The collected musings of Ryan Elder

Okay thanks. I saw that Breaking Bad season. However, the tracker he had was only able to tell him where the villain went, after he had planted the tracker, and the retrieved it later. I am not sure if the other trackers, that can send a live signal to a laptop or phone for example, are legal to buy? Cause in order for the MC to be there when the villain commits the crime, the MC will have to be tracking him live. If you can by trackers that can track live legally, then it will work.

There is another thing. Aside from the MC following the villain, there is also another supporting character tracking the villain as well. Him and the MC cross paths and both find out they are tracking the same person. But would it be too much of a coincidence, if both of them planted live trackers on the villain's car? This could be how one spots the other, when he sees there is already a tracker on the car, maybe, or is that too coincidental, that they would use the same method?

 

Also,, you could have your MC do some of his "tracking" online. You could have him monitoring the person's social media activities, noting any favorite places or frequent contacts.

 

I don't know about you, but when I am writing I find myself googling a lot. Just googled GPS trackers on your behalf and find there are many live trackers on the market. Trucking fleets use them to tell where their trucks are--sure doesn't look like they are illegal. Your creativity in resolving such plot dilemmas will be a big part of determining whether you tell a compelling and believable story.

 

Okay thanks. I googled it but they don'y go into much specifics about legalities, where I live, Canada. I don't think the MC would have any luck monitoring online social activities, because the villain is going to want to keep to himself and not post activities online.

 

The MC being worried and unsure about the legalities could be one element to the story. If the MC is determined enough, the legality may not be a determining factor on whether or not he uses a particular method to track the antagonist. I guess it all depends on the character.

 

It doesn't make sense to me that an already-active criminal is essentially taking career-in-crime-enhancement classes. On the one hand, shooting ranges and martial arts classes are perfectly legitimate hobbies. On the other hand, if he needs those skills for his criminal activities, he ought to already have them.

 

Really? Your MC is trying to catch a bad guy and he's worried about breaking the law? He's no Jack Bauer !hero character on 24) .

 

What do you mean criminal enhancement classes? I only mentioned that he was going to shooting ranges and martial arts, which are just hobby classes. Even though he already has them, he still wants to practice and keep up with it. No sense in not doing it for a long time and getting rusty, if that makes sense.

I also did some research and one person told me that those particular trackers that send out a live feed of where a person is going, you have to call a police network or something in order to get the live feed installed. It's not something that can be done by yourself, I was told, if that's true?

 

Don't forget about cameras mounted on drones--virtually silent, controlled from iPad--can stay airborne a long time with incredibly good clarity and zoom. (Google them also)

 

Okay thanks. But I think that might be too much since the MC would have to take drone flying course, and get a license, etc. I think that I should keep it simple and cut down on more plot, if that's possible.

 

Agreed. Unless you are interested in getting into the gritty details of the technology (trackers, drones, etc), I'm not sure those details are really needed for the plot. The MC can just follow the antagonist around for a while, making sure to stay as far away as possible, not entering the same small building as the antagonist, etc. All the while you can create tension from the protagonist almost being spotted and can drop in a few clues as the protagonist sees things. As long as the MC keeps his distance, it should be entirely plausible. Detective novels do this kind of thing all the time.

 

For my story, after a gang member is arrested but then released for not being able to get her to speak up, she then has to lay low and not make contact with the rest of the gang, unless it's an emergency, because the police now know who she is, and could survey her.

They send in an undercover cop to meet her, let him know he is one of the gang members, but a new one, since she has not spoken to the gang for a few weeks, or maybe even months, if that's better. So he came to her to warn her that the cops have evidence on her, and is lying of course, to try to get her to give up certain information. However, during the course of him meeting her and trying to get her to talk, she figures out that he may be an undercover cop, since he cannot answer certain questions about the gang's previous activities, that he would likely know, if he was a member. So she tries to flee him, but he chases her down to try to convince. She attacks him and a fight breaks out.

Three other men then come and chase down the cop. These three men then tell her that they are gang members, but newer ones since she last saw the gang. They came to save her from the undercover cop, since the cops are all over her, they say. They then try to find out what she told the cops, or what they know from her.

However, these three men are also undercover cops, and it was a contingency plan, in case she was not fooled by the first cop and they had to do something to prove they were the gang, like committing violence against an imposter. However, is this set up way too elaborate, even for police standards?

The crook is guilty of participating in an infamous kidnapping and that is her only crime. But in order to bust kidnappers, would they go to such elaborate lengths? Obviously I want them to, to an extent for entertainment, but is this too much for the audience to buy as plausible for police methods?

 

I don't think a police department would try something so complicated. It seems more like the type of thing an intelligence agency might do. It's possible that the FBI might, as they handle many kidnapping cases. If you did have the FBI do it (or another country's equivalent) then I think you'd need to develop how desperate the agency was for that particular case. The operation would require the involvement of 4 agents bare minimum (not counting the ones running the operation from the background), which is a lot.

 

If making it the FBI helps then I might be able to do that. However this case originally starts out as a traffic stop, that goes wrong and leads to an arrest. But then the investigators on the case find out at that something much bigger is going on. The FBI does not do regular traffic patrol. So if I make it the FBI that means I would have to switch investigators from the police to the FBI, about half way through and thereby dumping characters and POVs, and introducing new ones. I don't think it would be a good idea to do that. I would like to keep the same investigators throughout the story, if possible.

 

Weeks or months? This sounds like a plot like to a series which has a lot more time to dedicate to character relationships.

 

I have to agree. They wouldn't have the budget for it, for one thing. For another, that's not how cops think.

 

Happens often in movies. Guy gets kidnapped, tortured, someone rescues him, asks him same questions as they "get away" and they end up back where they started, whether the kidnapped answers or not.

 

Okay thanks. In fiction though, I have seen the police and FBI do way higher budgeted things than that though. Mine is low key compared to some stories, at least I assume in terms of budget. How is this so expensive, compared to what they do in other fiction?

 

Sorry. I thought you wanted to know if it was realistic.

If you're just comparing to other fiction, you only have one limit: make the reader believe. Set it up well enough and you can get away with anything.

 

Okay thanks. I have seen this done twice before in 24, and in the movie Enemy of the State. So it's not really new I guess.

There was one real life case though where the RCMP of Canada, went undercover as a whole gang itself. They actually made up a gang in order to recruit a new member, and get him to talk. So it doesn't seem that unrealistic, if a whole gang can be formed in real life as a cover by the police, at least not to me it doesn't.

What about this to try to get her to talk:

The police do not know any of the gang members though, so when they talk to her, they cannot identify anyone in the gang to confirm they are a part of it. The only gang member they know is currently on trial, and the trial starts tomorrow. Can they use this to their advantage while undercover? Like maybe they could get her to talk by telling her that they are new gang members, and the reason why the others did not give them their names when they were recruited was because since one of them is on trial, it is for security reasons. The tell her that the police have more evidence for the trial since she was arrested, so she must have given the cops something without knowing it.

Will this be a good reason to get her to talk?

 

I've seen some similar stuff done in series' like Jack Reacher, where the cops will stop someone, and the FBI will either get called in pretty quick, or will butt their heads in uninvited. Could be a good source of conflict between the police and the FBI actually, although would be a little bit unoriginal.

 

Well if I must have the FBI, I only want them for this one part of the investigation and then after it is done, they should get out so the main cop characters can resume I think. If that's how it can work realistically.

Another writer made a suggestion to me. They say that the woman would be too smart to talk to a stranger about the gang business. However one writer suggested to me that the woman would not give up any information until she spoke to the leader of the gang. If she names the leader while talking to the cops, saying she won't speak to anyone but him, then that's good enough. If the cops have the leader's name from her, then they have enough info for the story to continue. What if she just said that, and that would be enough? Would that work?

 

Okay thanks. I have asked more writers for opinions, and everytime there is a problem, they keep telling me to create new characters to fix it. Is their a limit as to how many gap filler characters should be allowed, even if they are minor and would just have one scene?

Plus I am writing for a low budget screenplay that I want to direct and produce myself, so the more gap filler characters I add to it, the more money and actors I need. I have added quite a few now to fill gaps, and I feel that it's getting kind of ridiculous I feel. For example, one of my threads a while ago was on 5th amendment rights, because readers didn't buy a legal scenario, so I was told to write in a new character to come in and explain the scenario, just so the reader would understand it, thus being the characters only purpose. I feel that the gap filler characters are beginning to become too much.

 

Specifically to Ryan Elder's case - creating one-off characters that serve only to advance the plot is bad. "Write in a new character" is typically fine when used as an absolute or logical necessity. If a criminal has been captured and is being hauled off to jail, typically you need to "write in a law enforcement character". The supporting cast is there to support, not to taxi the plot along until a conclusion.

Not to nitpick, but if you had an issue arise with a legal scenario - why not use an existing and relevant character (outside the legal system) to ask the necessary question? You could even turn it into a whole song-and-dance scene if it is a musical. The whole "make a new character" thing sounds great until you realize that this is the 4th one and you have wasted an opportunity to make a character bond with the audience. Also making a new character for the task is a distraction and is a mental tax on the audience and your budgets.

 

The trick is to make it all look natural.

If your main character is being pursued by the antagonist through a busy shopping mall, you don't have to have introduced the policeman the MC turns to for help. The police will be patrolling the mall as part of their job. The policeman will be exactly where you'd expect him to be. Handy for the plot, but not a coincidence either. However, if your main character is being pursued by another character through a dense forest, and runs into a policeman, the policeman had better have a good reason for popping up just then.

Nobody is going to have an issue with somebody who is exactly where you'd expect them to be—an olympic swimmer training in a large pool, or somebody walking their dog across a park, or somebody doing what their job normally entails. It's when things happen out of the ordinary that you have to set it all up carefully beforehand.

If you can use 'normal' characters ...preferably unnamed ones ...doing normal things to facilitate a plot point, it helps to keep your plot decluttered and adds to overall believability. Too many coincidences will lead in the opposite direction.