The collected musings of Ryan Elder

Ryan, have you ever heard of Rube Goldberg? When a plot starts to remind one of one of his inventions, something is wrong.

Sample cartoon: https://www.rubegoldberg.com/artwork/simple-way-to-find-your-glasses/?c=45

 

I'm with @ChickenFreak on this one. I think you're stuck because this whole plot turn simply doesn't work. It's too complicated AND basically implausible, given how storage facilities work and what his reason for having one/going to the safe—while the police watch him, and THEN get the combination via some technological jiggery pokery? Uh.

What did you intend the result of this scenario to be? Cops catch criminal, end of story? Or something else? I'd start there, whatever it is, and see if you can come up with another way to achieve that goal. This is your story, and it's part of the writer's job to work through these kinds of sticky bits. Of course you could also spend more time thinking about your present scenario, and maybe a eureka moment will occur to you and you'll find a way to solve the problem simply enough so it's believable to the reader. But my suggestion would be to turn this on its head and start again.

Have you actually written the story to this point, or is it still in the planning stages?

 

Don't know if these ideas have been suggested:

He needs to hide some new evidence in the safe.

A bluff by the cops leads him to need to check if [fill in the blank] is still in the safe.

 

I'd have to wonder if safe companies would have a tone sounding for each key press.

Also, if the police have a warrant, they bring in their own brute-force safe cracker with a blow torch and big drills. They don't care if they make a mess or if the owner knows they've been in his safe. They might notify him so he can be present and might even give him the opportunity to voluntarily open the safe for them. But if he didn't, they'd do whatever was needed to get into it... as long as, as I said, they have a legally-obtained warrant.

 

Okay thanks. I used a safe once that had a touch tone key pad that made the noises which is where I got the idea from.

I do not plan on having the villain get caught by opening the safe. This is the middle of the story. I have written out the outline and am stuck on this part. Basically I want the cops to record him opening the safe and then of the cops, figures out the combo, but comes back later and opens the safe for himself, for other reasons. But I also want the villain to find out the police are onto him near this point so he can take necessary steps that will lead to the third act. I just want two things to happen. Villain to find out and take steps, and the cop to open the safe for himself, without others knowing.

I could write it so that the cop has to break into it, but I think that might complicate things even more, rather than him figuring out the combination. It just calls for a longer scene and he would attract more attention when he is trying to be discrete. He is also not a safecracker though but just a cop, so there is that as well. Should he just acquire the combination then?

As for what GingerCoffee suggests, it has been said by others that the villain would not fall for a bluff if he knows the cops are onto him so what kind of bluff would work since the villain is too smart for that?

 

Your safe keypad made different tones for each button? That seems odd. The reasons phone do it (at least originally) is because it used this sounds (or pulses on a rotary phone) get get the call where it was needed. A safe wouldn't have need of that to open up since they operate on different technology. In fact, it sounds like that would be a major security issue, for the exact reason you are wanting to use it in your story.

 

Oh sorry I should have been more specific. I sometimes forget to explain things if I do not go through my notes as thoroughly. The villain has a customized key pad that was installed after the safe was built. The keypad is built to call his cellphone to alert him that the safe is broken into. In this situation it would make sense to have different tone sounds in each button, cause he took practically a phone key pad, and built it into his safe, so it will call his phone if opened.

Does that make more sense?

 

So his passcode is his phone number? And if that is the case will the safe call other people if a different number is punched?

 

Okay thanks. Well often when I ask for advice the answer is to create another character. For example, in my current story, the MC blackmails an ex-con is who an expert in computer hacking, cause he needs him to hack someone's computer. Later after finding certain information in the computer, it leads him to another location where he has to break into a safe and an alarm is tripped. However, I need to figure out a way for him to be able to break into the safe. Other people's advice was for him to blackmail an ex-con who is good at cracking safes?

But if the MC blackmails two criminals within about 10 pages, would the reader think it was too convenient or a deux ex machina? Is their anyway to get the MC to from point A to point B, without creating extra characters, if it's bad?

 

I suppose it could but the chances of someone else punching in a ten digit phone number into the safe is probably small. If they didn't know the correct code, they probably wouldn't bother to keep typing in random numbers to try to open it. But it would just be a wrong number on the other person's end, and that would be the end of that.

 

A few things. This concept really is different I think than what I thought you meant in the opening topic.

A safe cracker or a hacker don't really have to be characters. In a sense. I mean, yeah sure they are people but if they arrive and do one thing and leave. They are more like tools. I mean do you really count the hot dog salesman as a character in a cop movie? Or is he more a backdrop? Make sense?

Now on to your actually issue. Well blackmailing two seperate people with seperate skills is well, it says things about your guy. For one he knows criminals. I mean I don't think your average cop keeps criminals phone numbers up to date for this reason. You know blackmail also implies that he has something on them. A few things you could do here. Mix it up for one. As in, maybe one criminal is a friend that he gave a free pass once upon a time. Or maybe he has the safe cracking skills.

Yes the two people back to back. I do find troubling but for a different reason. Not because to many characters but because it makes me pause and think about it in the wrong way. Such as "Why does he have criminals ready to be blackmailed so easily?" OR "What is the point of watching him. He isn't doing anything. He keeps calling people to do stuff." OR "He is breaking the law in several ways pretty lightly here. Am I sure he is the hero?"

 

Well, if you're doing a heist story, it isn't, really. A lot of those types of stories use a team of specialists.
It might not be a great idea to use blackmail for both though. Bribery, trading favors, or maybe even the safecracker does it to stick it to someone.
But, yeah, early introduction removes the out-of-nowhere quality.

 

I don't see why the police need his combination. It's not going to be legal for them to use it. If they're going to open his storage unit illegally, they don't need it. If they won't open it illegally, they have no use for it.

I also don't see why the combination needs to be conveyed to them by sound. You seem to be absolutely desperate to make that work, and I don't see why you need it. If you just wanted a cool scene where the police use a parabolic mike, it would be better to have them use the mike for something else.

This business about someone trying ot use the safe accidentally calling someone whose phone number matches the safe combination..it makes no sense. A phone-style key pad doesn't have magic phone abilities. Tearing a phone apart to try to MacGyver the parts into a safe keypad is incredibly complicated and implausible. The idea that a wrong guess at the combination would call a number is a great way to give away the combination--HE just types one number wrong, and the combination is all but given away. Making the combination his phone number is even more horrible security.

None of it makes sense. Why are you so desperate to have the combination given to the police, and so desperate to have it given to them through the parabolic mike?

 

I'm returning, because this seems like an example of the kind of problem you keep having: You go too far down your plot path before you start to fix things.

You need a private police officer to get evidence against your villain.

So you decide that he keeps his stuff in a storage unit, and his storage unit has a keypad, and the police need to get the combination to the keypad, and they need to get it audibly.

Only then do you start to see the problems, but you don't back off--you try to force the elaborate scheme that you've come up with, to work.

Why don't you back off, detail by detail, and try to find something that makes sense?

You want the police to have the combination--but it doesn't really have to be a audible. How else could they get the combination?

You need a police officer to get in and see his stuff---but he doesn't really have to get the combination. How else could he get the storage unit open?

You need a police officer to find out something about him--but that something doesn't really have to be in a storage unit. How else could he find evidence about him?

The core of this is that you need a specific police officer to learn something, privately, about your villain. Right? So why not give up all the elaborate details, and think about that problem in a more general way?

 

Okay thanks. I need the cop to get proof against the villain, proof that can he used in court. But I also want the villain to be alerted by silent alarm or something that the cop has acquired it so he can get there to stop him. So I do not necessarily need safe that is audible in figuring out the combo, it was just my way. I need the cop to acquire proof, and for the villain to be alerted via silent alarm. It has to be in a public place like a self storage facility or something like that though, because if it's at a privately owned residence, it will steer the police investigation in other directions that will not work for what I am going for.

Do you think that when I try to come up with a story I should ask other writers advice on every plot turn before going ahead and creating more? I think that is my problem is that I get carried away and create too much of the story with confirming if every one from section to section works.

 

I suspect that "silent alarm" is another detail that you can dive below. You need the cop to acquire proof and you need the villain to...what? Arrive at the same place as the cop? Find out that the cop found the evidence? Why the "silent alarm"?

 

Responding to myself: In any case, for the combination to be audible, is completely unnecessary and too implausible and exotic. So is a combination, really. Having the combination doesn't make the unauthorized entry legal, so the combination is useless.

What do you really need? Try to keep diving below the exotic trimmings that you've created and figure out what you really need and why.

Try to figure out the skeleton of your plot without the fancy trimmings. As far as I can tell:

You have a villain that is doing Something Bad.
You have a cop that wants to catch him.
You want the cop to be deprived of the help of the police department. That's something that you need for emotion reasons, not plot reasons--you want the cop to be isolated, alone. (That's my theory, anyway. Do you know why you want this?) You need to mold the plot around your character emotion effect.
You would like to have a point in your plot where the cop has found evidence on his own without the help of the police department, the villain knows that he has, and the cop doesn't know that the villain knows. Again, do you know why you want this? Is it an interesting emotional situation? What is its purpose?

All of this does NOT mean that you need a storage unit, a combination, an audible keypad, a parabolic mike. That's just one of a million possible ways to get the more general effects that you want.

I strongly suggest that you come up with those general goals, and stop focusing on the implausible, exotic trimmings.

 

Okay thanks. You are right about my reason for the cop. For the villain I want to have a reason for him to come after the cop and arrive at the same place and time as him. Is their any way I can do that that is more plausible?

I suppose there is, but if the villain not stopping him from getting proof on him is enough, then what do I need to change about that?

 

Your current scheme is very complicated and implausible. Back away from it, figure out what you want at the general level, and brainstorm the general outline of several possible schemes that fulfill most of your goals, perhaps a dozen. For example:

- Cop persuades villain's landlord to let him in the apartment...
- Cop sets a fire in the villain's apartment, causing a legal arson investigation...
- Villain has a safe deposit box, and cop somehow figures out how to get access...
- Cop fakes traffic violations so that villain's car is towed to the police garage...
- Etc., etc., etc. Go for at least a dozen. Work across the dozen, trying to rough in their details, without focusing too much on any one.

 

Okay thanks. I am not sure where you are going with some of your suggestions though. For example, why would he cause an arson investigation, to get more cops onto the villain? Well that's one way to go but I do not know if that helps as much because the fire department will be investigating the arsonist a lot more than who owns the apartment, the villain that is.

If you get the villain's cop towed to the garage it will only cause him to have to pay traffic tickets, but not really have any proof to put him behind bars for his serious crimes.

I will think of other ways. Thanks. Mainly I have to work towards the end goal. The cop acquires proof on the villain. But the villain is alerted by it, and goes to intervene and stop the cop before he can turn it in.

That is the end goal, pretty simple, at least I think. So I just need to come up with something to fit that.

 

In my current horror script I introduced a minor character well into the second act, like page 70ish,
who was described as the hitchhiker. This character was just a filler in order to show off something that
the antagonist was capable of that we didn't know about up until that point. The hitchhiker gets killed
in an extraordinary way, but it's not a worthless kill, her death and the way she dies specifically is actually
a PLANT because it shows exactly how the antagonist will try to take out my MC in the finale of the third act.
The antagonist will try to take her, my MC, out the same way. But by seeing this beforehand (it is a script) with the hitchhiker, that gives the reader a blueprint of that method used to kill which the antagonist will eventually attempt to use again against my MC so the reader will know what to expect, but my MC will not know what to expect so we'll be in a "superior position" over her.

What I ended up doing was omitting the hitchhiker and I put my MC in the hitchhiker's place, a younger version of herself. My MC ends up having a vision of herself dieing in that extraordinary way that I'm referring to, so by the time she's faced with this same fate in reality by the end of the script, she's more prepared. The idea then becomes to just tweak the intended killing method some, to throw both us and her off a tad.

This was one of the best moves I've made in this script because by putting my MC in the hitchhiker's place, a new theme even emerged. So when you ask is it worth introducing "new characters" to sustain or introduce new plot points, just think, you may not need a new character(s) and it could easily be your MC or another existing character all together! Think about that.

 

Because an arson investigation would support a legal presence in the villain's apartment. You want to get the cop into a place that is normally private to the villain, right? A place where the villain is storing evidence. You decided that he stores evidence in a storage locker, but you can change the place where he stores evidence.

The villain might store evidence in his apartment. An arson investigation makes it possible for the cop to more easily access the apartment.

The villain might store evidence in his car. Being towed and in police custody makes it possible for the cop to more easily access the car.

The villain might store evidence in a safe deposit box.

And so on. These are also fairly elaborate, but they're much less elaborate than the MacGyver keypad with the magic phone and the parabolic mike.

 

Okay thanks. This is the first I have heard about the keypad and mic not working, I asked others before and they said they do not see why it wouldn't make sense. Well I won't use it if it won't work then. A fire might destroy the evidence inside the apartment though. What if he just staged a break in to attract the police? However, I asked others their opinions on this before, and they said that the villain would not be dumb enough to keep evidence in his own place. That's why I moved it to another residence, because writers before, told me that makes the villain dumb.

The safe deposit box thing works for the villain, but it would be harder for the cop to stage a break in at the bank or something to attract the attention of the police. It would also be harder to rob, if he plans to take it so he can stage an attraction for the police to find it at another place.

But whatever the scenario, I want the villain to be alerted that his evidence has been taking before the police get to see it. I do not want the cop to succeed at this point but for his plan to backfire and the villain to show up to see who took it from him.

 

It's not the "first" you've heard--many people on this very thread were dubious about a lock that uses tones to merrily announce the buttons being pushed.

 

Yes it's just the first time it's brought to my intention compared to other people before. I wont' use the villains own house though because I was told by others, the villain wouldn't keep any evidence there, since that's the first place the cops would look.

So for a safe, do they make safes that can call your cellphone via silent alarm? I want it to be silent so the cop does not know anyone has been alerted and finds out later. But do they make safes like that or how do safes work for alerting the owner, when he is not home? I have done some research but cannot find any that alert the owner when they are away.