WRITING A CRIME TRILOGY: Graham H Miller
For my next project, I’m writing that strange and somewhat rare beast, a crime trilogy. I know I’m not the first to tread this path, but it still remains a rare oddity. So why have I set myself on this path?
Well, when I’m not writing and plotting I, like many other writers, read a lot. I read a very specific genre of fiction that I’ve dubbed Grumpy Old Detective fiction on my Kindle mainly. These have a very satisfying structure, in book one we meet a detective, usually in his forties or fifties, who has a killer to catch. So far, so normal. But what makes these books stand out is that the main detective has a back-story, usually with a very personal connection. I’ve read books where in book one the new detective arrives with a burden. Something involving his family and usually a case that they couldn’t solve. A bear on their back, that they just can’t shrug off.
And, I have to say, that it makes for great stories. But the problems come further into the series. The books I read, usually come in series of anything from ten to twenty books. And there’s only so much that you can keep a reader hanging on while the big villain yet again escapes from our detectives plots.
So, what tends to happen is that around books three to five, the big back-story plot is resolved and the author then has to do some fancy writing to keep the interest and the series going. And, while I do read these books and devour the series, it takes a writer of some skill to pull this off and keep all the dynamics going once the initial impetus has been removed. The alternative is, of course, to keep the back-story going, but this results in an unsatisfying series as it becomes ever more unlikely that the bad guy keeps escaping or the twists become more far-fetched.
So, this line of thought led me to start a trilogy. And I’m loving it. Rather than a standalone crime book, I have more space for my characters to breathe, to grow and develop. And I can work out a very long term plot as well. But, importantly, I get to work toward an end point. Rather than have an endless rambling story, I can have a beginning, middle and an ending.
I know the author has fallen out of favour recently, but I’m convinced this is one of the factors that made Harry Potter into the world conquering behemoth that it was. We knew that there’d be seven books and that at the end of the seventh book, everything would be resolved.
And that’s what I’m aiming for (not the level of success!) but the sense of a resolution. A story, a dance between a super-villain and a good guy that spans over three books, with steps forward and back. At least, I hope so. At least I hope that people will read my books and enjoy them!
All my links are at https://grahamhmiller.com
My Amazon author pages is also here https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Graham-H.-Miller/author/B072X9NPG3
Crime Cymru 