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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Hello, everyone! Welcome to our 1st session of crime writers Week. If you can see and hear me, please drop your location in the chat so we can see where you're joining us from.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I see. North Carolina, London, Houston, Ontario, Minneapolis! Whoop! It's moving too fast for me to keep up with. Now welcome everyone we see you from all parts of the globe. We love having such an international audience as always

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: welcome. I'm going to drop some links here for you, and we will get started with our 1st speakers in just a moment. I'm going to just go through a few housekeeping items with you.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: But again, welcome to crime writers. Week. This is our 1st session of the week. We're so happy to kick things off.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: so, accessing your replays, we will have replays of all of our sessions this week. Monday, through Thursday sessions will be posted to the Hub page, and they will be posted throughout the day to day. So if you wanna refresh the hub throughout the day you'll see new things popping up.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: We'll have slides there. We'll have the replays special links from our speakers, special offers from providing aid. So make sure that you check out the hub. I'm gonna drop the links in the chat again for you now, since it is moving so fast.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: and the replays will be posted as soon as they're done processing from zoom. So if you just give it a couple of hours, you will start to see them. And they will also be posted to the community page for everyone to view who is a community member. By next Friday. So June 28.th So next week we'll get those posted there for you as well. So there's 2 ways to view the replays.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Your most immediate way will be through the Hub. But then next week you can view them on the community as well.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Premium day details. So like I said Monday through Thursday. Sessions are free for everybody to attend. But Friday sessions are limited to premium and premium pro users, because that is our premium day event. So free users. If you would like to upgrade your account. By Friday morning, you can still gain access to these live sessions

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: and premium and premium pro users who are currently registered will receive an email Friday morning with instructions for attending those live sessions and viewing those replays. So please keep an eye on your email Friday morning, if you have any questions about your account email Hello! At prorating Aidcom, and we'll be happy to let you know

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: if you are a premium or premium pro user but if you would like to upgrade your account, we do have a special offer for all attendees this week. For a 15% off yearly premium or premium pro subscription to pro writing aid. This will be off your 1st year and

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: you can see there's a special code here that you'll be using this time. It's CWW. 2024. When you go to our pricing page, and the link is in the chat here and also in the

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: hub. So you want to go to the hub, you'll get to the pricing page. You want to make sure you use that code. Cw, 2,024. This offer ends on July 6, th so you can find out more on the Hub.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: and if you'd like to keep the crime rate and conversation going, we'd love to have you over in our free community. There's a lot of chatter happening there already in the live event. Chat joining is super easy. You just log in using your prorating aid account email and password, and then it will let you right into the community, and you can check out the live event. Chat the event recordings. Page has our previous writers. Weeks replays on there. So if you'd like to catch up with any of those.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: there's a whole video library there for you to access. So we'd love to have you there. You can join us using the link here and in the chat

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: reminders for this session today. If you have a question for our speakers. Please use the QA. Box, as you can see. The chat moves very quickly, and we don't want to lose track of any questions, but please feel free to chat with each other. But you will want to make sure that in the dropdown arrow next to 2 you select everyone, otherwise your messages by default will just come to the host and panelists. So go ahead and change it to everyone, and then you can chat throughout the session today with fellow attendees.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Thank you for joining us. I'm so excited to introduce our 1st speakers. Ann and Richelle Ann Holly is a certified developmental editor of literary, historical, and fantasy fiction, and is the author of restraint, a novel of forbidden love in Regency, England. She was the producer and writer of the popular story, grid, roundtable, podcast and currently teaches and develops writing courses at pages and platforms.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Rochelle, Ramirez is a certified developmental editor who helps fiction and nonfiction writers structure and finish their projects. She is a Co. Creator of the story, path, course, and numerous writing masterclasses. She is a co-host of the happily ever Author club at pages and platforms, and the author of the forthcoming book, the Adhd writer from Frustrated to Focus to finished. You can learn more about Rochelle Ramirez and her editing services at Rochelle. ramirez.com

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: welcome, Ann and Richelle. We're so happy to have you back again. We love having you here.

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Anne Hawley: It's wonderful to be here. Should we go ahead and get started with the essentials of crime? Writing.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Absolutely.

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Anne Hawley: Let's go. Let me just share my screen here.

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Anne Hawley: Okay, are we looking at the right thing here?

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Anne Hawley: Yes, it looks good. Alright, thank you

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Anne Hawley: alright. Well, we are so happy to be here. Thank you, Michelle, for having us. We love pro writing. It's great audiences. You guys are the best really avid writers. And we love sharing what we have learned about

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Anne Hawley: different topics with you. And today we are talking about the essentials of writing crime. We just like to let you know that if you visit story path, dot me you can download the 7 essential story types that will contain a lot of the details that we're gonna talk about today be like a set of notes. And these are the essentials that will help you finish a professional working draft of any kind of story. But today we're talking about the crime type of story.

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Anne Hawley: So why in the world are we here today?

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Anne Hawley: Are you writing a crime story, assume you're here because you are writing or are interested in writing a crime story. Maybe you have one in progress, or you're thinking of writing one, or you've got a finished manuscript that yeah kinda isn't finished yet. Needs some work.

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Anne Hawley: Maybe you've come to this webinar because you want to give that that thrill and excitement to your readers. But you don't yet know how to structure your story, or you may have some scatter shot scenes or ideas of crime and detection. But they're not working together yet, or haven't entertained. Say your Beta readers, or your writing group, or yourself.

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Anne Hawley: or you're not a hundred percent clear on what constitutes a prime story.

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Anne Hawley: But any of those questions you're in the right place. Because today we're gonna cover quite a lot of ground, and there will be a replay, and our slides will be available to you, too. But here's what we're gonna cover. We're gonna fly through a lot of material we always do. We're gonna begin with a little discussion of what crime stories are even for, and why people like them.

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Anne Hawley: We'll go into some detail about what a working crime story is, and we'll cover some of the most popular subtypes or subgenres of crime story.

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Anne Hawley: And then, after that Richelle is gonna reveal the essential elements that every crime story needs to have in order to satisfy its audience. And she'll do that using a popular movie crime movie to demonstrate.

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Anne Hawley: And then she'll lay out the whole basic structure of a crime story. So let's get started. Let me issue a caveat. First.st We always issue this caveat with everything we do at pages and platforms. Everything we're gonna show you today in this presentation is a set of tools, not rules. These are principles of what makes a good working story by Western standards. Lots of caveats around that, and our clients usually find them useful, especially after they've got a rough draft.

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Anne Hawley: and they've gotten what's in their heart out onto the page. But please don't let any of ideas of of the ideas that we share today. Shut down your creativity as a writer, take what you need and leave the rest. The important thing is first, st to write the story that's in your heart to tell.

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Anne Hawley: So 1st of all, what are crime stories, even for

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Anne Hawley: crime stories remind us that there, wherever there are humans, there's crime

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Anne Hawley: crime stories help us establish cultural norms about what's right and wrong, what's just and unjust, and they give us a chance to feel a sense of order and security that comes from seeing the wrongdoer get their comeuppance.

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Anne Hawley: Crime stories provide the feeling of intrigue and satisfaction of solving a puzzle, letting us feel at least as clever as the investigator in the story. Ideally, just one step ahead of them

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Anne Hawley: there are a bunch of popular subtypes or subgenres of crime, and before we examine them, let's start by looking at what they all have in common.

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Anne Hawley: They are all, all of them use the tools of good storytelling, and Michelle is going to be going over those in detail.

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Anne Hawley: they are plot driven. This means that the protagonist is primarily motivated by external real-world events

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Anne Hawley: within the story and by characters in the story, and they, the

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Anne Hawley: protagonist, takes action in the external world to go after what they want.

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Anne Hawley: This is to say, it's not primarily an internal worldview type of story in a crime story. The protagonist wants to restore justice or order in society, despite difficult or impossible odds.

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Anne Hawley: the definition of justice is, gonna depend on your subtype or sub genre, whether it's criminal activity that is redressed through the official channels of the justice system, or an unfair act that may not be technically a crime, but can't be entrusted to law enforcement, and it calls for poetic justice sometimes in the form of another crime.

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Anne Hawley: or it might be an unsolved mystery that's simply personal to the protagonist.

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Anne Hawley: Now, crime stories vary by the protagonist profession. They may be a law enforcement officer, a sleuth or private eye, a lawyer, a journalist, sometimes even a criminal themselves.

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Anne Hawley: They vary by the type of crime and the type of criminal, for example, murder, serial killer, white collar.

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Anne Hawley: and they vary by setting. This crime story may take place in the real world of today or history, or in a fantasy or futuristic or sci-fi setting.

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Anne Hawley: Several crime subtypes have been popular in recent years. This, what follows is absolutely not an exhaustive list. I just wanna make sure we're clear that I am not giving you the whole entire world of possible crime variations, writers have been combining and recombining the elements of crime, at least since Edgar Allan Poe 1st published Murders in the Room, Morgan, 1841, and the genre continues to change. But here we go.

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Anne Hawley: There's the ever popular murder mystery in the classic murder mystery. The investigator is a private citizen person of means, typically a person of means who has a special knack for investigation. Think Poirot or

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Anne Hawley: Miss Marple.

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Anne Hawley: they might be a law enforcement official, but if they are, it's usually they work alone. They're kind of a loner, or they may have a single sidekick.

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Anne Hawley: The story is going to be focused more on the step-by-step accumulation of clues and red herrings, and on the investigators careful thought processes in solving the puzzle than on things like trial, conviction, or sentencing of the culprit.

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Anne Hawley: While a murder mystery can take place in any setting. It's classically confined to a crucible like environment such as a small town, an isolated country house, a train, an island, the cozy mystery, cozy murder, mystery is a variation which minimizes blood, gore, and violence.

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Anne Hawley: The protagonist goal, and probably that of the reader, is to restore order in the community where the murder has taken place.

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Anne Hawley: A couple of examples from relatively recent crime fiction include the coroner's lunch by Colin Caterle, featuring a reluctant coroner in Communist Laos of the 19 seventies trying to solve the murder of a senior official's wife is a really fun series of murder mysteries

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Anne Hawley: and sleep well, my lady, by Quay Corte, where a cop in Akra, the capital of Ghana, washes out of the police force and decides to get back on her feet by investigating a year old unsolved celebrity murder on her own.

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Anne Hawley: Next we have the courtroom drama

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Anne Hawley: here. The protagonist is usually a lawyer, often a public prosecutor or a law intern or maybe a law firm investigator.

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Anne Hawley: The courtroom story is focused on criminal conviction, the freeing of the innocent or civil proceedings by injured parties against corporate bad actors. The protagonists may alternatively be defending the wrongly accused and trying to discover the real wrongdoer.

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Anne Hawley: The criminal may be a corporate entity, organized crime, or a corrupt individual something or someone with political power or wealth is usually featured in this type of drama.

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Anne Hawley: The goal is social justice, usually involving a large social problem, such as racism, economic inequality, environmental destruction or domestic abuse.

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Anne Hawley: Courtroom drama is especially effective in filmed stories. So here are a couple of examples. Section 3, 75 is a drama from India that pits a passionate young prosecutor. That's where they're on the left against an apathetic defender in a hashtag. Metoo like case involving allegations of rape

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Anne Hawley: in the 2013 Chinese film. Silent. Witness, a high powered lawyer defends an accused murderer, but the whole case starts to unravel us both defense and prosecution together uncover an unexpected truth. And we mentioned these because it's really interesting to take in foreign courtroom crime stories because they give us a glimpse into different legal systems and different definitions of justice. And when I say foreign, of course I mean

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Anne Hawley: foreign to the United States, which is where we are. But look at dramas from other countries than your own. Since this is such an international audience today.

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Anne Hawley: Next, we have the journalism or newsroom drama, and in this type of crime story. The protagonist is a journalist who is working to uncover a crime that typically law enforcement, official law enforcement has ignored or failed to act on so the crime involved is usually some form of corruption, or a large social issue that creates injustice for the many, such as corporate malfeasance.

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Anne Hawley: The goal of the journalist is generally twofold. First, st to expose the crime and also to rise in status. Get the big scoop when the Pulitzer, that type of thing.

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Anne Hawley: The crime in this type of story is often scandalous, such as corruption or sex offenses.

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Anne Hawley: and the criminal is often a powerful leader, a corporation, or a government entity hiding that ruinous scandal or corruption behind their power and their wealth.

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Anne Hawley: One example of a journalism, crime, story, is the fragility of bodies by Argentinian author, Serio or Wien, where a tough, well connected reporter digs into a report of a suicide on the railroad tracks

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Anne Hawley: only to uncover a horrific deadly game.

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Anne Hawley: and another is Steve Larsen's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where a disgraced former journalist, working as a ghost writer decides to investigate the long ago disappearance of his client's granddaughter, and joins forces with a young hacker to discover astonishing corruption.

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Anne Hawley: Next, we have the police procedural. Now this has been a dominant crime story type in American television. Since the dawn of television

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Anne Hawley: oops went backwards there. Sorry police procedures, feature. A protagonist who is a law enforcement, official local police sheriff, Federal agent, Scotland Yard, Texas Ranger. Take your pick

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Anne Hawley: and it's focused on using accepted legal procedure and usually forensic science to identify and capture a criminal. Their goal is to get the violent felon off the street and restore the social order. The protagonist usually operates as part of a modern policing team at a minimum, a pair of cop partners who are officials of a State-run law enforcement agency.

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Anne Hawley: The crime type is usually a violent felony. And here's an example I recently enjoyed. It's a police procedural in a historical setting. So it's also historical. Detective L. It features A. Sherlock Holmes like Investigator in 1930 Shanghai working with a Policewoman, a rarity in that era, and a coroner to solve a series of criminal cases that point to a larger conspiracy. You can find it on Youtube. And it's awesome.

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Anne Hawley: Another enjoyable policing procedural this one in a fantasy setting is the Rivers of London series by Ben Aranovic. One of my favorites. The protagonist is a young police officer. He's learning magic in a generally otherwise realistic modern day, London, where his special unit handles crimes committed by characters from myth and legend, good fantasy series.

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Anne Hawley: Now a big crowd pleaser in the crime. Genre is the subtype of Caper and Heist. Our example story which Richelle is going to take us through in detail in a couple of minutes comes from this subgenre. This is the story where crime does pay and to wrongs, do make a right

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Anne Hawley: in the caper or Heist story. The protagonist is a criminal already, or becomes one at the beginning of the story.

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Anne Hawley: They are seeking retribution or justice outside the law, that is, they want to redress a wrong that has been done to them personally, or to a large group of people that may not have been an actual crime, and the protagonist always forms a team with special skills that operates on private funding sources or on the promise of a big payoff. When they get through their caper

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Anne Hawley: they often commit white collar crime involving theft, fraud, and deception, but the highest subtype may involve more violence in a darker tone, while the caper subtype is usually by definition lighter and generally nonviolent, focused on skill and teamwork.

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Anne Hawley: One k. Per novel you can find is set in a fantasy environment. That's Brandon Sanderson's mistborn, the final empire. A thieving crew recruits a young woman with special magical powers to join a team in a plan to overthrow the Empire by stealing its treasury and collapsing its economy. Whether that's Violet or not depends on your point of view.

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Anne Hawley: The Heist Society Series are YA novels that begin with a young woman who was born into the criminal world of art, theft and con games, and she has to organize a team of teenagers to steal back some stolen paintings. It's a lot of fun.

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Anne Hawley: Next we have the popular crime thriller in the thriller. The protagonist may be law enforcement, a lawyer, or even some cases a private citizen, and they are tracking a criminal who has monstrous characteristics. For instance, a serial killer or a pedophile.

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Anne Hawley: The criminal is also often a mastermind, at least as clever as the protagonist, often more so, and eventually will target the protagonist directly.

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Anne Hawley: The crimes are usually multiple, violent felonies.

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Anne Hawley: and the protagonist's goal is to stop the criminal before they strike again.

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Anne Hawley: The alienist by Caleb Carr is a historical psychological thriller in which an alienist or psychologist and a group of specialists tracked down a serial killer in 18 nineties, New York and Rip Caleb Carr. He just died last week.

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Anne Hawley: Red ink by Angela. Marcola is another psychological thriller. This one said, in modern day, Johannesburg, South Africa. Here a convicted serial killer asks an ambitious young journalist to write his story, but a series of violent events in the city begin to make her suspect that somehow, though he's in prison, he's behind the attacks.

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Anne Hawley: And finally, just a word about stories with crime, like elements of supporting a more character driven or internal story. And you see these quite a bit, this type of supporting story. The protagonist needs to uncover a hidden truth. So certain investigative skills and situations do come into play. The antagonist is not usually an actual criminal, and the hidden truth may have nothing to do with an actual official crime, but it's more of a puzzle

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Anne Hawley: solving the puzzle restores order to the protagonist's mind and life rather than necessarily restoring the broader social order.

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Anne Hawley: The adoption memoir often has these investigative elements, as in all you can ever know by Nicole Chang, which details her own search for the truth about her adoption and her biological parents, and an example from fiction is John Green's turtles all the way down, which is primarily a young adult kind of worldview coming of age story in which the protagonist pursues the truth about a crime as part of her process of coming to terms with mental illness.

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Anne Hawley: These subtypes are all important. They might make or break a potential reader's decision to read your book. Some readers can't get enough cozy murder mysteries and others won't go through for anything but a thriller.

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Anne Hawley: So each has its own rules, and you do need to know them. If you're writing in a fantasy setting, for example, you'd better be aware of current trends in both crime and fantasy.

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Anne Hawley: You need to be reading in that area to know what readers today expect and want

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Anne Hawley: and you just need to keep up with the the trends. So do your research keep up in the field and

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Anne Hawley: know what's going on in that particular subgenre that you want to write it. But regardless of the subtype or the setting or the marketing category, they all have certain structural elements in common, and as a writer looking to turn out a good working crime story in any of those subgenres, or a different one that satisfies its audience. You have a puzzle of your own to solve.

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Anne Hawley: You need to know how essential story elements play out in a crime story, and you have to combine those elements

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Anne Hawley: skillfully into a crime story that works. And that is what Richelle is going to cover next. So, Rochelle, I'll hand it off to you.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Okay, thanks, Ann. It's always interesting to me. It's always new and fresh to me when you share that alright. So to ell to illustrate the elements of crime. We've chosen Widows a 2018 American Heist film from a critically acclaimed screenplay by Jillian Flann of all people, and Steve Mcqueen.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The story's about a widow who assembles a team of recently widowed women to steal 5 million dollars from a corrupt politician in order to repay another politician for her deceased husband's debt.

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Rachelle Ramirez: using widows as an example. Let's look at the components you'll need for your crime story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 1st element your story needs is a strong desire, which is basically what your protagonist wants and what they need.

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Rachelle Ramirez: A crime story is primarily focused on your protagonists want, which is to restore justice in order they may approach this by solving a crime or pulling off a crime. Either way the protagonist tries to solve a puzzle.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The need of the crime. Protagonist can be just about anything in the beginning of the story, whether to gain knowledge, rise in social or financial status or a tone for past wrongs.

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Rachelle Ramirez: the need motivates the protagonist toward action

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Rachelle Ramirez: in widows. The protagonist Veronica wants to end the chaos her husband's crime created and restore justice via a heist.

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Rachelle Ramirez: she needs to gain knowledge and connect with other women to pull it off.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The second element your crime story needs is stakes, which is what the protagonist has to gain or lose.

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Rachelle Ramirez: What does the crime protagonists have to lose? Well, it's social order and the belief that justice will prevail.

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Rachelle Ramirez: What do they have to gain?

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Rachelle Ramirez: It's the restoration of justice and social order. Also the satisfaction of solving or pulling off the crime.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The stakes of a crime story run along a continuum from justice to injustice, and from chaos to order, and in a crime story every scene should move the protagonist closer to justice in order or closer to injustice and chaos

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Rachelle Ramirez: in widows. Veronica's lack of information and her husband's crimes

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Rachelle Ramirez: plummets her into chaos, threatening her belief that justice is even possible.

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Rachelle Ramirez: What she has to gain is knowledge and the restoration of justice in order.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 3rd element your story needs is a character change of state.

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Rachelle Ramirez: This is the change your protagonist makes as a result of the pressures they face in the story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: It's how they're different in the beginning of the story from how they are in the end.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The change for your character in a crime story might seem obvious from justice to injustice or chaos to order. Yes, but they should also experience an internal change, say, from ignorance to knowledge, or perhaps lack of esteem, to esteem

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Rachelle Ramirez: that change is determined by your supporting story type, and you can learn more about the other 6 story types with the link we'll give you at the end of this webinar. We may not have time to go over all 7 story types here today. But we're not gonna leave you hanging.

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Rachelle Ramirez: So what's the character change of state and widows? Well, Veronica moves from being in an unjust situation, ignorance of her husband's cheating and faking, his own death to a just situation, uncovering her husband's deception, outwitting him and paying their debts.

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Rachelle Ramirez: She also moves from a false connection with her husband to a true connection with Alice.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 5th element to your story needs is a premise.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The premise is the central idea that your story puts forth. It's a single cause and effect statement that comes directly from your protagonists, choices

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Rachelle Ramirez: based on what they want, what they need and what's at stake.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Some general premise ideas for crime stories, and these are just examples.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Our clever investigators restore order by outwitting the criminal.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Good. Police work results in justice.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The rule of law moves society towards justice.

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Rachelle Ramirez: crime, pace. When people team up to cheat the system, but not each other.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The promise statement of widows might be something like cheating other criminals with a clever Heist restores justice and order.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 4th element your crime story needs is emotion.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The emotion is what the reader wants to feel, the reason they choose your type of story

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Rachelle Ramirez: crime readers want to feel the security of seeing justice done and safety restored, or the intrigue of solving a puzzle and feeling more intelligent than the protagonist.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The audience for widows probably wants to feel suspense throughout, and ultimately the satisfaction of seeing women restore justice against extreme odds.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 6th essential element every good story needs are certain kinds of characters and moments

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Rachelle Ramirez: we'll start with the specific characters.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Crime audiences is expect you to deliver the kinds of characters that make a crime story a crime story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: There are roles or archetypes rather than specific individual characters.

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Rachelle Ramirez: That is, a single role can be played by more than one character.

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Rachelle Ramirez: and a single character can play more than one role.

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Rachelle Ramirez: So first, st your your crime story needs a protagonist, the primary character of the story who faces stakes of justice and injustice. They must be actively trying to solve a puzzle and restore order.

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Rachelle Ramirez: You'll want to give them characteristics the audience can identify with or admire such as deductive brilliance, sophistication, and flaws

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Rachelle Ramirez: make them less powerful than the antagonists primarily due to lack of knowledge and resources.

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Rachelle Ramirez: In a caper and heist the protagonist becomes the criminal, seeking a form of justice that the law might not recognize

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Rachelle Ramirez: in widows. Veronica is brave, intelligent, and determined.

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Rachelle Ramirez: but she lacks needed information and partnership.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Of course you need an antagonist. The antagonist in a crime story is the primary external force of opposition for the protagonist generally. That's the criminal.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The antagonist is a step ahead of the protagonist at the start of the story, and has information. The protagonist wants

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Rachelle Ramirez: their motives must be complex and believable, even if abhorrent.

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Rachelle Ramirez: When the antagonist is an antagonistic force, such as a criminal gang, a corporation, or organized crime ring. It becomes a situation rather than a character, but serves some of the same story purposes, even so that force must speak through characters such as politician, a hench, or say a CEO

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Rachelle Ramirez: in widows. The pinnacle of antagonism in the story is Veronica's husband, Harry, who forces her into the dangerous situation that makes the Heist seem necessary.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Harry is involved in a crime ring in which he steals from one politician to pay off another. This pits multiple forces against the protagonist Veronica, raising the stakes throughout the story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Other antagonistic forces at play are racism and misogyny embodied by most of the antagonistic characters.

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Rachelle Ramirez: A crime story requires at least one victim.

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Rachelle Ramirez: This is a character or group, or sometimes an environment

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Rachelle Ramirez: that has suffered injustice at the hands of the antagonist.

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Rachelle Ramirez: This victim, whether dead or alive, requires justice.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The victim is often powerless and dependent for justice on the protagonist

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Rachelle Ramirez: in a high circ caper. The victim of the planned crime is, oddly enough, the antagonist.

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Rachelle Ramirez: however, the victim in a murder mystery, and many police procedurals is often the dead person discovered in Chapter One.

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Rachelle Ramirez: And finally, we need to look at essential moments. These are the change points that support your story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: You'll want to build your story around these essential moments to create the conflict that will drive your plot forward

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Rachelle Ramirez: in the setup of a crime story. The protagonist is engaged in their everyday activities, usually either solving or doing crime, and once the crime is incited or discovered, those activities will prove relevant to the protagonists search for justice.

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Rachelle Ramirez: In the beginning of widows 4 women are shown in their ordinary worlds, enabling their husbands crime careers

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Rachelle Ramirez: in the inciting incident someone or something alerts the protagonist to a crime or crime opportunity changing their state from business as usual, to inspire, to restore justice

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Rachelle Ramirez: in widows. Veronica learns of the inciting crime from Jamal that her husband stole 2 million dollars from Jamal, and she has just weeks to pay him back and restore justice. She learns her husband kept a notebook that could help solve her problem.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 3rd essential moment is the act one pay.

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Rachelle Ramirez: This is usually when the investigator sees objections to investigating the crime, or the mastermind may see flaws in the proposed crime

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Rachelle Ramirez: in widows. Veronica realizes the plans, and her husband's notebook require more team members. She can't do it herself. More information and prescribes high risks, activities.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Our 4th essential moment is really a series of moments or scenes that raise the stakes throughout, act 2 and increase the complications.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Here the investigator starts finding clues, some of which are faults or misleading, also known as red herrings.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Characters affected by the crime may help or hinder the investigation, and in a caper or heist

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Rachelle Ramirez: the team forms but runs into difficulties with the original plan.

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Rachelle Ramirez: One of them may demonstrate they are a shapeshifter or incompetent

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Rachelle Ramirez: in widows. Veronica invites the widows of her husband's criminal gang to join her team.

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Rachelle Ramirez: One doesn't show up

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Rachelle Ramirez: she's a shapeshifter.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 5th essential moment in the crime story is the midpoint shift.

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Rachelle Ramirez: As the name implies, this happens at approximately the middle of the story and moves a crime story from act 2 to act 3.

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Rachelle Ramirez: It's where the protagonist realizes they must change their approach to solving the case or pulling off the crime.

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Rachelle Ramirez: having just discovered her husband, faked her own death, and that she has the opportunity to sell the notebook. Veronica enters her deceased son's room and decides in subtext. In this point the midpoint shift often is to proceed with the Heist. Despite the now inevitability that either she or her husband will die.

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Rachelle Ramirez: she lets go of life as she knew it, and proceeds with attack rather than react.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 6th essential is the global peak, and this is where the investigator confronts the criminal directly gambling on the correctness of their deductions, or the mastermind faces the antagonist alone to protect the team, gambling that most of them will escape with the loot.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Widows has a crisis moment in the high sequence in which Veronica must decide whether to complete the Heist at any cost, and kill another woman who, by the way, is also a victim of racism and misogyny, or risk the success of the entire Heist, and she chooses not to kill her

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Rachelle Ramirez: in the resolution. The investigator brings the criminal to justice, restoring social order, or the mastermind and the team get away with the loot for poetic justice to prove that order and balance have been restored

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Rachelle Ramirez: after the heist, Veronica's husband returns to demand the money for himself, threatening her life.

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Rachelle Ramirez: She kills him, bringing the ultimate antagonist to justice.

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Rachelle Ramirez: In widows all the women of the Heist live and are successful in restoring some justice against misogyny, racism, deception, and political corruption.

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Rachelle Ramirez: though it comes at a particularly high cost for Veronica and Alice.

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Rachelle Ramirez: And now

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Rachelle Ramirez: the big question, I put all these elements together to write your crime story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Think of your story as a big circus tent.

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Rachelle Ramirez: That's a lot of story material, and you need tent polls to support the weight of it all.

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Rachelle Ramirez: We think of the main tent polls as delineating a 4 act structure.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Now, don't get too hung up on the 4 act structure. Screenwriters usually think in 3 acts. Playwrights might structure their work in 5 acts. We use a 4 act structure at pages and platforms, because we found it to be the most helpful and efficient way to help authors think about their stories and get them lined up

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Rachelle Ramirez: in an ideal and perfect story. Each act is supposedly 25%.

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Rachelle Ramirez: But in modern storytelling, and particularly with the crime story, the act structure looks a little more like this.

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Rachelle Ramirez: a short, quick act, one as little as 10% of the story which introduces the protagonist, their ordinary life, their main gift and flaw, and the puzzle they need to solve.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Fully 80% of the story is devoted to rising complications leading to the global crisis and climax.

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Rachelle Ramirez: And the resolution is relatively short series of moments that wind the story up in the final, say, 10% or so.

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Rachelle Ramirez: We saw this pattern in widows where the final wrap up is even shorter than that

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Rachelle Ramirez: there are key events in each act.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Act one also called the Beginning Hook, has to pack in a lot without overwhelming the audience.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The 1st thing you need to do is introduce the protagonist in their ordinary world, doing something that is normal to them.

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Rachelle Ramirez: demonstrate their fear or flaw, something they will overcome or fail to overcome later.

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Rachelle Ramirez: demonstrate the injustice, the inciting crime, or opportunity to commit a crime that interrupts their ordinary world.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Introduce interesting supporting characters that serve your story arc

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Rachelle Ramirez: and demonstrate what the protagonist wants just as

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Rachelle Ramirez: an order, and their needs, based on their internal change.

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Rachelle Ramirez: make the stakes clear. Stakes in a crime story are not for a subtext. What can the protagonists gain? What can they lose

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Rachelle Ramirez: in transitioning from act one to act 2. Your location will often change, but is not required.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Put clues and red herrings, those faults, clues, and obstacles between the protagonist and their goal.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Make sure the obstacles escalate the pressure increases for your protagonist.

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Rachelle Ramirez: create a midpoint shift where the protagonist goes from reactive to proactive and changes their tactics.

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Rachelle Ramirez: The midpoint shift transitions the story to act 3,

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Rachelle Ramirez: and in the middle build you'll want to continue escalating the complications and raising the stakes

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Rachelle Ramirez: and remove the protagonist. Hope of restoring justice in an all is lost moment at the end of the middle build

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Rachelle Ramirez: in your ending payoff or act 4. You're answering the questions you set up previously. So write a climax in which the protagonist confronts the antagonist

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Rachelle Ramirez: show the protagonists rising to the challenge and confronting their fear or flaw.

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Rachelle Ramirez: demonstrate how the protagonist outwits the antagonist or show the antagonist outwitting the protagonist.

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Rachelle Ramirez: You'll also want to create a resolution showing justice restored or continued injustice or chaos.

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Rachelle Ramirez: And that's the basic story structure for a crime story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: And yes, that's a lot to absorb. And of course you can watch this again. You'll also find all these essential elements in our free download. So let's do a quick review before we jump into the QA.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Today, you've learned what a crime story is for

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Rachelle Ramirez: some popular crime subtypes

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Rachelle Ramirez: the essential story requirements you can use for your crime story and how to build those elements into a 4 act structure of your story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: And now you have the basics of the crime story, a structural framework for writing and editing your story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: and a plan to finish your professional working draft.

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Rachelle Ramirez: So congratulations.

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Rachelle Ramirez: And before the Q. And questions and response sections. We'd like to share the URL for that free download that we talked about. And you can learn more about all 7 story types. Crime is just one of them

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Rachelle Ramirez: in addition, providing a will make these slides and presentations available later, I guess, today or within the week as well as the recording.

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Rachelle Ramirez: So let's get to your questions about writing a crime story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Alright. So.

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Anne Hawley: Rochelle. That was awesome.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. Put your questions in the QA. Instead of the chat that will help us, and we will try to get as to as many as we can here in the next little bit.

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Rachelle Ramirez: And I'll read the questions and give you a chance to respond. 1st we have ha! Liam asks, how familiar should a crime writer be with law enforcement and law enforcement techniques.

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Anne Hawley: Well, if you're writing a a type of crime story that involves real world today, law enforcement in a particular culture, then, yeah, you should be pretty familiar with them. Your reader will get after you if you aren't. There are specialists out there like sense, not sensitive readers, but expert readers, you can consult like. And there's a lot of good podcasts and stuff, true crime, that type of thing.

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Anne Hawley: so I would say, but if you're writing like, say, in a fantasy

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Anne Hawley: crime.

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Anne Hawley: you know, police procedural, you can. You have a little more leeway? I think, on the whole.

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Anne Hawley: the reader of the police procedural. Or if you are doing screenplays, the viewer expects to feel that it's realistic and not be hoodwinked by false, you know, fake made up crime solving stuff that said a lot of what goes on in police procedurals is

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Anne Hawley: not accurate. If you really look like fingerprints, don't work that way, and there's a lot of, you know, Csi type stuff that really is over over imagined over, hyped, made to be almost magical in a way. So it's good to be aware of those differences. But on the whole, try and be realistic. Do your research absolutely.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Alright Tara wants to know is change obligatory? Because, like an Agatha Christie character, I.

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Anne Hawley: The question.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Or Miss Marple actually go through a change.

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Anne Hawley: They change externally. Sherlock Holmes also famously doesn't change much. James Bond doesn't change much. These are characters who are notoriously sort of you hit the reset button and tell yet another story, and they don't go through a lot of change.

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Anne Hawley: even those, though typically they are those characters as Poe in particular, I think, is very vain, and he's looking for adulation, and he goes from needing it to getting it sort of ra, ris rising in this, in the esteem of the people he's impressing the hell out of Sherlock Holmes is the same way. So yeah, those are famously principal protagonists, crime protagonists who don't

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Anne Hawley: change because they're part of the series that just goes on and on. But in the

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Anne Hawley: you you look for even a little change. Typically, it's a change in their standing in the world or in the eyes of of the people they're impressing with their magnificent crime solving skills. But yeah, they, though that type of character, most of their changes external. They go from there. They're facing an injustice or a crime, and they go. They change externally to having solved the crime or restoring justice.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Okay. And they're also going from ignorance to knowledge. They're gaining knowledge as they investigate the crime.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Alright, Lucy says, what do you make of the End of Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd. I don't know that story, do you?

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Anne Hawley: I can't know I but we we can't claim to have seen every or read every prime story. So we I I'm afraid we don't know how to answer that one. I'm sorry.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Alright. I skipped one here. Sandra says you speak of change in the protagonist. How much change is enough if the protagonist is a detective crime is their life. How much change is believable.

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Anne Hawley: That we sort of covered in the last in the last question. But also, if you look at series whether written or filmed, the protagonist usually is undergoing a a life art change. They have like relationship issues that their job

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Anne Hawley: ruins or

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Anne Hawley: that that sort of thing. So any crime series. Typically modern ones, they're evolving or changing. Sometimes they age, you know, they go through depending on how long the story lasts. But you can. You can have a a detective hard boiled detective character change quite a lot, depending on what their internal life is like or what they're trying to redeem themselves from, or a tone for that type of thing. There's a lot you can do with the

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Anne Hawley: with it. You don't have to, but I think the modern reader expects sort of an emotional arc for the character as well as the external solution to the mystery.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Alright anonymous attendees says, How do you develop a plot? Twist in a crime? Fantasy story.

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Anne Hawley: Well, Rochelle.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Chuck.

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Anne Hawley: How do you? It's like, Yeah.

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Rachelle Ramirez: So fantasy story, so fantasy in this case is the setting. So it doesn't change the plot of your story. It doesn't. You choose the story type you choose. What kind of story you want to tell and fantasy for our purposes. Here is the setting, so it won't change whether it's fantasy or a realistic story, and setting up a plot twist means you are setting up expectations for the reader, and you are surprising them.

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Rachelle Ramirez: So how you do. That is very specific to each and every individual story. But you're go. You can play with tropes and the expectations of what you've set up for the reader, and then surprise them by turning, that I would look at your say.

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Rachelle Ramirez: your particular favorite, 3 crime stories, and see what your favorite authors did, and see if you can do some sort of play on any of those things, or even combine the 2. But it's the the twist is about setting up expectations and then surprising them, but surprising the reader with something different, and not something out of the blue.

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Anne Hawley: Oh, I was just gonna say, and I will just add that in don't be tempted by a fantasy world to have the plot to be. Oh, it was magic that still has to be established, covered over, and then brought out a, you know, and surprise as this surprising but inevitable twist to to the reader.

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Anne Hawley: No.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Manson, Fd. 7. Wants to know. Do you think the anti Hero Lead would work in the crime story?

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Rachelle Ramirez: Example. The protagonist is the most feared assassin from the mercenary group that's focused on killing the terrorists for bounty. But as the mercenary group betrayed him for the terrorists and the elites. That's when he went for the John Wick mode against him. Even the policies of the military hunted down the protagonist for being too dangerous for the world. Stability.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Anti hero works well in the crime story. Anti hero means that. You know, they didn't want to solve the crime. They didn't sign up for that stuff there. They've got other plans. It is not their goal to help other people. And then, you know, yeah, I guess I'm gonna have to do this. It's the right thing.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Keep in mind. Stories like John Wick are primarily action stories, and sometimes it's quite easy to get action and crime. Confused

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Rachelle Ramirez: action is when the primary stakes of story are safety and danger, usually life and death, but not always so in in John Wick the primary problem now. I haven't seen it. So maybe I'm wrong here, and I don't know if you've seen it. But I believe that it is primarily an action story. This stakes are like life and death, and when the protagonist faces for themselves life and death or serious danger, safety and danger that

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Rachelle Ramirez: goes above the need to solve a crime or bring someone to justice usually almost always need to save your own life. More important.

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Rachelle Ramirez: so

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Rachelle Ramirez: keep that in mind? And did I? Did I get that.

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Anne Hawley: Yeah, I think so. There's often a revenge motive where it feels kind of like a crime searches. They're going to go out and get revenge for the fact that this bad guy killed his wife, or whatever that's pretty.

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Anne Hawley: Unfortunately, standard driver for that type of action character. But remember, the crime protagonist is usually working with brains more than brawn. It's not that they don't, can't fight, or, you know, wield a gun or something, but they are primarily puzzling through a solving the mystery rather than just going out. For if it's primarily revenge and or that type of thing you're gonna be leaning more towards the action story. Cr download for more about the action story.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Alright. Nancy Wade says, I write a cozy mystery series, and since it's a series, can I show character, growth, or change of the main character or protagonist, as her character is used again and again in the series.

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Anne Hawley: Yes, absolutely do that, by all means, your reader. I think these days the modern reader would like to side. We mentioned this would like to see an emotional arc of change or circumstantial change realistically aging. I'm thinking of the the Colin Cottrell series, the Coroner in Laos. He's quite old at the start, and he gets older as the series goes on, and he grapples with aging. And it's very engaging, feels more realistic that way. So yeah, I think absolutely do it

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Anne Hawley: if you want to. I mean, that's I think the modern reader would like that would enjoy that.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. And I would say, other than moving from ignorance to wisdom, and from injustice to justice or

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Rachelle Ramirez: chaos to order. I wouldn't do the same change over and over and over again for each book. It should.

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Anne Hawley: Yeah, like, they made a terrible mistake in Book 3, and then in Book 4, they have to, somehow, while they're solving another mystery, half to a tone for the accidentally getting someone killed or putting the wrong person in jail. That type of thing. So there could be a redemption type of atonement arc in in one of the stories. Yeah, make it real. Make them make them feel like real people going through. You know, emotional change.

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Anne Hawley: Yeah, absolutely. We missed one here.

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Anne Hawley: JJ. Asked, would you recommend the 4 act structure for crime stories? What are its advantages to other types? We just. It's kind of an arbitrary division. It's still the same story arc. We like to divide it into 4 for analytical and editing purposes, but you're still having to hit the same, those same tent polls in roughly the same places, whether you call it a 3 act structure like a TV show with little short beginnings and ends. It's it's an arbitrary division that we use to help our thinking. I wouldn't get too hung up on it if I were you.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Right, and the difference between looking at it as a threex structure or a 4 x structure, say, in this example Jay uses the hero's journey. Is that we want to account for a midpoint shift. What holds up? What prevents you from having? That's kind of that saggy middle build. Something is holding up the middle. They're shifting from reactive to proactive, and they're changing their approach. And that

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Rachelle Ramirez: that gives you a prop there in the middle. So. But I agree with Ann. It's they're they're pretty arbitrary.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Okay, Cindy says. I tend to move the template elements of the story structure around, not keeping them in the recommended order. Is this, okay?

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Rachelle Ramirez: I would say, who's making the recommendations?

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Rachelle Ramirez: And does it work for your story? I mean, what recommended order is that? Are we talking about in terms of what we just suggested here?

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Rachelle Ramirez: I would. I would say, no, you don't want to move that around, because

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Rachelle Ramirez: I mean, why, what's your store? Really? Ask yourself why you're moving it around. And does it move your story forward? Is your story progressively complicating? Or are you moving back and forth between? Okay, they solve this. But now they're going back to this like real world. We we move forward, you know, 2 steps forward. One step back in a story. Your story is consistently, progressively escalating, even if they have some success along the way.

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Rachelle Ramirez: You don't want them going backwards. So

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Rachelle Ramirez: our. The order that we used here for the suggestions was very broad. So if you're moving that around, I would really look and question, why?

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Rachelle Ramirez: And is it the best choice? Not saying you can't. You can do whatever you want? Maybe your great idea is fresh and innovative, and who knows but I would really ask myself why, and make sure that I was breaking the rules for really

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Rachelle Ramirez: good reason, not accidentally, or cause I didn't want to solve the challenge.

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Rachelle Ramirez: but because I made that choice.

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Anne Hawley: I would say, the worst thing you can do as a writer of fiction is to bore your reader, and one of the ways that your specific reader who wants to like your story and likes the kind of story you're writing will get bored is by having those pro. Those complications go up and then

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Anne Hawley: down again, and then we're gonna go up, and then oh, they lose again and go. And then I say, you get bored in the middle right that big saggy middle. So that's why we

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Anne Hawley: promulgate this idea of these. This particular sequence.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Chithuba asks a question about marketing and pitching, and I am going to say I'm sorry that this session and the information that we have to provide here doesn't cover that. That's outside our scope for today. And that's a huge answer. We have a lot of that information in our happily ever author.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Love to have you come and join us. But that is a an, an enormous answer that we do not. We are not able to answer today. So I'm sorry we'll have to

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Rachelle Ramirez: to to breeze over that one.

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Anne Hawley: Yeah. But can I say that your story idea sounds really interesting. It sounds very interesting.

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Anne Hawley: Julia. Julissa, excuse me, asks, can I write a character led crime, thriller story? And if so, what's the difference compared to a plot led crime? Thriller story, a crime story by definition is, is like by definition, primarily plot driven. But if you want to write a character driven so I mean, a really good example is, for example, silence lamps where?

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Anne Hawley: Where? Where? There's a big psychological element and the character they're they're very the internal change of the character. The protagonist is very close, like it's 49, 51%. So yeah, you can do that. Yeah, absolutely.

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Anne Hawley: And if so, what's the difference compared to a plot like this? It's how much of the character change is foremost on the page. Basically, the difference.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Joe says, how can you make a crime thriller? A comedy protagonist is a sleuth and wants to clear his name also. Do you need to fact check scenes with a medic. If a hospital scene or a police officer for corrections. I okay, Joe, I would just say real quick here that if you are doing a crime, thriller comedy, find another crime, thriller comedy that you loved, and ask yourself, what did they? What did they do? Maybe find 3 different ones and see what they did.

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Rachelle Ramirez: if your protagonist is a sleuth and wants to clear his name, maybe the primary story isn't crime.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Maybe it's validation. And I would encourage you to look at our 7 story types handout download that we've provided here to see. Is it really a crime thriller? Or does your story have aspects of crime and action in it? But it is really perhaps, a validation story.

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Anne Hawley: And I'll just have that comedy is a style, not a story type. And so your comedy crime story still should have all the elements of a crime story. And then you build in the comedy style. I don't understand comedy. I have no sense of humor whatsoever, so I don't know how to I I can't advise you on writing comedy, but it is a style and the story type is not affected by this style.

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Anne Hawley: Yeah.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Lots of great information out there on writing comedy.

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Rachelle Ramirez: There it's it's a pattern. It's plan, Callback, using 3 there. There are lots of patterns, and you can find a lot of great information out there.

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Anne Hawley: Annie asked. Can you provide a couple of more examples of the midpoint shift in different stories? I'm not gonna do it here. But let me recommend you, get any standard like, get a really standard kind of movie like a marble movie, one of the earlier ones, not the recent ones and go on. Get it on your screen and move your cursor to the middle, move it to 50%.

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Anne Hawley: Preferably, it's a movie you've seen and see what's happening and do that about 4 or 5 different movies, and you'll start to get a feeling for exactly what the midpoint shift is. That's the short answer, and I highly recommend that you can do it in books too. Open it to the middle, and see what's going on, because that will, if if you're already familiar with the story, that'll be really useful.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Alright. Last we're we're about out of time here. So I'm gonna do. Let's see one more question. Eva says, do British crime novels go down well in the Us. And you're a great person to answer that.

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Anne Hawley: Yeah, absolutely. I love them. They're not maybe not universally of interest to all American readers. Nothing is. But yeah, we love British

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Anne Hawley: crime stories. Our television is full of them. So yes, absolutely.

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Rachelle Ramirez: True.

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Rachelle Ramirez: true.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Alright! So I am going to pass this back to Michelle. Thank you all for coming.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Thank you. And initial question.

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Anne Hawley: Everybody, bam.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: It was lovely having you back for another event. We always love having you here. You just give so much great information, and the chat has just been moving so quickly. With such great feedback. So thank you, everybody for attending the replay. The slides. Everything will be up on the hub as soon as we can get it up there.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: And we have another event starting in an hour, so we will see you. Then.

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Rachelle Ramirez: Thank you.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Hi! Everyone.