Five Principles of Crime Fiction, or Where Beginning Crime Fiction Writers Often Go Wrong
1) Make it personal with your protagonist.
The protagonist, be they a PI, law enforcement officer, or amateur sleuth, has to have personal stakes in the outcome. At times, the stakes could be life or death; they could be about livelihood, family, or even identity, but they need to have skin in the game. If the protagonist can walk away from the conflict and return to their normal life, then the reader’s investment in the outcome will be minimal.
If you look at Small Mercies, or any of Dennis Lehane’s major works (and I advise you to do just that), you see just how personal the story can be to the protagonist. In this case, the plot revolves around a single mother whose daughter disappears. But as she pokes the hornet’s nest, her home, community, and even identity are threatened. Ultimately, all that can be taken from her is taken, until she has nothing left but the core of her character and her will to overcome. It’s a beautiful and perfectly constructed novel. Most importantly, the stakes are personal to the protagonist.
2) Your protagonist must come under threat.
At some point, the protagonist must come under threat from the antagonist. This is usually a physical threat, though it can also manifest as a threat against their family or loved ones. The conflict must come to a head, and the threat elevates that final confrontation.
I get a lot of manuscripts where the protagonist cruises through an investigation without ever being seriously, dramatically, and bodily challenged by the antagonistic forces. Nothing makes a crime story more personal, and nothing spikes action more, than the protagonist coming under threat. Mystery writers call it a “pinch point,” when action is taken to keep the investigator from pursuing their objective. It could come as a threat to family, profession, or, more likely, life.
All you have to do is look at the scene in the classic noir film Chinatown when a hired thug opens up Jake’s nostril with a switchblade as a form of intimidation. You can practically feel the “pinch” there, and see the faltering determination in Jake’s grimace of pain. But the fall is preceded by a redoubling of determination, because now it has been made more personal.
3) Your antagonist must be worthy of your protagonist.
The antagonist need not be the worst thing in the world, but should be the worst thing in your protagonist’s world. There should be a yin-yang relationship between the two parties, and we should see some of the protagonist reflected in the antagonist. The antagonist can’t just be “bad”; they also have to be a fully dynamic character. The reader has to sense the writer loves them as much as they love the protagonist. Sharpening your antagonist is the best way to elevate conflict and bring the most out in your protagonist.
There is no writer better at creating worthy antagonists than Thomas Harris. It’s Hannibal Lecter who gets the spin-off, so compelling is he as a character. The most important quality all great antagonists share is this: the writer loves them as much as, if not more than, the protagonist. As a crime fiction editor, time and again I read antagonists who the aspiring writer wants to make “bad,” so they give them lots of unlikable traits, making them and the story predictable. Lecter is unquestionably evil, but he is given a humanity, sophistication, and integrity that makes him compelling. The perfect counterbalance to the driven, morally rigid Starling. The protagonist and antagonist create a reflection in their qualities, both complementing and opposing each other.
4) The protagonist guides the reader through the plot points, reveals, and pivots.
The reader should not be ahead of the protagonist. Facts should be revealed by the protagonist to the reader. If the reader is ahead of the protagonist, a good deal of fun evaporates from the book. I’ve seen manuscripts where the murder is revealed in the prologue, and the sleuth spends the book divining out who did it, while the reader knows all along. The protagonist needs to be equivalent to Virgil in their guidance of the reader through the hellscape of the investigation. Even if the reader guesses the ending, they still thrill to discovering if they are right.
Ever want to be completely in the hands of your de facto investigator? Try Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders. Like with all great mysteries, the protagonist is barely hanging on as they figure out who is behind the murder. And because Susan Ryeland is such a great character, and we are told the story through her POV, we too are thrilling to every reach she makes for each clue and fragile truth on her way to bringing down the murderer. When that happens, it is cathartic, because the reader is doing it along with her, or, as her. Any hint that you know more would loosen the tension, like a tightrope not strung taut enough. The reader is not there to watch the protagonist go through the motions; they are there to experience the motions.
5) Systems are more compelling than individuals as an antagonistic force.
The best scenarios involve corrupt systems manifested in the antagonist, when the antagonist represents a corrupt or detrimental systemic force: the corrupt, exploitative movie industry manifested through pimp Pierce Patchett in L.A. Confidential; the institutional racism in 1950s Los Angeles as Easy Rawlins confronts in Devil in a Blue Dress. I cover the latter and the concept extensively in this blog post about Devil in a Blue Dress. In short, if the protagonist is battling not just a person, but a system, the narrative takes on a complexity, reach, and depth of purpose that taking down a mere serial killer cannot.
There are, of course, many more principles to creating classic crime fiction, but these are the five main ones I see aspiring crime fiction writers ignore or get wrong.
Matt Henderson Ellis is a writer and crime fiction developmental editor.