Love and Murder: Sarah Todd Taylor
Years ago I signed up for a screenwriting course and watched the teacher’s face fall in horror when I admitted that the thing I loved most about writing was description. There was, however, method in my apparent madness. In signing up to a course that concentrated on plot and dialogue I was playing to my weaknesses, aiming to target and improve the parts of my writing that needed more work.
Learning from other types of writing and other genres of writing is invaluable for an author, which is why, earlier this year, I found myself spending a week in the company of romance writers to see what I could learn from this hugely popular genre.
So what do romance and crime writing have in common?
Well, firstly, who knows better about tension than romance writers? It’s ‘Will They? Won’t They?’ not ‘Will They? Ooh, Look They Did Already’. Romance writers are skilled at pacing, at drip feeding information, at hiding the intentions of their characters, at duplicitous conversations that create tension between the characters and for the reader. Take a look at the most famous love stories of all time – at Elizabeth misreading Darcy or at Jane Eyre believing Rochester to be marrying another. The incredible levels of tension in romance fiction is something that crime writers can also deploy to great effect. We want our readers to be on edge, to be anxious for our characters, to be unsure of their intentions. Tension is key to both genre.
Secondly, romance writers are great at sensory writing. The most innocent or prosaic actions, in the hands of a skilled writer of romance, can make a reader’s heart race. The brush of hands washing up at a sink in Under The Greenwood Tree, Captain Wentworth’s bowed head as he scratches out a letter – both of these passages have, dear reader, made this author swoon in spite of involving the most ordinary of actions. That’s because they key so well into the senses involved – the touch of hands, Wentworth’s shortness of breath, the sound of nib against paper. As readers, primed for the importance of these actions by the tension the author builds up in earlier scenes, these scenes carry immense emotive power. So how do we, as crime writers, transfer this power to our own writing? By learning what romance writers already know – the power of the sensory world – of writing not just about the puzzle of the crime but the feel of it, the sights, sounds and even smell of it so that our reader feels they are right there in the crime scene.
Finally, romance writers are great at interiority – at getting inside their characters’ heads and delving into their thoughts. It is this that lets us sympathise with Margaret Hale’s torments and feel that we know the most intimate thoughts of Jane Eyre. In the hands of a crime writer, this interiority can be chillingly effective, especially if we choose to go into the heads of our criminals.
Learning from other media or from other genre can be immensely helpful to a writer. Want to improve your dialogue – take a look at radio plays. Find that your descriptions are lacking something – how about a poetry course? Struggling with pacing – I heartily recommend the children’s book world where things happen at a wonderful pace. We all have lots to learn from one another.
And now I’m off to swoon over Captain Wentworth again.
Crime Cymru 