Crime fiction is big business at the moment, but there arecertain situations that have been overplayed so much that theyhave become genre cliches and everybody knows what to expectnext.
Here are ten cliches you should try to avoid and thoughtson how to subvert the cliches if you do decide to use them.
Cops and Doctors You can find this perennial favourite in both crime andhistorical fiction.
You'll see it in ER, NYPD Blue and in cross -genre shows like the X Files.
The doctor says "OK but only fora minute" or "It's touch and go.
The next few hours will becrucial" or "It could be minutes, it could be days...
you neverknow with coma cases" The policemen usually say nothing.
Theyjust stand around and chew the scenery in frustration.
Mulder and Scully actually spend a lot of their time hangingaround in hospitals but you don't notice so much because thepatients aren't your run of the mill criminals or witnesses.
And that's the way to get around this one.
Get a new twist andadd some tension.
Maybe the patient is related to either the copor the doctor.
Or maybe the doctor is an amateur detective andknows better than the cop? But beware of the "Dick Van Dyke"syndrome...
that leads you into a whole new area of cliche The New Partner In this scenario a veteran cop has to get a new partner afterthe death of his old one.
The rookie is either keen as mustardand eager to please, or burned out from personal problems.
It'sprobably best known in modern times from the Lethal Weaponmovies.
Screenwriters tried to add some tension early in theseries by having Mel Gibson as a borderline suicide case, andthat gave the first film an edge; but it was lost in laterinstalments.
By the time the fourth movie came came along theyhad fallen so deeply into a buddy movie relationship that alldrama was lost in favour of light comedy.
You need to do some serious subverting if you want to usethis situation.
People have tried having a dog as the buddy inK9, having their Mom as the buddy in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot,and having foreigners as the buddy in big Arnie's Red Heat.
Outside the strictly police procedural we've also had the robotbuddy in Robocop, the ghost buddy in Randall and Hopkirk(Deceased), the alien buddy in Alien Nation, the magician buddyin Jonathan Creek, the ex-serviceman buddy in both SherlockHolmes and Poirot.
The list just goes on and on.
However you do it, filling in the blanks is easy in thisscenario.
What you need is something new.
How about having thecop being given a politician doing a meet-the-people stint.
Or,on a completely tasteless but might be funny level, how aboutthe schizophrenic cop who is his own buddy? The Rookie in the Morgue Once only the province of young students in Quincy, this one nowturns up on TV in the CSI franchise or Crossing Jordan and inprint in the Kay Scarpetta books.
There are usually two waysthis one can proceed.
Either the young cop rushes out, hand atmouth, or he stands still, icily cold and detached, as theautopsy proceeds.
Inspector Morse tried to subvert this situation by having theold timer as the squeamish one, but how about having the rookieas the pathologist? Whatever you do, try not to give the pathologist a chance to besmug and patronizing while explaining large chunks of the plot.
In the UK, this is overdone in Silent Witness and Waking theDead, and is just a lazy way to advance the story.
The Cantankerous Lieutenant Chews Out The Cop In films and television shows this happens to every protagonist,and Clint Eastwood for one must be tired of it.
In the DirtyHarry series he was rarely out of his boss's office.
It usually ends up with the lieutenant and the cop snarling ateach other, so how about having one of them being completelycalm and laid back? Or how about having one of them being deaf? And if you must write this scene, please don't use lines like"I'll have your badge for that", or "I'm not covering for youthis time" The Slimy Defence Lawyer This one was a hot favourite on NYPD Blue and was guaranteed toget right up Sipowitz's nose.
Once you've introduced the sharpsuit, the slick hairstyle and the briefcase, this guy willinevitably say, "My client has no further comment," or "You hadno right to talk to him without me there.
" Everybody knows therest.
Again, serious though is needed to bring a new twist to thissituation.
Your lawyer could be an ex-cop who knows all themoves, or a relative or lover of one of the cops? How about alawyer defending himself? Or a counter-culture lawyer coveredwith tattoos and piercings? Whatever you do try to come up with some creative invective.
Slimeball, sleazeball, reptile and shyster have all beenoverused.
The Car Chase Bullit and The French Connection set the standard, and Gone in 60Seconds brought it into the 21st Century, but this situation hasmostly become tired.
There are only so many little old ladies toavoid, so many road signs to hit, and so many police cars totrash before your audience becomes jaded.
Over the years the Bond movies have used up just about all thepossible permutations, so you'll struggle to come up withsomething new.
It would be better to add tension in another way.
In a bid to appear fresh, the chase element has sometimes beendropped altogether in favour of the race against time as inSpeed or Die Hard With a Vengeance.
To succeed you'll need agood reason for the journey to take place, a disastrous outcomeif it's not successful, and some good near misses on the way.
But beware.
Too much carnage and your readers will startthinking of The Blues Brothers.
And please, don't have yourprotagonist drive the wrong way down a one-way street..
it'sbeen done far too often.
The Shoot Out Raymond Chandler's advice to crime writers still holds.
"If yourplot is flagging, have a man come in with a gun.
" You've got tobe careful though.
Too many people still transfer scenes from oldcowboy movies almost verbatim into modern cop scenes.
Probably the best recent shoot out was in Michael Mann's Heat.
You cared who lived or died, and there was excitement andtension.
Therein lies the trick.
Make your readers have anopinion, not just about your hero, but about the othercharacters as well.
At the end of LA Confidential, we knew allof the people involved in the climax, and it made it moresatisfying to watch who lived or died.
Lining one-dimensionalpeople up just as cannon fodder might work in a Saturday nightpopcorn movie, but we should be aiming higher than that.
Shoot outs work well on film, but they can be a drag in print.
Some writers tend to slow things down, especially to have a close look at the wounds.
Unless you're careful it can read like a medical textbook.
And, please, don't have heads "exploding like ripe watermelons.
" The Cop in The Cafe This was used in Chips in every episode, giving them an excuse to show a motorbike speeding from a car park with loose gravel flying.
It's also a favourite in most of the aforementioned buddy movies, and especially in Starsky and Hutch.
They'll be in a cafe, musing over the chewing out they've had from their boss, when a call comes through.
The radio buzzes, giving them a chance to attach a flashing light to the roof of their car and head off to a car chase, closely followed by a shoot out.
See how it's possible to run one cliche into another? Pretty soon you'd have a whole plot, but would anybody buy it? One way of changing this scene might be to have an alternative means of the cops getting the message.
You could have them hearing something on the Television? Or how about on a cell-phone or laptop...
there are multiple opportunities for foul ups, misunderstandings or criminal actions there, and they haven't been overdone...
yet.
Good Cop / Bad Cop The good cop / bad cop interview became a cliche almost as soon as crime fiction began.
A fine example, nearly seventy years old, can be seen in The Maltese Falcon.
By now everybody knows the moves, and your readers will be bored long before the interview is over.
Unless you're being self-referential and ironic, as in LA Confidential you'll never pull it off.
Cracker tried to subvert the interview situation altogether by having it performed by a psychiatrist who played both cops in one.
In The Rock, Sean Connery as the prisoner told Nicholas Cage which questions he should be asking.
You'll need to find something similarly innovative if you're going to make it work.
How about having two good cops? Or two bad cops? Or maybe there is a new computer system designed by psychologists to ask the right questions in the right order? How would your cops and your prisoner handle that? The Estranged Wife Why do all fictional cops have relationship problems? This scene always goes the same way.
The wife says, "You never see the children anymore.
" The cop doesn't say anything, because his mobile phone interrupts.
You know the rest.
Cracker is again a good case in point as he went through this scene in almost every episode.
Pacino played a variation of it with his girlfriend in Heat.
Not only does Cracker have a failed marriage, but he's also a gambler and a drinker.
In recent years people have been giving cops more and more problems to overcome, culminating in Denzel Washington's paraplegic investigator in The Bone Collector.
I wouldn't even try to top that.
Why not be original.
Make your cop a healthy, stable, happily married man.
Now there's a challenge.
Conclusion The next time you read or watch a police drama, notice how many of the above are still in use.
All of them can occur in any one story, and frequently do...
just shuffle the paragraphs, add a murder or two and you have an instant plot.
But unless you can subvert some of the cliches, don't expect anybody to buy it.