Writing police procedurals as I do, I read a lot of police
procedural fiction because I enjoy it. It’s not as if I want to imagine myself
in the role of the first on scene investigator. Imagine the stress of that in
real life? And the smell? The bossing people around. And the responsibility.
I know I don’t have the personality to be a cop. I once
checked out becoming a private investigator. In California it means indenturing
yourself to a seasoned detective for thousands of hours. I went as far as
meeting a private detective in a bar. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and told
me he had a gun in the waistband. I
could have the job but I’d have to move to Denver. No, that wasn’t going to
happen.
As far as being a cop, I made a mistake turning up for my
ride-along. The civilian who had made the
arrangements sneered at me and told me straight out, “You could never be a cop.
You can’t follow orders.” Okay. It hadn’t
occurred to me to want to be a cop.
One of the components in being effective either as a private
investigator or law enforcement is being able to ask hard questions. That would be questions that make people cry,
run away, or punch you on the nose. I’m not good at that. I’m not good at
asking a hard question and then being silent while the pressure cooks.
What I am good at is observing from the corner. I’m a
watcher, as I suspect all of us writers are.
Lie detection is fascinating to me. The latest research states that trained
observers are only slightly better at spotting the liars in these videos than
the average person. I took the tests and discovered I am slightly better.
Writers are trained observers, I suspect. Ever since we
discovered the joy—and the agony—of recording the human experience we’ve been
watching. We take the observations one step further with the what if? question.
The truly talented among us can play the “then what happened” game and come up with clever plots.
The hard part will always be writing it down.
Are you a watcher from the corner? Can you ask hard
questions?
4 comments:
I love watching people and guessing what they might be up to, but I also ask a lot of questions. Great post.
I have done a lot of people watching, and I'm the same way--can't get up the nerve to put people on the spot! But I love mysteries!
Good post, Mar! (loved the pi with the Hawaiian shirt and gun tucked in the waist band!)
I'm definitely a watcher as well, and wouldn't dream of being a copy or a PI. Also, I don't read mysteries for the procedures, mostly for the interaction between the characters.
Thanks, everybody. I've been away all day. I think about this watching a lot. If you fell dead in front of me I'd probably take notes.
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