The collected musings of Ryan Elder

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In my story I have a cop who is kind of like Dirty Harry in the first movie, where the villain has legally gotten away with his crimes. The antihero cop character, follows him around on his own time, to see if he will get any leads, or get anything on him.

Finally after days of not seeing anything, he gets frustrated and makes a threatening phone call to him, in order to flush him out, and get him to do something to incriminate himself, so to speak.

However, it does not go as plan and the villain believes that another cop is after him, who also plays a role in the story, so the villain goes to take the other cop hostage, to find out what he knows, things get out of hand and the villain ends up shooting the other cop to death in a gunfight.

Now I want the main character, the antihero cop type, to get in a lot of trouble for the other cop's death and looking at a harsh prison sentence. Harsh enough to not want to face the music and rather be a fugitive.

Now I was told by others who read and discussed it, that that, who is also the main character, would not go to prison. He would just get fired or face disciplinary actions.

But I need him to literally want to be fugitive and not be taken alive even, cause he not face jail time. I want it to be bad enough where he will not be taken alive.

Is there somewhat I can tweak this, so he would be in that much trouble for another officer's death, in a way that's more realistically plausible to the reader?

 

If all the main character, the cop, does is something that causes the other cop to be killed, he would not be charged with the death. He has to do something criminal to be involved with the other cop's death.

You could have him get blamed for the actual shooting. It's a bit of a trope though so you'll need a strong story to overcome that.


Is English not your first language? Just curious about some of your grammar errors.

does not go as planned
Harsh enough he'd rather be a fugitive than face the music
But I need him to literally want to be a fugitive and not want to be taken alive even, cause he not face jail time.
Is there some way I can tweak this

​

 

Okay thanks. Sorry I wrote it in a hurry cause I was at work. I will watch my grammar better.

But isn't he doing something criminal already though? He is following the guy around when he is off to duty, and it's not his assignment, so that's tantamount to stalking, along with the threatening phone call.

So wouldn't he have committed a crime there?

 

Not a prosecutable crime in that context.

 

Okay thanks. Is their anything I can do to rewrite it so that it works? What if for example, the villain calls his henchmen to go deal with the second cop, he thinks is after him. Let's call him Cop B. Cop A, the main cop, figures out they are going after Cop B while following them. In the shoot out, cop B, manages to kill one of the henchman and takes his clothes, gloves and his mask to disguise himself as one of them, hoping they will not recognize that it's him, so he can get away.

Cop A goes to rescue Cop B, but sees Cop B in one of the henchmen's clothes and mask, and shoots him to death, cause he has a gun, thinking that's one of the armed henchmen. So Cop B's body is found with Cop A's bullets in from his police issue pistol, and Cop A tries to explain that it was an accident. Is this good enough, or will just legally be written off as unfortunate accident, even though it was his stalking that lead to him accidentally shooting Cop B?

Is there anything better I can do? Mainly Cop A, needs to be blamed for Cop B's death, to the point where he is facing enough jail time that he will not be taken alive. Perhaps there are other ways I can write it?

 

So you need Cop A to be blamed for murder because..... Is your main goal to get him inside prison for another plot arc? Do you just want to fully hammer home the anti-hero element.

Socially, I see a lot of fall out (within your department) if you've shot another cop. If you really want to go the Cop A going to prison, I'd try something a little more intricate. Is there a reason for him to be framed? How corrupt is your police department? Does he actually need to pull the trigger, or can you write the plot in such a way where he's manipulated into making incriminating mistakes?

Also, I'd do a quick google search for Felony Murder. There are plenty of legal loops that can send someone to prison for a crime they "didn't" commit.

 

If you made your main character a war hero marine type instead of a cop, it would be easier to construct the premise, and you'd have an outline similar to Rambo.

 

Okay thanks. I already know about felony murder, and that's kind of what I was going for. Basically the goal is to get him blamed is because I want him to go after the villains, while at the same time trying to evade the arrest of the police. Of course the more harsh the prison term he is looking at, the more stronger he will evade and the more he will let the ends justify the means.

Instead of stalking I might be able to tweak it. How about if Cop A broke into the villain's safe, and the villain and his men are alerted to the break in. They come and think it's Cop B who is breaking in, who is also there, and kill him.

Does this work better for felony murder? Is breaking into safe more prosecutable compared to stalking and would work better?

 

In my story, a cop is on the trail of a serial rapist killer type villain, and he himself is raped by the villain eventually, but escapes and wants revenge. The other cops cannot catch the villain because they have to play by the rules, and the villain is always too good at slipping through the legal and forensic cracks, if that makes sense.

So the main character grows impatient and wants to manipulate the police department into bending the rules and stepping outside the box to catch them. The story also uses the old cliche that the main character cop, cannot get his captain to take him seriously and is criticized by him failing, so he does not get much support.

In my case though, he decides that the best way is to take samples of the captain's DNA, fingerprints, etc, and plant them at the next crime scene, when the next crime happens. He thinks that this will insure that the captain will want to take down the villain really seriously and urgently, if there is evidence of him, implicating him in the next murder.

The main character, hot on the trail, fails to stop the next murder from happening, but manages to get there before any other cops are called to the scene. He then plants the captains DNA and prints there, before other officers arrive.

The captain is then facing possible murder charges, implicated in the crime. He has a small window to escape arrest and convince his officers below him to follow his orders and go take the killer down, by executing a plan by the main character, that was not taking seriously before. But now with the captain's life on the line, he is okay with using unorthodox methods to get the villain, and hopefully get him to confess and clear the captain's name.

This is what the main character was counting on. Manipulating them captain into doing whatever it takes, letting the ends justify the means, and thereby getting others on the force to help him as well.

Does this sound like the idea is perhaps too illogical, even if the main character is desperate for revenge and is not thinking the most clearly, or fairly?

 

If you're going for a super-realistic approach, it seems a bit far-fetched. But for a general action/crime novel? Seems like a good twist!

 

Okay thanks. This is what I was told by some others as well. However, since the story deals with deep dark themes, such as rape and murder, and why the killer is doing these terrible things from how he grew up, do you think that it is best to take a more realistic approach? With that kind of controversial serious subject matter in mind, how far is it wise to push the realism?

 

I think you can go either way, really. I mean, it's maybe more of a writing style question, and maybe a need to match up the realism here with the realism elsewhere, but I don't think there's an automatic clash between exploring a villain's motivation and a slightly over-the-top plot twist.

I'm not a huge action/mystery reader, but I don't think I'd be totally pulled out of the story by the twist you described. I've read stuff by Grisham and Turrow that were at least as extreme, if not more so.

 

Okay thanks. I thought that Grisham was usually trying to be realistic but am not familiar with much of Turrow lol.

Which third act idea is better though? This one, or this older one, which I talked about in this previous thread:

https://www.writingforums.org/threads/can-i-tweak-this-plot-point-so-it-makes-more-sense.139975/

 

To me, this one feels less over-the-top, but it will probably depend on execution.

 

Okay thanks. What if maybe I had both? The new idea where he manipulates his captain first, but then things go wrong, and the second idea is the consequences. Would that work too?

 

Conceivably, I guess. I don't know - again, hard to know without seeing it actually executed.

 

Hmm. I'm not a total fan of this kind of story, so I'm probably not the best person to judge. But to me, I'd say this plot twist is using a sledge hammer to crack a nut, to a certain extent.

For one thing, the repercussions of the cop getting caught planting the evidence would be very dire, for the cop himself. And because the chief of police KNOWS he wasn't actually responsible or connected to the crime, he will certainly suspect a plant. He will likely suspect this particular cop—who has been pestering him to catch this particular criminal, and was first on the scene— has planted something. So this could backfire quite badly.

Besides catching the criminal, what is the point of this story? Did you want the police chief to learn something about himself and vulnerability? Or did you want your protagonist to learn that he's capable of any kind of crime in order to get what he wants himself? How would he have felt if the chief had actually been arrested and convicted for this crime? Would he have been capable of lying under oath, if he was asked about the evidence?

I think this story might go wandering off in odd directions, if you choose this route. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You might end up with a better story if you explore the inner workings of these people and the repercussions of the ends always justifying the means, rather than just the mechanics of catching a bad guy.

 

If the captain has an ironclad alibi, the evidence is going to look planted, I think?

Police captains tend to get bucket loads of benefit of the doubt.

And the people discovering the planted evidence work for him. Unless feds get involved, that evidence can easily be dealt with long before the captain needs to worry about clearing his name?

 

Okay thanks. The point I am trying to convey is "The protagonist to learn that he's capable of any kind of crime in order to get what he wants himself", as you said. The captain does not suspect him though, he suspects that it was the villain who framed him. The main character even tells him that the killer has always been 5 steps ahead of them, so it must be him who framed him in an effort to divert the investigation, and now he's laughing in our faces. The captain is then convinced it was the killer. He would probably suspect him more than the main character, because the main character was their at the time of the murder, failing to stop it, and he says it was them, since they were up to something fishy, when he was trying to stop the next victim from being killed.

I will just have to write it so the captain either does not have an ironclad alibi, or if he does he is really worried that the prosecutor will believe the physical evidence, over the words of whoever vouches that they were with the captain. Worried to the point where he will take the law into his own hands to take the killer down with him at that point.

Does this make sense?

As far as the evidence being dealt with before the prosecutor gets involved, is their a way the evidence can be investigated by cops who arrive, they send it, and then send to the lab, and then the lab, sends it to the prosecutor's office, without calling the captain at all about it first? Or they call him to tell him about it after it's sent in?

As for the captain getting benefit of the doubt, I will just have to write the prosecutor so he's the type to press charges immediately no matter who it is.

 

Here's a thought. What if the cop found out who the next victim was going to be, and it is someone the cop knows from before in the story. The cop talks the victim into faking his death for the time being. Basically by hiding out for a few days, and the cop lies and says he saw the killer kill the man but failed to stop it. The killer then took the body and he failed to retrieve it, if the victim was for surely dead that is.

But the MC leaves the captain's DNA at the scene, thereby implicating him. So this way, the captain is still almost just as much trouble and has to take the law into his own hands to try to take the villain down, and clear his own name, but at the same time there is no real murder, and the main character is a little less of a jerk, cause since there is no murder, then the captain can get off once the villain is caught, and the supposed dead victim turns out to be alive and fine later.

What do you think?

 

Ryan, I feel that you're twisting your plot into knots, and the knots into knots into knots, to achieve... I'm not sure what? You seem to get your heart set on some particular scene or situation, and then you twist and twist and twist to get to that scene or situation, when something else might be far more graceful and logical.

This particular twisty tangle seems to come from the fact that you want it to be impossible for the criminal to be caught by normal police means. Why do you object to the criminal being caught by normal police means?

 

Okay thanks. It's just usually in a lot of cases, I feel that if he is caught by normal police means, a lot of readers might think that it's anticlimatic. I mean in Dirty Harry for example, let's say Harry didn't have to break into the suspect's house and shoot him in the leg to get him to talk. Let's say Harry was able to get a warrant in time to search the house, find the rifle, by legal authorization, and the villain totally talked and said where his buried alive hostage was before her time ran out.

If the movie ended this way, a lot of Dirty Harry fans would say that sucked and Harry caught the villain too easily and it was too much of a slam dunk. Basically readers, especially of police thrillers, really like stories where the hero has to go out of his way and commit crimes himself, just to get the villain. If I ended it on a note, where the hero caught him by legal means, I think I would get that reaction, of feeling underwhelmed, whilst in comparison to other stories of that genre, especially ones that are set up for revenge, where the hero is gravely damaged and wants justice.

My original ending idea was this from another thread (https://www.writingforums.org/threads/can-i-make-this-forensic-scenario-convincing.139183/), but since I was told it does not work, I feel I have to go out of my way to end it some other way.

 

I really, really, really need you to learn to quote. All you have to do is hit the Reply button. The post you're replying to will be above your response. You can and generally should edit that post, but these days it will be squished under a "Click to expand" link anyway, if it's long. I refrained from editing your post this time, as a demonstration.

 

Sorry I was quoting to this. Sorry I forgot to hit it.

Okay thanks. It's just usually in a lot of cases, I feel that if he is caught by normal police means, a lot of readers might think that it's anticlimatic. I mean in Dirty Harry for example, let's say Harry didn't have to break into the suspect's house and shoot him in the leg to get him to talk. Let's say Harry was able to get a warrant in time to search the house, find the rifle, by legal authorization, and the villain totally talked and said where his buried alive hostage was before her time ran out.

If the movie ended this way, a lot of Dirty Harry fans would say that sucked and Harry caught the villain too easily and it was too much of a slam dunk. Basically readers, especially of police thrillers, really like stories where the hero has to go out of his way and commit crimes himself, just to get the villain. If I ended it on a note, where the hero caught him by legal means, I think I would get that reaction, of feeling underwhelmed, whilst in comparison to other stories of that genre, especially ones that are set up for revenge, where the hero is gravely damaged and wants justice.

My original ending idea was this from another thread (https://www.writingforums.org/threads/can-i-make-this-forensic-scenario-convincing.139183/), but since I was told it does not work, I feel I have to go out of my way to end it some other way.