In Parts 1 and 2, I invented a crime series called Fast, with three main characters whom we have come to know and love, episode after episode: Fast, Slow, and Boss. I outlined an episode of the series in which the theme of exams is arbitrarily shoehorned into the story of a robbery gone wrong at a school.
To avoid the damage done to the story by the shoehorn, I identified some key events which we might elaborate to make the story feel whole and natural:
| 20+ years ago | Fast bunked off university (providing motivation for Fast to push their own children to go to university) |
| 20 years ago | Fast became a parent |
| 16 years ago | Slow became a parent |
| 5 years ago | A criminal investigation was left open to doubt |
| 6 months ago | A credible complaint against the police was filed |
| Last weekend | A night watchman was killed and a safe broken into |
There is a pattern here that can work causally, and explain why some events happen now, as follows:
Slow’s career is five or six years behind Fast’s. Five years ago Fast was doing the same job as Slow is doing now. If there are five or six years between them, it is not surprising to find there are five or six years between their children (and the children’s exam-taking).
By the same token, Fast was doing Slow’s job when the dubious conviction was obtained. Indeed Boss may have been doing Fast’s job at that time (subject of course to research as to how advancement actually works in the police force, and with reference to the series bible).
This means we do not have to explain causally why, if Fast’s daughter is taking exams, Slow’s son is too. It is a consequence of the way promotions work in the police force. These characters would occupy these roles at the stages of life they have reached and at this stage in their careers. Whoever Slow was, Slow would likely have a sixteen-year-old taking exams now.
Given sufficient leeway in the series bible, the earliest event in the long causal sequence that determines what happened last weekend is Fast’s bunking off university (which I provide as motivation for getting the daughter into and through her own studies). Why would Fast, a dynamic soon-to-be successful career police officer bunk off university? (we could even indulge the theme-lovers by timing the bunking off to be just before some exams…)
The answer I’m going to offer is: Fast was witness to a crime and was advised to continue studies elsewhere because of lingering bad feeling locally among the family and friends of the criminal. Instead, being the dynamic person Fast is, Fast merely joined the police force and got on with a career.
Fast’s testimony (and the related crime) becomes the key event in the story. The inciting incident. What was the crime? Something serious. Serious enough that it would be sensible for Fast to leave town. Hence murder.
Let’s update our timeline:
| 20+ years ago | Fast was a critical witness in a murder case, advised to leave town, never returned to studies, joined the police & is motivated now to see their own children through university. Murderer, to give the character a name, is part of a vicious family and goes to prison. |
| 20 years ago | Fast became a parent. |
| 16 years ago | Slow became a parent, now explained. |
| 5 years ago | A criminal investigation was left open to doubt |
| 6 months ago | A credible complaint against the police was filed in respect of the investigation of five years ago |
| Last weekend | a night watchman was killed and a safe broken into |
Some story opportunities that stand out are:
- Fast became a parent after becoming settled on a secure career path,
- Murderer was a parent, and left Murderer’s-Child to grow up embittered (and psychologically damaged), now in their twenties,
- Five years ago there was a possible miscarriage of justice, or at least justice may have been rougher than it should have been, or someone was framed.
Murderer perhaps died in prison. Either five years ago (somehow triggering the less than perfect investigation at that time) or six months ago (somehow triggering the complaint now filed).
We do, however, want a direct causal path to the watchman and the school safe. Could the night watchman have been Murderer’s -Child? Let’s see…
How could a credible complaint against the police be filed upon the death of Murderer? Murderer cannot plausibly be framing someone by dying, surely? Then could Murderer have been preventing someone else from giving information to the police? Why would Murderer do that? Unless, of course, to protect Murderer’s own family.
How about this: suppose five years ago there was an attempt to break Murderer out of jail and Murderer’s-Child was convicted in connection with this, and themselves jailed. Murderer dies 6 months ago and Murderer’s-Child-2 (a second child of Murderer, whom I have just invented) sets about ‘finding’ witnesses to overthrow the Murderer’s-Child-1 conviction and bring down, and disgrace, Fast.
Murderer was vehemently against this course of action—while still alive—believing Fast to be too clever, and both Murderer’s-Child-1 and Murderer’s-Child-2 would end up in prison, since both were indeed involved in the escape attempt. (Adopting this storyline neatly characterizes Fast as effective, and foreshadows the fact that Fast does indeed achieve exactly the feared result).
So, was night watchman a key (as night watchman) to the attempt at the prison break of Murderer? And could night watchman still, perhaps, choose or choose not to expose one or other or both Murderer’s-Children? If so then, with night watchman out of the picture, the Murderer’s-Child-1 conviction could be challenged by ‘new witnesses’.
It’s getting complicated. Let’s redraw the timeline and see what we can make work:
| 20+ years ago | As a student, living away from home, Fast is a critical witness in a murder case, after which Fast is advised to leave town. Murderer, part of a vicious family, goes to prison. Fast does not return to studies but joins the police, has to work up from the bottom [making Fast a more heroic character], and resolves to see any future offspring go through university i.e. to have a better ‘leg up’ in life [making Fast a good parent]. |
| 20 years ago | After early career success and settled in the job in the police force, Fast becomes a parent. |
| 16 years ago | Slow became a parent, as explained. |
| 5 years ago | An attempt is made to break Murderer out of jail by two offspring Murderer’s-Child-1 and Murderer’s-Child-2 because Murderer’s health is failing [foreshadows that Murderer will be dead in five years]. The attempt is brutal (consistent with a violent family) during a visit to an outside hospital. One prison officer is held hostage and ends up in a wheel chair, the other leaves the prison service, traumatized, to become a night watchman (the violent nature of the crime is enough to keep any perpetrators in jail for much longer than 5 years). Fast secures the conviction of Murderer’s-Chlid-1 with the help of night watchman. There is insufficient evidence against Murderer’s-Child-2. |
| 6 months ago | Murderer dies. Murderer’s-Child-2 decides to frame Fast, against Murderer’s strict earlier edict for fear that both children end up in jail [neatly foreshadowing Fast’s eventual success, and reinforcing the strength of Murderer’s personality, which is diluted in Murderer’s offspring]. Without the night watchman and with two new ‘witnesses’ coming forward, a credible complaint against the police is filed, bringing the conviction five years ago of Murderer’s-Child-1 into doubt. |
| Last weekend | Night watchman was killed to dispose of a key witness. The safe was broken into as a misdirection. |
Having worked our way through the background history, the proposed theme of examinations has turned somewhat dilute. It serves now, instead, more as a seed to stimulate story development. On the face of it, the theme that is emerging now is the lives and prospects of adult children in relation to the lives of their parents. Perhaps the real theme has yet to emerge. I would like to think so. I would like to think it will emerge subtly as the writer (or writers) breathe life into the characters. That it will arrive through emotional authenticity and be part of the whole flavor of the story, rather than be helicoptered in to check a box and fill in time, to make up the required length of the episode.
But the writer might still lose their job, and if that prospect still hangs over them, well, bloody-mindedness can run both ways, as I will demonstrate in Part 4.
Carter Blakelaw BSc BA lives in bustling central London, in a street with two bookshops and an embassy, any of which might provide escape to new pastures, if only for an afternoon. Carter has studied physics, philosophy and computer science and was the architect and lead programmer for the Rooms 3D Desktops virtual reality engine, and has worked in integrated circuit design. In addition to his Top 100 Writing Tips book, he has published three books on what makes us conscious and how that knowledge impinges on both the machines we build and on our art. He has been an active member of the T-Party (latterly renamed Gravity’s Angels) SF writers’ group for 15 years, and of the Cola Factory (latterly renamed Spectrum) SF writers’ group, for the last ten years. Carter’s website is: https://www.carterblakelaw.com/ for more info and up-to-date news.
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