The collected musings of Ryan Elder

There are ample gadgets that can notify a home owner when something happens--a window or door being opened, water, a specific temperature range, loud noises, motion sensors, all sorts of things.

I wanted to note that if this villain is so terribly successful and wealthy, he doesn't have to store his evidence in HIS home, or in a storage unit. He could afford to rent a spare apartment, house, or car. He could use the classic safe deposit box and just need to hide the key--since this is purely a plot device, the evidence doesn't have to be bulky.

Come to think of it, does it actually need to be legal "evidence"? You want your cop to be operating outside the law. Perhaps the cop finds out who is caring for the villain's elderly mother or handicapped sibling or infant son, someone that the villain cares about, information that the villain's enemies would like to have. That could explain why both of them have to fight it out outside the law--if the cop reports the infant son, the son will be taken safely into the foster care system, and the cop's leverage is lost.

 

Okay thanks. The reason why the cop wants legal evidence so he can alert the police to something they can use, to put the villain away, which is his ultimate goal.

 

I thought revenge was the ultimate goal?

 

Well I wanted him to get revenge after trying to get proof backfires. Usually in stories the MC's goal changes once a backfire happens? They try to get the villain, fail, learn a lesson from it, and then resort to more desperate means, in my case going from justice, to failing, to revenge. So I was following that idea sort of. So revenge is the ultimate goal, after he changes, since his original ultimate goal fails.

 

I'm just going to emphasize once again that plausibility matters.

 

Okay thanks. Well I think part of the problem is that when I try to make changes I still have the habit of creating unstoppable villains. I try to make them smart enough that they do not do anything illogical or not make any mistakes, and as a result there is no way to stop them but to get revenge. But I feel that he should be stoppable by being able to do something to incriminate himself too. But a lot of ideas I come up with for him to incriminate himself, people do not by as something he would do because he is too smart too do that so what can I do to create a villain who is capable of being caught? Or should I just write it so revenge is the only option and they cannot find anything to use as evidence at all?

 

Demanding that:

1) There be legal evidence usable in court.
2) Collected privately by a cop who can't or won't use police resources

is twisting your plot into implausible knots. I think that you're likely to need to abandon either the cop-on-his-own, or the evidence usable in court.

 

Okay thanks. A cop can still collect evidence privately. They evidence just has to be placed somewhere and then called in by an anonymous tip, such as the cop using a friend's voice to call it in. There are definate ways around it, at least according to the cops I asked when doing research. Such as staging an fire at an apartment or something like you said.

 

Sigh.

 

Well when it comes to villains how can I write them plausibly in a way that they are smart but are capable of making a mistake? Cause if I restart from scratch the cop has to discover him somehow. But if he is so smart he would never be caught onto. Is their anything to keep in mind when writing a villain that is capable of making a mistake or an oversight that would get the cops onto him?

 

Okay thanks. But in Seven the killer doesn't get caught. Perhaps I am not ready for a story where the killer is able to get caught by plausible means. What if I wrote it so that the villain got away in the end? Or perhaps audiences would not accept that for this particular one. Hmm... Would the villain keep evidence in a place under his own name for any reason at all? Once I come up with the villains's plan, perhaps I can look for a flaw after.

 

In my script the MC is following the villain around on his time, trying to get proof of his crimes, but does it for days and cannot find him doing anything illegal. But how do I write it so that someone can follow a person for days and that person wouldn't notice? He's just a regular civilian, so it's not like he has helicopters, or tracking devices, so is their anything I can do to make this scenario more believable? Basically in the story he has to follow him around to get evidence, and then after a few days, he finally sees him do something to incriminate himself.

 

Abandon the idea that he follows him around all the time. Instead, have him watch him in some narrower context--for example, the villain has a favorite bar, so the MC starts hanging out there in the hope of identifying some of the villain's regular associates. And he gets lucky and sees something.

 

Okay thanks, but I want the villain to go a particular place and commit a crime, and the MC sees him do it, from following him. Is their a way to do that without the villain spotting him?

 

Can your MC rope in some of his friends so it's not the same person following the villain around?

Where is the story set? If it was somewhere like London or New York, the streets are so busy that you could realistically not notice the same person trailing you around for days on end. In Little-Piddlington-Village, not so much.

Does your villain only go to crowded places so he doesn't stand out? Bars crammed with people, busy streets during rush hour, etc.

 

It is set in a fairly large city but have not decided which city yet. But a city of at least 20,000 or something like that probably. If I could I may be able to set it in a bigger city. It's a screenplay, which I am setting in my own city to be shot there, so it depends on how big a city of 20,000 can pass for, when you try to give the viewer the impression that it's bigger from the tailing scenes.

The biggest road in my city probably has six lanes, if that means anything.

The villain goes to events such as family BBQs, and the MC is noticing that he goes to martial arts classes and firearm combat classes, thinking that the villain is gearing up for hard times. He is going to things like that.

 

Well you're definitely going to notice a stranger hanging around at a family BBQ. You'll probably also notice it if the same person is in your martial arts AND fire combat class, because those can only have, what, 20 people in?

 

What if the MC with binoculars or a telescope from really far away? The villain also knows what the MC looks like too, so he cannot show his face to the villain while stalking him.

 

Not very feasible. Your MC is going to have to be hidden, because people are going to notice a man with a telescope in a public place, and your villain is going to have to be very conveniently placed to be in his line of sight. For example in one of the classes, he will have to be standing beside a window that is in sight of wherever MC is hiding with his telescope or binoculars at the time.

If your MC is just monitoring where he goes (i.e. he only has to be watching the class entrance to see when villain enters and exits) that's more believable, but then it defeats the purpose because he needs to be seeing what villain is doing when he commits a crime.

 

Okay thanks. The MC can still here the villain commit a crime like a gunshot and a scream, when the crime goes wrong. So I think I can do that part by hearing, because then the MC goes to check it out.

As for the classes, perhaps the MC can just see signs on buildings to get he idea of what the villain is doing. But a lot of classes are outdoors. My martial arts class is sometimes, if the whether is nice, and pistol target shooting ranges are outdoors as well. So perhaps the MC can view by telescope from far away, if he is concealed in a car or something?

 

I don't think the MC will be able to watch the person he is surveilling for the entire day, but he/she should be able to get fairly close to that. The key would be making sure that when observing, he keep contact with the villain to a bare minimum. So, if the villain goes into a small bar, he/she will need to be watching from the cafe across the street. I can imagine quite a bit of tension as the observer wonders what's going on in there, but is unable to enter without being recognized. He/she could then follow the person being observed, staying as far back as possible, until he sees that person go into an abandoned warehouse or something. He/she would have to take an extraordinary risk to follow the person being observed in there, but that would just mean more tension.

 

I'm not a techie, or a crime novel buff, but you can be a regular person and get an inexpensive GPS tracking device these days. (Ever see Breaking Bad?). Plus, wouldn't think your bad guy would need to be followed constantly--just during those times the crime was more likely to be committed. Good luck--sounds fun--like you gotta solve your own mystery before you can write it.