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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yep, we've got participants. That's good. Okay, nice one. I can see everybody starting to file in. Hello, everybody. I'm Sarah from parity aid. Thank you for joining us today. If you can see and hear me, please drop your name and location in the chat.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: I can see we've got a few people coming in, so I'll wait until I can see some names. Oh, hello! From the UK. Hi, Tiffany!

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So we got one person in the chat. There we go.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: but Roger from Richmond, Kentucky. Oh, they're coming in faster now, Sue, from Ireland, David from Utah, who's very excited for this session. That's good. Edwin from California, laurel from Maryland.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Well, from Nc. Is that North Carolina?

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Mike, from Vancouver.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Barbara from

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: BC, Victoria, BC. Canada. Perfect. Right? Okay. So

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: sounds like everyone can see you hear me. That's good before we get started. We've just got a few housekeeping items that we're going to go through.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So 1st you can access your crime writers. Week replays by going to the Hub page replays for Monday to Thursday. Sessions are available for everyone on the main crime week Hub, and today's replays will be posted to the premium hub as soon as they're done processing by zoom.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: They will also be posted to our community page for all members to view. By June 28.th

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: If you'd like to keep the crime writing, conversation going, we'd love to have you in our private online writing community joining is easy. You simply need to visit the link below and then log in with your priority. 8 account info. Then you can hop over to live event, chat, to talk to other attendees.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: We have a brief survey we'd love for you to take at the moment to fill out for us. We love hosting these writers' events, and your feedback plays such an important role to making more events like this happen. So the link will be in the chat for you. I will post it in a moment. I'll try to remember to do that.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: That's the share your feedback slide. I should have shown that while I was reading that one out. Good. Okay. So reminders for today. If you have a question for our speaker, please use the QA. Box, you can find that button in the center of your zoom screen. If you'd like to chat with other viewers, please use the chat and be sure to select everyone, otherwise your messages will just come to the host and panelists

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: and then links to your offers from today's premium day. Speakers will be available on the premium hub.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: and I will also post everything into the chat in a moment.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So I'm done with our housekeeping items. Let me just stop sharing my screen and introduce our speaker. So today we are joined by Graham Bartlett. So Graham Bartlett rose to become chief superintendent, and the divisional commander of Brighton and hove police. His 1st nonfiction book, Death Comes Knocking, was the Sunday Times, Top, 10 bestseller, which he then followed with Babes in the Wood.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: He co-wrote these books with best-selling author, Peter James, and has since turned to fiction and published bad for good force of hate and city on fire. All-starring chief Superintendent, Joe. Ho! Is it home?

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: I should have asked how to pronounce that Graham is also a police procedural and crime advisor, helping scores of authors and TV writers inject authenticity into their work.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: So with that over and done with, I will hand over to Graham.

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Graham Bartlett: Thank you very much, Sarah, and thanks for that. That introduction, and thank you to everybody for joining us. It's always good to see the participants signing in on the, on, on, on, on the chat, and working out where they're all from, I saying to Sarah that they, before we came on air that when I 1st did one of these, about 2 or 3 years ago

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Graham Bartlett: I naively thought that there was only Uk audience and my whole presentation was about Uk police procedures, and that so I had to make a rich, rapid changes, because I realized actually we were talking to a much richer, auger, richer audience than just just just here on the little old Uk. But there are some, I'll just say some Uk ones coming in. So that's great.

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Graham Bartlett: So thank you very much. I'm gonna share. Share my screen.

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Graham Bartlett: every you'll you'll realize every time I share a screen. I pause because I can't multitask.

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Graham Bartlett: So that's that's what I do. So this is what we're gonna talk about today creating credible crime fiction. And as I say it's not a it's not a Uk centered presentation at all. This is about

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Graham Bartlett: how to use sort of policing and crime. To to to really kind of drive a story. It's not. It's not about which procedures work in which different jurisdictions, etc. It's more generic than that, although some of the material to illustrate it is drawn for the Uk. But you can. You can apply

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Graham Bartlett: apply to to your own your own areas as well.

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Graham Bartlett: So just

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Graham Bartlett: just going through just a little bit more about why.

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Graham Bartlett: why pro-writing? Ada kindly asked me to come along again and talk to you today. So I'm a retired and senior detective with Sussex police. Sussex is a geographic force. It covers the areas of East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton and hove, and it's about 50 miles south of Brighton, on the South coast. Very tricky area to police. There's a lot of

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Graham Bartlett: deprivation. It was the drugs capital of the UK. For many, many years has huge numbers of visitors that come in and cause all sorts of issues very politically centered area. So lots of protests, lots of public order, that sort of stuff and lots of crime.

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Graham Bartlett: And my last job was actually to be in charge of Brighton home, where most of those things those things happen

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Graham Bartlett: since then I've become a crime writer almost by accident. But I I wrote some a couple of nonfictions, as Sarah said with Peter James. And now I'm writing fiction, and my 1st 3 novels are are police procedures with a political edge, and they're based in the Uk. And they're told from the viewpoint of a basically, the officer that did that did my job. And the 1st book for good is about

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Graham Bartlett: what happens when police cuts are so severe that vigilantism takes over

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Graham Bartlett: and and the last book in the series, or the the most recent book in the series, City on Fire.

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Graham Bartlett: is about what happens when big pharmaceutical companies try to fuel the drugs epidemic in a city, and what murderous length cell go to to sustain that! So political edge, all with a kind of theme of

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Graham Bartlett: this, that this this is isn't happening now, but it certainly could if we don't watch out so I can't enjoy stretching things a little bit there, and I'm advised around 150 or so authors probably a bit more than that now. Some of them are household names, and if you can see the ones they're on screen

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Graham Bartlett: but also I I advise people that are just setting out sort of Middle East authors as well. And it's not just people that are writing police procedure. I advise people that write all sub genre of crimes, psychological thrills, crazy crime and historical crime to degree. So anything that's got crime or policing in. I'll advise authors on those about getting there.

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Graham Bartlett: getting their writing authentic.

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Graham Bartlett: And I also run courses with the professional writing academy, actually running an all day forensic course tomorrow. With them and and with universities.

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Graham Bartlett: And and it's kind of you know. It's it's become a sort of a passion of mine, really.

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Graham Bartlett: that

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Graham Bartlett: crime fiction is authentic

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Graham Bartlett: and plausible and credible. What one thing

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Graham Bartlett: that I will never talk about is trying to create realistic crime fixing because I think

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Graham Bartlett: realistic crime fiction is actually quite dull, because policing can be very, very dull. You know. You can spend a lot of time on paperwork. Let's spend a lot of time hanging around waiting for people to turn up or

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Graham Bartlett: waiting for information to come in. You know, there's a lot of sitting around. There's a lot of mundane jobs.

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Graham Bartlett: but we don't want that crime writers. What we want is we want the drama. We want the action. We want the characters, and we want

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Graham Bartlett: all of what they do in the world they operate in to be authentic.

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Graham Bartlett: So I'm going to come on to a little bit about that in a minute. We're going to talk about ways of doing that. But 1st of all, just as a bit of a

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Graham Bartlett: a bit of a kind of sort of light-hearted start.

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Graham Bartlett: policing is, is renowned for its 3 letter acronyms. It's Tlas. And and you know, if if you can shorten a phrase into a 3 letter acronym, then you know, so much the better.

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Graham Bartlett: and please do use them from time to time. But what we don't want to do is we don't want to create.

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Graham Bartlett: And this is why I'm pausing now because I'm about to reshare my screen. We don't want to create

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Graham Bartlett: scenes such as the one I'm about to show you now.

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Graham Bartlett: where the 3 letter acronyms become everything.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: It doesn't sound seem like the sound's coming through.

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Graham Bartlett: And sound not coming through.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: No.

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Graham Bartlett: Okay, I will come off my headphones. I think that might be the issue.

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Graham Bartlett: It's it's worth a wait. I'll tell you.

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Graham Bartlett: Could you just give me a nod of it's coming through, Sarah.

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Graham Bartlett: What have we got? 3 afos pronounced dead one in Icu. All suspects fit with the established Ocg. The Hgv. Was transporting drugs. Code number ed. 916, down the M. 23, and was intercepted by the Ocg. By an orchestrated Rtc. We can see the Hgv. With ed. 916, traveling with an arb on the M. 23, at 933 via CCTV. But it sounds to me like the Ocg. Were Airbnb playing r-p-g's like Mtg and DND, whilst listening to Ogb. By an IBM. PC, so hold on, son, these are all just letters.

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Graham Bartlett: So I said, Can you just tell me what happened?

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Graham Bartlett: Do do you actually know what happened?

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Graham Bartlett: Afraid? I don't, sir.

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Graham Bartlett: was rifkind

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Graham Bartlett: so those of you familiar with the with the UK. Will be familiar with a drama called Line of Duty, which that is a skit off. But line of duty takes poetic license to

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Graham Bartlett: the nth degree, and stretches it and stretches it and stretches it so. And that's what you end up with. And that's what we're not going to be dealing with today. So we're going to be talking about how to make

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Graham Bartlett: your drama dramatic, not too, not not too technical, and make it understandable for your for your readers.

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Graham Bartlett: So

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Graham Bartlett: the

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Graham Bartlett: when I'm advising or teaching crime writers about how to make their crime.

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Graham Bartlett: and they're policing authentic.

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Graham Bartlett: There are some principles that I always apply. And I think if you're going to anyone for any advice when you're writing fiction, you should be looking for these kind of principles.

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Graham Bartlett: The 1st one is the story is always key.

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Graham Bartlett: The story is always king.

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Graham Bartlett: and

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Graham Bartlett: the

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Graham Bartlett: procedures, and the the language and the structures, and the staffing, and the personnel, and and and the way things are in real life

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Graham Bartlett: are only there to shore up those procedures. That story. They're not there for their own sake. If you start putting too much information on the page, then it becomes an info dump, and it draws away from the story, and it's really tempting to do that, particularly if you're at one end of the spectrum, like I was when I started writing crime fiction

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Graham Bartlett: because I knew all the procedures, and I knew exactly how a murder would be investigated. I fell into the trap. Luckily my agent picked it up, but I fell into the trap of writing the crime scenes as if they were real crime scenes, and they went on and on, and on, and on and on, and that's no use to anybody.

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Graham Bartlett: So the the story itself. What is this book all around? What are these things all about? That must always be be at the forefront of your mind, but it must be credible.

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Graham Bartlett: You know you've got to. You've got to. You're entering into a contract with the reader where you're going to ask them to read 400 pages of your of your novel. So you want them to believe in the world that you're creating. Believe in the characters that you're creating. So that's where the the authenticity comes in. You know. You can't have.

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Graham Bartlett: you know, people getting

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Graham Bartlett: go to a murder scene. And and and you know, unlike in Csi programs swabbing somewhere and immediately getting the DNA hit. Or you can't have

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Graham Bartlett: people being convicted of murder and being released, you know, on, on probation, or something like that. It can't have. It must be credible. So you have to. You have to create that world. Sometimes it involves some twists and turns that I can help you with, and others like me can help you with

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Graham Bartlett: characters must also be plausible, and we'll talk a little bit about characters in a bit. But you know your characters must be those that you think. Yeah, okay, they probably could be in the place. They can be off the wall. They can be, you know, to be, you know, really dull sort of plodding, you know.

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Graham Bartlett: Died in the world. Detectives that always played by the book. You don't have to be that at all, but they must be plausible.

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Graham Bartlett: No one wants an I spy book of policing, so I spy used to be a kind of in little kids information books that they used to provide. They used to produce back in the back in the seventies. I spy Book of Aircraft. I spy Book of trees, I suppose so. No one. No one wants a textbook. Basically, if I'm saying, if you

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Graham Bartlett: you want a textbook to buy a textbook. People are buying your books, your your fiction, because they want to go on a journey with you. They want to engage with the characters. They want to come on the story with you and get all the things we all love from reading. They don't want to just know what you've learned about the procedures.

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Graham Bartlett: however, understanding those procedures, does allow you pirated license. So there's always going to be a stretch

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Graham Bartlett: but if you know what, what, what the the the real-life position is. So you know what happens when the police go to a murder scene, or you know how they interview a suspect, or you know how they

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Graham Bartlett: plant listening devices in people's cars or

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Graham Bartlett: houses, or whatever you know how that's actually done.

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Graham Bartlett: But it doesn't see your story to do it exactly that way. Then you can. You can stretch it a little bit if you're guessing it'll come across immediately, as you as you're guessing.

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Graham Bartlett: And the good news is

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Graham Bartlett: it's not rocket science. So you know, policing is just is just a profession, just a job. Crime investigation is just a job.

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Graham Bartlett: No? Well, it is complicated, obviously, but no more complicated than you know heart surgery, or.

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Graham Bartlett: you know.

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Graham Bartlett: aircraft flying an aircraft or something like that. It's just a lot of things that come together that if you know them, you know them. And and and you can usually find a way around things. I mean one of the

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Graham Bartlett: One of the classic ones I get asked is I? I need my main character to be related to the the murder victim. Now that is

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Graham Bartlett: almost impossible to do. But there, I have done it. I have helped read of writers, find a way in which you create a set of circumstances around those characters and around that murder. That means that they are the only person that can be investigating it. Would it happen in real life. Probably not. Could it happen in real life?

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Graham Bartlett: It certainly could. But if you build those blocks in before, and that's where having that knowledge of how things actually work helps you

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Graham Bartlett: helps. You create the the environment so that these things that would be incredible

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Graham Bartlett: previously become credible.

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Graham Bartlett: So what's good crime and thriller writing all about. Well, it it makes the tedious dramatic. There is a lot of tedium in policing. As I said, there's a huge amount of tedium

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Graham Bartlett: and sometimes you need to include those scenes around, you know, for effect. But you have to make them dramatic in one way or another, and there's a. There's an adage, I think probably most people will have heard it. That comes from mainly from film. And TV

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Graham Bartlett: about, you know, getting into your scenes late and coming out early, so getting in late into the action and coming out before things start to go off the boil, and that that's kind of making these things dramatic. Just pick, pick that moment of drama and focus on that.

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Graham Bartlett: There's also finding the humanity and the procedure. I mean, there's nothing more

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Graham Bartlett: boring than sitting there waiting

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Graham Bartlett: for a suspect to come out of the house so that you can arrest them. You could be sat there all night in a car with someone that you don't particularly like, who's got next to no conversation, and you've just got to sit there with them.

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Graham Bartlett: So rather than just kind of

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Graham Bartlett: depict this scene of of tedium in the car, you know. Get into the get into your protagonist or your character's point of view character's head, and and just show that kind of that frustration, that kind of you know the anger and the anxiety and the just. They are going to kill this person if they say another word, and.

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Graham Bartlett: you know, make finding excuses to go off, and, you know, relieve themselves behind a bush, or going off and getting some coffees just to get out of it. Just just make

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Graham Bartlett: you're showing how boring that job is. But you're showing it in a very human way which your readers will engage with Mark Billingham. Does this really? Well? Mark Billingham is a UK crime writer, but those are people don't know

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Graham Bartlett: so authentic without being pedantic. So you know that's about you know that, you know as as I say, you know you, you can. You can skip things, and I'm going to give some examples a minute. You can skip huge parts of a process just to get into the right bits.

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Graham Bartlett: And it shows the tip of the tip of the iceberg. You're only showing the drama, that's all. You're that's all you're showing.

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Graham Bartlett: Now, a lot of this involves research. So you know part of that research, and might be listening to people like me, or

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Graham Bartlett: or going on Google, or by textbooks, or or watching

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Graham Bartlett: documentaries on policing or on crime investigation or.

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Graham Bartlett: yeah, true crime dramas, even.

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Graham Bartlett: But but then it's about turning that turning that into drama and recognizing that most of it is is dull.

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Graham Bartlett: So it's about identifying that drama, identifying when things start to ramp up because we're all about ramping up the drama, aren't we? And make that the point of the chapter of the scene talks about getting in late and out early, crunching down time. You know. It can take. Sometimes it can take

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Graham Bartlett: 5 days for a standard DNA result to come back. You don't want to find you want to build in a 5 to 5 day

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Graham Bartlett: gap in your timeline just because someone's waiting for a forensic result to come back. So so just be be prudent. But also, you know, don't feel. Don't be. Don't be kind of scared of crunching down time.

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Graham Bartlett: And and and this is something that we're familiar with. If we're right, is it about showing, showing, not telling

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Graham Bartlett: so I'm gonna I'm gonna show you a clip now. I mean it. Obviously, we are mainly novelists here and not some not screen writers. But I think I think the screen actually helps us

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Graham Bartlett: kind of understand some of these principles a lot stronger. This is a this is a scene from a Uk drama called Happy Valley

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Graham Bartlett: Which is based in in Yorkshire, in the north of England, and it's a very deprived community, and it centers around a uniform. Sergeant. It's not a detective, a uniform sergeant called Katherine Kayward.

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Graham Bartlett: And it's really it's really, you know, it's my favorite drama, my favorite piece drama by country rock.

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Graham Bartlett: but it's it's all about her character, and

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Graham Bartlett: she's a very, very complex character, with a very, very rich kind of and difficult history with her family, and and professionally as well.

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Graham Bartlett: And what the writers wanted to do is they wanted to show you as much of that in a dramatic way, at the very, very 1st scene of series one episode one. So I'm going to show you

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Graham Bartlett: that scene now.

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Graham Bartlett: and this scene is

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Graham Bartlett: 2 and a half minutes long.

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Graham Bartlett: So yeah, just to just look at this information. You're getting about

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Graham Bartlett: Katherine Kayward. In those 2 and a half minutes.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: That seems like there might be no sound again. Yeah, it's not coming through.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Thank you.

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Graham Bartlett: Around the corner and reckoning to set fire to inside. Yes, thank you. We're on top of that. How much can I give you for these

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Graham Bartlett: my sauces.

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Graham Bartlett: Well, he can send himself to Barry, nurse, that's his chance.

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Graham Bartlett: If it's taken my eyebrows with it.

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Graham Bartlett: What do you think I'm gonna toss about what you do, which is pretty small. You like crazy like animal. They know his name.

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Graham Bartlett: No use. 23 unemployed. It's not good.

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Graham Bartlett: What's it just about, she finished with them 3 days ago. No, she said to my good friend

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Graham Bartlett: High ranking, highly trained specialist expert police administration Pca.

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Graham Bartlett: Pathetic that she was naked

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Graham Bartlett: you've got. I don't know what you bought that for. Well, if you accidentally get this fireball, you're going to get a bonus, believe you me, it's not a good look.

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Graham Bartlett: I was all come to this endlap.

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Graham Bartlett: I've been humiliated, humiliated, but I don't want to talk about it all right. Ok.

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Graham Bartlett: yo

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Graham Bartlett: seems to be vowels and words. Okay, can I just say this? So, Liam.

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Graham Bartlett: the light is making me nervous.

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Graham Bartlett: You've had a lot to drink, and you've got the shapes, and you might press it without intending to, and I like to put it down. I understand that the point I'm making is that with all these fumes, and frankly, I don't know how you're staying conscious you could go up any second whether you intend to or not, and once you go up. You won't just go up a bit. You'll go up a lot. And the other big thing to say is, it hurts

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Graham Bartlett: 3 seconds in. You'll be screaming at me to put you out 7 seconds in. You'll be begging me to shoot you.

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Graham Bartlett: There's a big thing conversation.

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Graham Bartlett: Yeah, I think you've got that covered. I'm Catherine. By the way, I'm 47. I'm divorced. I live with my sister, who's a recovering heroin addict. I have 2 grown-up children, one dad, one who don't speak to me and a grandson. So

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Graham Bartlett: why.

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Graham Bartlett: finally speak to you? It's complicated. Let's talk about you

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Graham Bartlett: so fabulous, fabulous example there of you now know in the 1st 2 and a half minutes of what was a 3 season drama

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Graham Bartlett: as much as you're going to need to know that stage of Katherine Kayward. She's she. She's innovative, she's brave. She's in charge. She's a bit cynical. She's got family family background from hell. And that that's basically just

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Graham Bartlett: showing all that through a very, very what would be a very, very traumatic, otherwise a very traumatic scene. And she's got a very quick wit about. I don't know if you heard. Did you heard the bit where she she said. Oh, you know, shut the comedy department down to to her colleague, you know. Shut that lot over there.

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Graham Bartlett: So she's, you know, she's 1 of these people that that you you suddenly learn a lot from. And you you can engage with, and she's relatable, you know, and it's you know, it's a great way to start a series. So you know, if you're able to to start your novels like that. Then I think you've got a very, very bright future.

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Graham Bartlett: okay, so, my my mantra on on this. So, as I said I,

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Graham Bartlett: when I started writing crime, I was tempted. And I did wrote, you know, I kind of write. Okay, this is how this is how you investigated murder. So we're going to have

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Graham Bartlett: senior investigating officer deputy senior investigating officer. We're going to have a detective sergeant in charge of intelligence. We're going to have one in charge of search. We're going to have a family liaison.

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Graham Bartlett: and they know this is all the stuff they're going to do, and they're going to put pieces of paper in here and take them out there, and my then agent is a different agent now. But my then agent said to me.

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Graham Bartlett: she said. You got you got to get rid of half of this after this, these officers and and half the procedures.

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Graham Bartlett: you know, she said, it's just blowing my head. I don't know what's going on. And I said, well, I said, well, you can't, I said. I can't. That's that's what it takes to investigate a murder. That's

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Graham Bartlett: that's you know what you have to do. This is, you know it's not. It's not simple stuff, you know. It's not like, you see on the Telly.

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Graham Bartlett: And she said.

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Graham Bartlett: Graham, you're writing fiction. No one cares which I thought was a bit harsh, but I think they, but I think they do care, but they care

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Graham Bartlett: about authenticity. But also you've got to be conscious your reader's not going to be able to hold 30 people in the head

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Graham Bartlett: and work, and remember who who they all are, particularly bits of world that they're not familiar with.

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Graham Bartlett: So I have this kind of mantra.

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Graham Bartlett: that every word this is for all my novels, all my writing, every word in every line, in every paragraph, in every scene, in every chapter, must earn its place on the page, and that goes for characters, too.

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Graham Bartlett: So you don't put a procedure in unless it's absolutely to going to take the story or characters forward.

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Graham Bartlett: You don't talk about, you know, a particular branch of the police, if it's not deeply relevant to your story, and that what that does that makes very, very concise dramatic

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Graham Bartlett: fiction. So every word, every line, every paragraph, every scene, every chapter, must have in its place on the page.

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Graham Bartlett: So to do that.

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Graham Bartlett: You

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Graham Bartlett: need to know kind of what to put in and what to leave out.

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Graham Bartlett: you know. So it's very easy for me to sort of, say all I know what to put in, but it's equally tough for me to say. Well, I know what to leave out.

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Graham Bartlett: If you've not worked in policing before then, you might not know when to put it in the 1st place, and you might be taking stuff out. That's actually really important.

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Graham Bartlett: So you know, you have to sort of take a bit of a judgment on this, and it's you know, these are the sort of things that I do is, you know, I'll go through the manuscript, the highlighter, and you know I'll take out scenes and words and think well, is that earning its place on the page. No, it's not bye-bye.

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Graham Bartlett: and put that in a separate folder, and then we kind of move the story forward. And it's really, you know if you if you're like me, and you've got 3 or 4, you know principal characters in your stories, then everything needs to have an effect on them. You know everything needs to be in a position, you know, there to kind of, you know. Either be help them or

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Graham Bartlett: put them in their way, or create the tension and the jeopardy. So what's the effect on those characters? And if if sitting around waiting for somebody to come out so you can arrest them is not having an effect on the characters.

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Graham Bartlett: and it can do because we can, as we described, discussed earlier. Then out it goes.

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Graham Bartlett: but also get, get fresh, get fresh people to get fresh people to have a look at it, and just kind of, you know. Be

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Graham Bartlett: be aware that other people's views, you know, whether they're whether they're experts or they're not experts. Other people's views are valid, and they represent.

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Graham Bartlett: They represent a reader. I'm I'm going through the edits of my next novel at the moment, and I've

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Graham Bartlett: and I've had 3 people look at it.

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Graham Bartlett: One a couple of them are, are.

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Graham Bartlett: you know, proper editors that do it before that goes to my agent, and and the 3rd one is somebody who is just a reader, and they for me they all got equal voice on that, because if the reader says I don't understand that they're all.

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Graham Bartlett: it's a bit kind of flowery that that paragraph, or whatever that that could be representing, you know, hundreds of other readers when the book comes out. So it's about kind of keeping that keeping that tight.

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Graham Bartlett: So I'm going to use some gonna use some example. Now, this is this is

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Graham Bartlett: from A you. This is from UK procedure. So in the UK.

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Graham Bartlett: For firearms, officers to be deployed.

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Graham Bartlett: They have to be authorized by a senior officer.

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Graham Bartlett: They. They have a slightly more junior officer who is in what we call tactical command. So they're the ones that will will determine what, what.

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Graham Bartlett: what, how the firearms operation would take place.

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Graham Bartlett: And then they have their own firearms team, and they run the operation according to their own training and their protocols and that sort of thing. So there's lots and lots of people involved in the firearms scene.

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Graham Bartlett: But equally there's a lot of hanging around.

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Graham Bartlett: So

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Graham Bartlett: when you're writing a firearm scene, the other thing to remember in the UK. And it might be the same in other countries when you're thinking about specialist firearms, units like Swat teams or similar, is that your lead detective is probably very unlikely in the UK. They wouldn't be allowed near the scene until the firearm operation had finished. But they'd be very unlikely to be at the scene.

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Graham Bartlett: So you have to think about. Okay, well, what what role is your protagonist going to have?

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Graham Bartlett: And these are the sorts of roles they could have.

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Graham Bartlett: and what the kind of their position might be in terms of the drama, so are they likely to be the armed officer. Well, probably not. And so, therefore, are you going to want to waste a point of view character on one of the armed officers that one of the people that they're with

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Graham Bartlett: with the Heckler, Cocker. Whatever it is, going through the door. It's all very dramatic. It's all very exciting.

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Graham Bartlett: But but do you wanna have a point of view character

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Graham Bartlett: of that person, because you're probably never going to see them again.

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Graham Bartlett: Probably not.

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Graham Bartlett: Do you want them in command? So if you have them in command, if your protagonist is very senior officer, they may well be in command, and I used to be a firearms commander in my latter years, and the one thing that I found intensely frustrating

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Graham Bartlett: was, you're in command, but you're not in control.

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Graham Bartlett: So you're you're kind of, you know. It's your you've given the authorization, and you're watching the tactics play out. But you're not.

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Graham Bartlett: You're not covering that door there, or you're not the one who's putting the distraction device through that window. There, you're watching what happened in front of you, and that could be incredibly frustrating. So there's a bit of drama there. If you're telling it through that story. You can have that frustration of the I call it the impotence of command where you're in command, but other people are doing your bidding for you, and there's nothing you can do about it.

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Graham Bartlett: Do you want your protagonist at the scene? Well, you might have them detached from the scene again. You're not going to have them go through the door. You could have them at the scene, and they could be the one who's, you know, goes in next. Once a firearms operation is finished, and they do the search, or take over the prisoners, or whatever it might be.

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Graham Bartlett: Are they just sitting there listening to the firearms officers and getting all concerned. I've got a scene in one of my books called Force of Hate, where they're doing just that

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Graham Bartlett: the firearms operation is going on, and you've got my main character listening to it, and just kind of trying to work out what's going on. And is it good news? Is it bad news? And then the period of silence that can be quite dramatic in the same way, watching the drama as well? If you, if people are worried about it, or video.

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Graham Bartlett: or are they the one receiving changing intelligence? Actually.

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Graham Bartlett: what we thought was a kind of fairly low threat farms operation. Actually, these people have got very heavy weaponry in there. And okay, what are we going to do now? So it's all about. This is about it's about getting the get getting the the human impact out of this. It's not so much the the external

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Graham Bartlett: drama is the human impact.

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Graham Bartlett: So when so talking about arrests now, so arrests are usually quite an important scene in in, in novels, and you have a kind of you know you have different forms of arrests, and you have different tempos of arrests.

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Graham Bartlett: But actually that the phases of an arrest

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Graham Bartlett: are these. So first, st we have to identify a suspect.

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Graham Bartlett: then you have to locate the suspect.

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Graham Bartlett: Then you arrest. The suspect could be, could be, a violent arrest could be a kind of just walking up to them and putting your arm on theirs and saying, You're under arrest.

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Graham Bartlett: then you have to transport the suspect.

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Graham Bartlett: and you have to have the detention authorized by in the UK by a sergeant has to authorize the detention.

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Graham Bartlett: Then they're processed.

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Graham Bartlett: and then they have all their forensics taken from them, their DNA photograph and fingerprints taken from them, and then, if it's for a serious event, they might be having their fingernails scraped and their hair plucked and swabs taken in their hands.

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Graham Bartlett: etc, etc.

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Graham Bartlett: and they go and sit and wait in a cell.

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Graham Bartlett: And then the solicitor arrives, and the solicitor's briefed, and the solicitor sits for the suspects, and then they get to the interview.

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Graham Bartlett: which is the next high point, the arrest, and then the interview.

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Graham Bartlett: Do you really want to show every stage of that in your book. Is your reader going to fall asleep? Probably, like you have, as I've got through, gone through that list deliberately

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Graham Bartlett: making it sound very, very dull, because it is very, very dull.

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Graham Bartlett: Or do you cut out all these scenes and just have

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Graham Bartlett: these 4 seams?

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Graham Bartlett: So you have. You have a suspect located? Yeah, we know where he is. We know where he is. We've got to get there. We're going to get there. Let's get the team out there. Let's go and do it. Let's get the areas covered. Let's make sure we can't escape. Let's make sure we've got, you know, helicopter. If he's going to escape, let's make sure we've got police, dogs, etc, etc. Then you've got the arrest. It might be a very, very high tempo arrest.

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Graham Bartlett: then you can. Then you cut, and what I do. If I'm cutting like big chunks of the timeline out like this is, I'll I'll then cut to another scene to give a view of to give an impression of time passing.

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Graham Bartlett: and then you might want you might want to switch to your suspects point of view and have them sitting in the cell.

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Graham Bartlett: They're just sitting in the cell waiting, and a cook. Honestly, this is true.

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Graham Bartlett: even though the officers will be rushing around and doing all sorts of things.

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Graham Bartlett: The the people that I've spoken to in sales tell me, always used to tell me that

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Graham Bartlett: that you know they're not doing anything. No one's doing anything. They just left me sat here. No one's doing anything, however hard you convince them that they are actually rushing around doing lots of stuff around it to try and expedite the investigation.

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Graham Bartlett: The person in the cell never believes it. So you can have that kind of tedium in a bit like we talked about the the overnight staycat. Have the tedium that's sitting in the cell waiting and waiting, waiting.

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Graham Bartlett: and then you move to the interview. So you've basically got 4 very, very quick scenes there that cut out all of the all of the procedure that is of no use to your book or your readers. But by by just kind of using time breaks.

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Graham Bartlett: you know, working out where the drama is. The waiting sale isn't drama. But then that is drama in itself, in a way, because it's how you kind of show that the impact of maybe some inner monologue. If someone's not been arrested before, this is the end of their world, they're going to go to prison for the rest of their life. What's going to happen to their family, their kids, their house, their job, all of that, you know, all of this stuff. Just go way way down. That can be quite a dramatic scene in itself, even though nothing's happening.

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Graham Bartlett: And then the interview.

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Graham Bartlett: But do reflect that passage of time, you know, don't just cut from the arrest, to the waiting in the cell to the interview. Do reflect it, as I say, just with cutting out to another scene, and then coming back

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Graham Bartlett: is a way to do that.

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Graham Bartlett: Oh, hello! There we go!

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Graham Bartlett: So interviews themselves again. I'm going to show you some examples in a minute of of interviews that are, how they, how they are and how they can be written. So this is the Uk interview model. It's called Peace, which stands for planning and preparation engaged, explain, account.

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Graham Bartlett: closure and evaluation.

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Graham Bartlett: and that is what

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Graham Bartlett: officers have to go through

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Graham Bartlett: the beginning and the approach to during and after an interview very, very long-winded, very long-winded. A lot of planning involved

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Graham Bartlett: lot of kind of strategizing, etc, etc, etc.

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Graham Bartlett: Interest to the readers. Not a bit of it.

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Graham Bartlett: This is the bit that's interesting to the readers. The account clarification, the challenge. This is the bit of the of the story where you want to be

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Graham Bartlett: getting into right? Tell tell me what

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Graham Bartlett: you know. Just open questions. Tell me what happened. Where were you? What did you see? Who was with you.

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Graham Bartlett: Then you go to the clarification. This is where you're getting to put the flesh on the bones. All right. You said you went on the bus into the city center. What bus did you get? Where did you sit on the bus?

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Graham Bartlett: Do you recognize anyone on the bus? Tell us about the bus. And then the challenge is

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Graham Bartlett: that bus was canceled that day you didn't build that bus, or we've got your car going into the town at the time you said you're on the bus, or you said you weren't in the pub yet. We've got your DNA all over a glass that was used to smashing someone's face or something like that. So that's the kind of. And that's the really meaty part of the interview. There.

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Graham Bartlett: that's where you focus on the interview. Not all of this stuff you just cut to the chase. Cut to the case, chase cut to the chase.

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Graham Bartlett: and I'm going to show you an example. Now this is from a book called The Jigsaw Man, by again a UK author called Nadine Matheson, and Nadine has got the that she's she's she's lucky enough to to

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Graham Bartlett: to also have been a what we call a solicitor advocate. So she represented people in the police station, and she also

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Graham Bartlett: defended places in court, so she'd been in a police station many, many times. So she she wrote this. She's written a scene, a book called the Jigsaw Man, which has got a brilliant interview scene. But I'm going to show you 1st of all

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Graham Bartlett: what the

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Graham Bartlett: what what an interview! Actually looks like in terms of a real interview. So you've got here all of the introductions being tape recorded. I'm decent. So really, interview. Thank you very much. The other person.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Graham. It looks like you might be showing the wrong screen. I can still see the slides.

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Graham Bartlett: Thanks for that

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Graham Bartlett: C.

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Graham Bartlett: Professional.

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Graham Bartlett: he said. Not

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Graham Bartlett: just bear with me.

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Graham Bartlett: Just talk amongst yourselves for a second.

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Graham Bartlett: This is all down to presenter error. Nothing else.

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Graham Bartlett: Is that okay, Sam?

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yeah, that's perfect.

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Graham Bartlett: So this is a real record of interview. You see, a lot of redaction in there. Very, very boring DC. Is attached to the robbery squad in London. You've got a right to a solicitor. You've been arrested in caution. I'm going to explain what it all means. Not really got into any form of questioning at all. 36 pages of notes.

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Graham Bartlett: The jigsaw man

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Graham Bartlett: is far more dramatic.

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Graham Bartlett: I'm not comfortable. Blame is disaster. I'm not comfortable. I'm in pain. Picked up a cup of water. Tough watching warrant number. Tough it here. Right? Let's move, too. First, st any mental health issues. No, okay. Move on from that he'd been arrested for murder. Blaine looked up at the camera in the corner, shook his head.

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Graham Bartlett: So much more dramatic. None of that preamble at all. I think somewhere in here she does say that they went through all the completed, the admin part of the interview. Well, that's mainly everything that we've just seen on that record of interview. So she's cutting straight into the chase here.

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Graham Bartlett: Your alibi is nonsense. 2 weeks ago, so none of all the the dial procedure. She's kind of taken what she knows is being a real interview and focus in on those that those really dramatic points that

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Graham Bartlett: that are necessary to engage the reader.

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Graham Bartlett: And so that that's kind of that's about leaving the leaving the the the kind of mundane, you know, on the cutting room floor

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Graham Bartlett: and and and having the you know, keep keeping the drama on the page.

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Graham Bartlett: So

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Graham Bartlett: so in creating relatable characters. Then, you know, police, just think of police officers as like you or me. You know, they're just normal people. They've obviously got an extraordinary job. But then lots of other people extraordinary jobs, but they've got home lives. They've got home pressures, you know. They might have money worries, relationship worries they might be, you know. They might be heavy into sport. They might be into all sorts of things, but they're just normal people.

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Graham Bartlett: who are working, you know, in

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Graham Bartlett: and creating your relatable characters.

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Graham Bartlett: You, you know, because the procedure is alien to most people.

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Graham Bartlett: Just identify the human aspects of that, you know. If you were, if you were made to work, you know, if you, if you were due to go home at 5 o'clock because it was you're going out with your friends, or it was your children's parents evening, or you know you played. You played a sport, and you had an important game that night. You suddenly had to stay on work.

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Graham Bartlett: You know the stay-like work is just kind of what it is. But the the draw, you know the impact is oh, God, you know. But I've you know, I'm supposed to be looking after the kids tonight, or I'm supposed to be, you know, playing in this game, or I'm supposed to be. You know we've been looking out, looking forward to this night out for ages, and it's all about kind of how to

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Graham Bartlett: how to show that human side of it, even if they're police officers. So think about your officers and your suspects as well. Your antagonists, as well, you know. Are they bored, scared, impatient? Are they frustrated. Think about those inner inner things that the procedure, and sometimes the banality of their job, and the investigation, which is very, very important and very exciting. But how is it affecting them?

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Graham Bartlett: You know it's the that that's where we read as well will again it. And it's the same for police officers. It's for everybody else

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Graham Bartlett: to think about what's hurting. You know. They've just been running. They just run after a suspect, you know. I mean, take it for me if you run after a suspect. It's very, very difficult to talk afterwards to tell them you know their rights and tell them they're being arrested sometimes in my case for days. It's difficult to talk, because you're just exhausted, and you might have twisted your ankle, or you might be, you know, your feet might hurt or whatever

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Graham Bartlett: we, you know, as we're writers, we know what it's like when we're sitting at a screen all day. You know, police officers nowadays are sitting at screens all day, you know I've been editing all day, so my eyes are on fire through looking at screens all day, so you know. Think of your officers on that, and then you know, what do they need? What is their kind of hierarchy of need? You know? What? What do they need do they need a weed? No one seems to go to the toilet in crime drama, and probably not, you know, pretty darn a whole scene there. But

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Graham Bartlett: you know, just you know, somebody's like in the middle of a briefing, and they're just absolutely desperate for a wee, you know, that just brings a humanity into it. Do they want a glass of wine, you know? Do they just like it's been such a busy day? I mean, you do get some of that. We do meet at the pub afterwards, but that's after work. If this is at 10 o'clock in the morning, it tells you something else.

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Graham Bartlett: Do they want their mom.

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Graham Bartlett: You know they are. They can. Is this upset them? I mean, I've you know I've I can't tell you. When I was in the police, you know.

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Graham Bartlett: God bless her! But I've never really wanted my mum. But so there's some things that really upset me. But I just wanted some human comfort from? For rather so, you know, how are they feeling, you know? Is it really getting to them?

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Graham Bartlett: And what are they really thinking? What are they really really thinking they might be saying all this stuff? But you know, do they believe that that's the person that they should be after? Can they see

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Graham Bartlett: the reason why this, the person that they've just arrested might have committed this heinous offense. You know. What is the you know? What is? What is it really going on between, you know, behind, behind their eyes?

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Graham Bartlett: so I'm going to show you one more video. And again, it's from Happy Valley.

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Graham Bartlett: And again. It's it's Catherine Kayward. And this one, and by by no coincidence, is the first, st

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Graham Bartlett: the 1st episode, 1st scene of the 1st episode of the 3rd season.

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Graham Bartlett: So this is she's she's been called

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Graham Bartlett: a body. A body's been found in a remote area of Yorkshire where she worked, and she's been. She's been

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Graham Bartlett: call to it. And again, we are going to learn from this

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Graham Bartlett: what's happened to her over there, I mean, hopefully, we've watched all this all the day the episode. But we're gonna catch up from that 1st clip that we saw.

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Graham Bartlett: you know. 2 2 seasons have gone now, and we're just about to enter 3rd and final season. So we're learning a little bit about her character, art, and a little bit about how she's

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Graham Bartlett: You know what she thinks of of the world and people around her.

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Graham Bartlett: So I'm going to try and share this screen.

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Graham Bartlett: Try get it right this time

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Graham Bartlett: and again. This is this is about 3 min or so. So again, very short space of time. You're learning an awful lot.

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Graham Bartlett: Turn out nice again. I'll sit there. Is it a sheep. I think it's an alien life form.

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Graham Bartlett: Think I do a few sized things with around there.

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Graham Bartlett: What shape?

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Graham Bartlett: No aliens.

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Graham Bartlett: 6, 7, 5. To control

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Graham Bartlett: his human remains

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Graham Bartlett: go down. And

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Graham Bartlett: Katherine the

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Graham Bartlett: couldn't, you know?

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Graham Bartlett: Total skeleton at No. One?

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Graham Bartlett: Nothing below the waist.

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Graham Bartlett: I think it's been 7 and a half 8 years. Oh, really? Well, we'll let the Home Office pathologist be like, sir, as you wish

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Graham Bartlett: that you're retiring this year.

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Graham Bartlett: nit.

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Graham Bartlett: 7 months, one week, 3 days. Do you think so?

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Graham Bartlett: Hmm.

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Graham Bartlett: Oh, yes.

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Graham Bartlett: and he's got metal plates on the right clavicle very similar to Muon, except mine's on the left. What do you do with a metal plate, Catherine? Oh, it's a long story, sir, from a distant altercation. This is newer than mine. Oh, you've decided to heed, have you. What's his favourite sandwich? I don't think we'll have too much trouble identifying him. Her. Whoever lit his teeth.

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Graham Bartlett: He wants a very troublesome daughter, as Gareth Augustus.

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Graham Bartlett: They fell off a 3rd floor balcony down the upshore house in Elland about 9, 10 years ago, when he was off his head on Mcat

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Graham Bartlett: shattered his collarbone.

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Graham Bartlett: and I'd recognise those teeth anywhere, and it's him once for a public order offence. And he bit me

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Graham Bartlett: went missing about 18 months later. That was

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Graham Bartlett: 7 and a half 8 years since.

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Graham Bartlett: People used to say it upset someone who shouldn't have and been buried in concrete underpants up at Scam, and but I've never owned it.

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Graham Bartlett: This is Burton

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Graham Bartlett: might find his legs are in that blue thing over there.

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Graham Bartlett: I'll leave it with you.

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Graham Bartlett: Taps.

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Graham Bartlett: I love that. Say, especially the last comment there. So there she is.

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Graham Bartlett: just as far as as far as they're concerned. She's just a kind of just a uniform officer doesn't really know her staff. They're the big detectives that have come in. And she absolutely

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Graham Bartlett: what's the floor with them? Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant story. Okay, so just final slide, and then we'll we'll go on to

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Graham Bartlett: We will go now. Final slide, and then we'll we'll go to questions.

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Graham Bartlett: so the final slide is just a reminder that we're amongst all the procedures, every word

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Graham Bartlett: in every line, in every paragraph, in every scene, in every chapter must earn its place on this page, and it goes for characters, too.

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Graham Bartlett: So

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Graham Bartlett: there we go. Let's see if you got any questions for me. I haven't looked at the questions.

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Graham Bartlett: Tabia. So if there isn't, then it's going to be a short email. Oh, no, there's 3 questions in there. Let's see

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Graham Bartlett: So Catherine asks

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Graham Bartlett: how do you? How do you balance what is real and what is not?

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Graham Bartlett: When it comes to cops? And do you write. You write Matthew romance?

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Graham Bartlett: Oh, wow! So I mean, it is, it is kind of, you know. It's it's what's necessary, really, what you what you absolutely necessary.

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Graham Bartlett: necessarily want, and then it's being able to stretch if you if you want to. You know, if you want to create something that isn't necessarily real or wouldn't, wouldn't be realistic. There's a thing. But if you, if it could happen, it can happen

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Graham Bartlett: so if it can happen, then it's just about finding a way around, how you create that environment, create the character traits, create the relationships that makes that unusual thing happen. So so so it's it's always kind of

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Graham Bartlett: understanding that you're going outside of what the norm is, and provided you don't go, you know you don't sort of move into what's impossible.

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Graham Bartlett: you know. So, for example, you know, a London police officer coming over to New York

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Graham Bartlett: and arresting people would would be impossible. That'd be unlawful. And and it wouldn't be able to happen. But but you know there are ways of getting London officers to act in certain ways in New York, and and then possibly engineer arrests, etc. So

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Graham Bartlett: that's really how you do it, but it's understanding where you're veering from the norm, and even veering into the extraordinary, and then making sure that your setup is right for that

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Graham Bartlett: I'm

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Graham Bartlett: Yellow Man just said, what about if there are Judy detectives, but not rookies, as in they, as in they, have some

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Graham Bartlett: years of experience, can they be still in? In a firearm? Say, now, this is this is quite sort of jurisdiction specific. So in the UK. The answer to that is no

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Graham Bartlett: because no, no officers apart from specialist firearms, officers carry guns. Detectives never carry guns.

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Graham Bartlett: Uniform patrol officers never carry guns. Traffic patrol officers don't carry guns.

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Graham Bartlett: If you'd need to speak to the area where you're basing your story to find out whether you could, as a as a as a junior detective with with experience, be at a firearm scene. But in the Uk you wouldn't be able to be, that's literally, you know, but you couldn't. It wouldn't, wouldn't be allowed at all.

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Graham Bartlett: Harry said. Police officers also appear in other subgenres, such as cozy and hardcore stories, where their supporting characters, often shown up

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Graham Bartlett: by the pi or amateur sleuth.

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Graham Bartlett: How can they? And their procedures be made more realistic.

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Graham Bartlett: So again, this, this is quite a this is John Specific. So I run a kind of a study group called the Murder Squad, which is a year-long sort of program of courses and tutorials, and we had a we had a week before last we had a private investigator as our guest speaker

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Graham Bartlett: and in the Uk. It's really really clear that the the private investigators and the police do not work together in any way whatsoever. The private investigators wouldn't even approach the police unless it was with a package of

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Graham Bartlett: court ready evidence that they had they created to hand over to them to pick up the investigation.

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Graham Bartlett: So how

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Graham Bartlett: how police officers work with the pis and the amateur sleuths is is, you know, depends on where you're writing where you're where you're basing your writing and how you then show the the what's possible, what the amateur sleuths and the pis can do, what data they have available to them.

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Graham Bartlett: what forensic support they might have available to them. Again, you'd need to. You need to know what what that is in terms of

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Graham Bartlett: the area that you're writing in. But it is a I mean, it's you know. They're great story setups, particularly if you've got, you know, if you've got sort of a somebody that hasn't got a police and background. Who's Jeremiah Sleuth showing up with police officers? That's a great story.

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Graham Bartlett: So I hope that that makes sense is that if you've got any more questions, if you pop them in the QA. Session, we've got a. QA.

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Graham Bartlett: tab at the bottom. We've got a few oh, there's another one there.

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Graham Bartlett: How do police officers handle arson cases? Weldon?

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Graham Bartlett: Wow!

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Graham Bartlett: Short question very long answer.

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Graham Bartlett: So,

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Graham Bartlett: so, yeah, I mean, our city is, is is obviously criminal damage by fire and police officers

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Graham Bartlett: of the

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Graham Bartlett: primary role in investigating that, but they do that in conjunction with the with the fire service. So fire Service have their own

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Graham Bartlett: fire investigators.

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Graham Bartlett: and they're looking for.

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Graham Bartlett: I mean. It's almost like magic. What? The the fire investigators come up where they can pick up seats of fire.

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Graham Bartlett: You know, in in basically ruins they can pick up electrical faults. They can pick up fire, spread, etc, etc. So the police rely very, very heavily on on the fire. Investigators and specialist fires, forensic officers.

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Graham Bartlett: from from the forensic labs. But in terms of the investigation, the normal sort of other than the forensic side of it. The police investigation is carried out in the same way as any other. So you're looking for you're looking for witnesses. You're looking for. CCTV. You're looking for suspects who might have a a a tendency to commit to

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Graham Bartlett: cause fires. You're looking for grudges against the owner. You're looking for threats, all of those sorts of things. You know, you're putting together that investigation that's supported by a very, very specialist forensic. Network of of both from the fire service and and the forensic, the forensic science services. But it's it's 1 of those things that

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Graham Bartlett: But you know, it's really, really difficult to really, really difficult to

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Graham Bartlett: to investigate. There was a big fire in Brighton about a year ago. Massive hotel. The Iconic Hotel got burned down, and they, the fire service, have managed to PIN it down to a cigarette, being discarded outside a particular room number

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Graham Bartlett: and a particular time of day, and and then the spread of the farm, and how they did that I've got no idea, because that I saw the I saw the the stated place very soon after, and how you even knew

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Graham Bartlett: where that fire started. I've got no idea.

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Graham Bartlett: What are your pet peeves regarding non-law enforcement background authors covering legal scenes? I'm an amateur

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Graham Bartlett: sleuth, cozy, cozy mystery author will be a lot more background authors.

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Graham Bartlett: So authors. So Cindy, is that is that authors that haven't got a background in in in in sort of law enforcement, and what things they get wrong

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Graham Bartlett: is that is that about right?

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Graham Bartlett: I don't know how it was. Yes, it is. Yes, thanks for that. So well on my website, I've got a I've got a let me see if I can get that up quickly.

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Graham Bartlett: I've got a section called Bartlett's Bloopers, and that is exactly what that is. It's not bloopers that I've made. I will listen to that. I'm just going to get that up on the screen. Now, if I can

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Graham Bartlett: blah blah blah blah!

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Graham Bartlett: So

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Graham Bartlett: I'm going to multitask now, which is never a good thing for somebody of my agenda to try. But we're going to try and do it anyway.

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Graham Bartlett: And then I'm going to go to Harry while I'm trying to multitask. Do very realistic representations of forensics serve as primers to real criminals, to criminals. Learn to avoid certain behavior based on what they were even sick. I that's a really good question and something that I do get asked a lot, and I don't know whether too realistic crime fiction does influence other people to commit a crime, I think. What does have a research? There's a plethora now of

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Graham Bartlett: of true crime documentaries and and

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Graham Bartlett: it's a fly. What we call fly on the wall documentary where they follow police and they follow investigations.

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Graham Bartlett: And sometimes, I mean, I've seen some of those. There's what there was one recently called digital detectives, and they were showing some. It's really some depth about how a police can can trace you digitally, not just by your phone, but by financials, and by CCTV. And by, you know, by your Wi-fi use, etc. But it's it's just one of those

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Graham Bartlett: 1 1 of those things I always think I reckon they're telling a bit too much here. I'm just going to go back to Cindy's question and the the Bartlett's bloopers.

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Graham Bartlett: so I'll just scan through some of them

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Graham Bartlett: it hinders rather than helps you become a senior detective or a hard drinking, womanizing corner, cutting maverick.

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Graham Bartlett: If your detective switches off or fiddles with the Sussex computer that comprising the compromising the evidence.

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Graham Bartlett: Murder detectives never have more never, never have just one case running at a time.

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Graham Bartlett: Murder detectives would never be on. Talk about that. Earlier senior officers don't go around kicking doors down to rest. Suspects. That's the

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Graham Bartlett: joy for the other people. Covert tactics are called that for a reason.

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Graham Bartlett: People don't just wondering. Go, hey? I'm the undercover officer today.

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Graham Bartlett: because then they've just blown their their covert nature. So you'll look at some more of those Spartans bloopers on my website.

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Graham Bartlett: if that's and that's of any use to anybody.

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Graham Bartlett: Right back to the questions. Probably take one more

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Graham Bartlett: she's handy because there is one more so? Megan asks. I'm writing a sci-fi crime thriller that has supernatural elements. How far can I go or get away with bending the rules about police organizing

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Graham Bartlett: and operates in a future that doesn't exist in reality. While keeping it still realistic.

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Graham Bartlett: Megan, I'm going to kick myself for saying this, but in the future you can fill your boots. Really, you know, I think, providing you have a sort of you're not going to go explaining the fact that that you know DNA is now such that you can kind of look at someone and meet their DNA, although it might be something that you choose to to use. But you know, providing, I think people can see that there is a that you know, that there is a kind of link between

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Graham Bartlett: the world that you're creating and the procedures you're creating, however far in the future, or that they think, yeah, I can imagine that might happen. I think you'd be all right. But to be honest, supernatural elements in sci-fi you are, I mean, I've tried to advise somebody who wrote a murder mystery based on Mars with Mars police. And I said, I don't know what you wanted to say, because I don't know how they please in Mars, and I really don't. But so I think you can fill your boots on that Megan.

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Graham Bartlett: that's it. I think I think we're we're at time. We're at time.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yes.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Yeah.

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Graham Bartlett: Deborah, thank you for writing. Those last things come up. I really hope that was useful. I tried not to make it too procedurally.

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Graham Bartlett: Intrigue, because that does depend on the area that you're writing, and I don't want to exclude people.

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Graham Bartlett: I didn't do that

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Graham Bartlett: not to use

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Graham Bartlett: the procedures and the policing and the crime investigation methods in your area and turn them into dramatic crime victims.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Awesome stuff. Thank you so much. Everybody who joined us, and thank you, Graham, for spending time with us and going through all of that I certainly learned a lot myself. I'm definitely going to be re-watching this one, for when I decide, you know, it's so inspirational it's definitely made me want to dive in, and it's always nice knowing what goes on that we don't always get insight into.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: That's always helpful as well, and everyone showing the love in the chat as well, which is always nice.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: I dropped some links in there as well to your content set to your website and everything as well. So hopefully, everyone's grabbed that. And yeah, we hope that you guys check out the replay. If you didn't catch all of it, I see somebody missed it. But they're going to watch the replay. So that's perfect. But yeah, so thank you again, everybody for joining us. And thank you, Graham, for spending your time with us and sharing all of your insight and wisdom. It's been amazing.

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Graham Bartlett: Thank everybody.

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Sarah @ ProWritingAid: Brilliant thanks. Bye for now, guys.