I have decided to create a Private Eve series that has a mix of Peter Gunn and Sleepy Hollow. I want to make my characters unique and not imitations. I am open to suggestions. I want my main character to be like his predecessors without the baggage. I am open to suggestions.
You're not giving us a whole lot to work with here, my friend. Are you wanting suggestions to get you started? If that's the case, I'd start with motivation/backstory for a PI. I think with those types of story, since the arc for the character is generally shallow, backstory is pretty important. And I don't mean dumping it all on the reader at the beginning, but having his past affect his decisions and get him in and out of trouble. So why is your character a PI? I think that's where I'd start, were I writing a PI story.
Who are his pedecessors? What I took away is a series about a P.I., that has snappy dialog and paranormal leanings. Is that correct?
PTSD flash backs of getting shot at when he was younger due to his early incompetence. Mid scene he's in a fire fight maybe he could over come his fear of getting shot again? In doing so being and showing he's become a competent man. Do you play video games at all? I suggest LA Noire because it's a Noire crime solver but it shows a good PI background story and the story in general in the game is amazing. Though sadly it's replayability is low it is probably a good example to look at. Noire films to as well or check out Murder She Wrote or Poirot. All good for backstory and idea's. Poirot is good because of its funny situational humor. I suggest this even if it's not the kind of thing you're looking to do because it'll give you a broader sense of different character backstories and how the evidence or suspects are handled.
Your question is too vague. We can’t tell you how to write your story. I would suggest you read things in the same genre for inspiration, make a start planning or writing your story, and then come back with a more specific question once you have one.
Also you can't easily make your characters unique whilst basing a setting on a mixture of what has come before .... come up with a unique (or at least different) setting and base your characters in it
From your requirements, I mean this 'Peter Gunn' does seem fairly archaic - however, directed by the great Blake Edwards, so resurrect Cato, everybody likes Cato. Scene 1, Cato and family surround table. They eat delicious steaming noodles. Meanwhile waiters pass by laden with disgusting slop for diners. Waiter: Where you want this Headless Horse fried rice? Cato: Table 13 Uncle Cato Senior [eating]: Headless Horse is bad name for restaurant. We have only eleven customer! Cato (slurping): Yes, a great mystery. Like the mystery of Sleepy Hollow, my stupid uncle. We live Sleepy Hollow, I call it Headless Horse. You have no brain, uncle [rage]. Waiter: Mister Cato, Mister Cato. There is jockey at door. He want his horse back he say. OPENING CREDITS/MUSIC Detective wanders empty restaurant. He is a hard-bitten health and safety official. Is the restaurant feeding horse to Americans, or has racial stereotyping run riot here in Westchester County, New York? [Storyline continues] ... Cato's Japanese...not Chinese...fudge that error somehow, [write] Sushi scene blowfish + cleaver.
I agree with you. I am going to make my character a mixture of Peter Gunn and Easy Rawlins from Walter Mosley. I am a fan of Mosley.
Very true. I want to make them a little old school in demeanor and very contemporary. I will be glad to share with you the complete character/storyboard of my character when I post it next week.
I don’t think sharing your character sheets and storyboards will help. Unless you have a specific question, like how to advance a certain plot point or how to characterise a certain personality, I’m not sure we would be any the wiser in terms of what help you are looking for.
For example , I'm a fan of Lee Child and my character Steve 'Dusty' Miller fits into the sort of jack reacher action hero role , however he isnt a carbon copy Jack Reacher - Big jack is a straight arrow ex millitary cop ... since leaving the army Dusty has been robbing banks and working as a hit man for organised crime. Jack has seen all sorts of shit but is unaffected by it , Dusty is damaged by the things hes seen and done and so on
You’re welcome. I think a helpful exercise might be to try to summarise your whole story in a couple of sentences. Keep it really simple, but include the overall structure (what it is about and what happens at the end). Then expand from there with your characters, making sure that the changes they go through reflect the intended ending of the story. Finally, your plot plan should reflect the twists and turns and the events which will elicit those changes in your characters. It might also help to think about the overall message, moral or philosophy of the story, if there is one.
First, I'd back off on the idea of a series. Make it a standalone novel, and then you can decide whether it has legs to keep running, With a PI series, you don't need a series arc in any case. An episodic approach is perfectly adequate. What time period do you want to set your investigator in? Present day technology is a real game changer. Consider Internet searches and cell phones as two critical examples. Peter Gunn was ahead of his time in some ways. He had a telephone in his car, and was apparently independently wealthy. But what made that series was the collection of odd characters he had connections to for informants, not to mention his unusual rapport with Lt Jacobi. All those relationships come from being a gumshoe, someone who has to track down information the hard way; going to informants and suspects and digging out information they don't easily deliver. Modern investigator stories tend to get lost in technobabble, from complex computer analysis to magical forensic trails. Beware of that. It's a large part of why the old school PIs like Peter Gunn or Joe Mannix are so fondly nostalgic. In fact, Mannix started out in a high tech computerized investigation firm, and in the second season, discarded all that in favor of a tiny office and an attractive-but-hands-off secretary in the tradition of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. So the first step is to decide whether you want a procedural story, with lots of research into modern investigative procedures and the labyrinth of legal pitfalls, or a seat-of-the-pants detective from the pages of Blake Edwards or Sidney Sheldon Leonard. Or you could split the difference with the likes of Spenser (for Hire) of Kinsey Millhone. Good luck!
That is a good idea Cognito. I want to stay contemporary but keep the traditional approach. I definitely want to put it in a modern setting.
The first problem I see is that you're trying to create a unique character...by asking us what he should be like...it's a bit like designing a horse by committee - you end up with a giraffe. Secondly, character-driven stories are all about the character arc, from some sort of damaged to a better sort of damaged by the end of the book. PI dramas all almost invariably about how he beats the bad guy despite his damaged past getting in the way; there is no arc from bad to better; especially if you're going to write a series. So you're going to create a character, and then you're going to have to create a plot for his first adventure?