The collected musings of Ryan Elder

Well later on he finds out that he was there through some other clues and evidence. But for the time being, which would be a few weeks, I do not necessarily want the cop seeing it coming. I was planning on having it happen in daylight. I am writing a screenplay for a low budget and it's just a lot cheaper to shoot in daylight.

It can be either an open area or built up. However, the crooked cop parks his car, and then walks somewhere to wait to be searched. This way, the other cop does not see his car. Then the crooked cop, is driven to the blood in location, in the gang's car, and then later he runs back to his own car, which the cop would have never saw. So whether or not the area is open or built up, would be determined by the cop not being able to see his car logically, when he first waits to meet the gang.

 

I was more thinking about facial recognition. If shadows from buildings or dark, may make facial recognition from a distance more than daylight in an open space. I still think it could work.

 

I think a bigger problem is that this dirty cop is doing a "blood in" ritual. Dirty cops aren't dirty because they want to be gang members, they are either extorted or paid. If this gang was extorting this dirty cop, they wouldn't allow him to join the gang, and why would he want to? That part puts up huge red flags for me. I can't picture a scenario where, realistically, a cop (dirty or otherwise) would do join a gang this way.

 

I'm not saying the superiors must frame your protagonist for drug dealing - I merely offered it as a suggestion that you might consider. If you feel it won't work within your story structure, then obviously, you shouldn't use it. As far as having the entire police force after your protagonist for something he cannot get out of, that is something that I see as needing a change, so that he can or your story will be unsatisfying to the readers. You simply need to put in something that results in a reversal.

Your protagonist can go to extremes - including torture, as Liam Neeson did in Taken - but they must be a necessary part of the plot and contribute to the protagonist's achieving a higher goal.

 

Okay thanks. In Taken though Liam Neeson went to another country, France, then came back and disappeared from France starting an investigation that would be able to lead directly to him.

In mine, I still want my hero to live in the city as the crooks he illegal tortured and what not, and that is the tricky part.

As for the hero being in too much trouble by the police, prior, what if i wrote it so that he is not arrested but the captain wants him to turn in his gun, cause he is suspended or something like that.

And he doesn't want to, so he takes off with his gun, and the captain tries to have him detained, and then the whole force is after him... cause he needs his gun if he is going to pursue a vendetta.

However, if he was going to pursue one, would it just be more logical to turn in his gun and then just try to acquire another one later?

 

In my experience, police are often quite lenient when it comes to their own. That's why there are internal affairs departments in each.

If he's suspended - and this "turning in the gun and badge thing has been done to death - he probably won't be arrested, just told not to come in to work, and his union will step in, there'll be an investigation (by supervisors and IID and possibly the prosecution network too), etc. I don't think one person (like the Captain) can do it spontaneously, but I'm talking about in Australia. I'd also expect that in the US (I'm guessing that's your location) obtaining a firearm legally or otherwise is no difficult task.

I don't know how your police handle firearm control - I believe in Australia, the gun is left at the station at the end of the day, excepting for our "soggies" (aka "Sons Of God" or "Special Operations Group" your SWAT) who are required to be ready for action at all times.

But what you've outlined can work - you just need to put in place the necessary aspects to make the sequence of events credible. If you haven't gone to the Author's Salon website yet, I'd encourage you to do so - there's a lot of useful stuff there and any amount of time you spend researching or learning about story structure will repay itself many times over when you come to write.

Author's Salon encourages revealing both the protagonist's and antagonist's true nature early in the piece, which can make for a great opening scene if they're both in it together; A can set up the P for a fall, but the P isn't going to have a bar of it, and from there on the action can build very quickly.

 

Okay thanks. I will check out Author's Salon.

And yeah, the whole gun and badge thing has been done to death. So perhaps in order for him to have the police after him than he has to be charged with a prior crime that he has to somehow get out of by the end?

 

Yes. Something major.

He canbe set up countless ways: in The Killing (the still very good US version) there was a doctored photo to implicate a politician that was eventually shown to be false; I recall things like fingerprints, hair sample (DNA), and such in other works too.

 

Okay thanks. It's hard for me to set something up prior in the story, without it coming off as forced or shoehorned in. There is the part of the plot earlier in the story where he kills a cop that is working with the gang, but cannot prove it. He shot first cause he thought that the cop was going to shoot him, being with the gang at the time, the gang was coming after him.

So there is that. However, would the police go after him for this? I mean it's his word against a cop who is dead, so wouldn't they believe him and have too much uncertainty to make an arrest?

 

It can be easily done. One suggestion is that the dead cop was on the phone to one of his cronies (in the force) just before he was shot and says something like, "What's (protagonist) doing here?" or similar. The dead cope need not be operating on his own, a la Witness. The circumstances or scene will come alive by your drawing of the characters and descriptions of the locations, and readers will suspend their disbelief. Where there's one crooked cop, surely there are others?

 

Oh okay thanks. The phone call, might work. The crooked cop is turning good in my story, and while he was with the gang, I wanted him to attempt to save the MC, but the MC thought he came to kill since he is with the gang, and opens fire or something like that, since crooked cop had a gun out or something. Something along those lines.

But so far, I was only planning on their being one crooked cop and didn't have any use for others, afterwards. So it might work.

 

I think that will be quite workable.

If you find Author's Salon has ueful stuff, I've downloaded and put into pdf/.doc format several articles: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/99857594/Author%27s%20Salon.zip

 

Okay thanks. I still feel that if he has to be charged with a crime, before and has to set out to prove he was justified, I feel it becomes a fugitive trying to prove himself story, and this is very different than the type of story I was going for, which was a vigilante cop/revenge story. I feel that the revenge cannot be concentrated on, if he is busy trying to prove his innocence and that is the main focus.

 

Hi,
Sorry for the late reply. I hope you have come up with something till now.

But if you haven't , all i can say is try to explore the ruins of the destroyed plan and try to make your MC pick up some points or clues that will eventually lead to a good plan second time. Or you can go with the first plan itself without making anything to wrong. As i said no one can influence your story and no one should , if a way feels more suitable to you for you story go with that.

 

Does it have to end well for the MC? Maybe the story ends with him not getting bailed out of whatever situation he's in from the way that he dealt with the villain, now he has to decide if it was worth it or not?

 

You could make it a philosophical kind of ending that is dark. Your MC is not simply killing the antagonist, but his equal and opposite in the act of revenge. Perhaps even killing the 'bad' version of himself, his physical manifestation of his inner demons. Make it more than simply "badguy hurts goodguy, goodguy now must seek retribution", if you know what I mean.

In the end the MC could have some altercation with the antagonist, resulting in both getting the shit kicked out of them. And then have the MC simply leave everything behind, changed for the better/worse for what he has done to get to this point. Your MC doesn't have to win or lose, and the antagonist doesn't have to die for the point to be made.

I like @Simpson17866 said, as it challenges your MC to confront his actions for gaining his retribution. As well as the implications of what he has done leading up to that dark victory.

 

I don't understand the need for the ritual either. Change it to a large deal that needs protection, an information meet or something along those lines, and it's makes more sense. I agree, dirty cops don't need or generally want to be gang members; they do it for the money.

As for the recognizing the dirty cop's face; as long as you make it known that they they both know he didn't get a good look at the dirty cop, it makes sense.

 

I have to agree with the others. A dirty cop is simply on the payroll, never part of the gang. It makes no sense.

If you want to keep this scenario, I would say the cop is related to one of the higher up members, but not obviously so. Perhaps the dirty cop was adopted and you later find his brother is a higher up. He had a good foster family and grew up right. He became a cop and while he was new used available resources to find his real family. He found out his brother was in the gang, but met with him anyway. Later he became part of the case against the gang and started doing "favors" to help his brother out. He was conflicted about it the whole time, but has strong family values. You can show the decline in his morality, explain his reasoning (no one thinks they're a villain theory), humanize him a little, and make a realistic back story.

About the wire thing, it depends on visibility. It also depends on location. If they're at a club, it's fair to be patted down. A shady back alley in broad daylight and he recognizes one of them? Justified.

 

Okay thanks. I was planning on the story being open for a sequel, so if the first one finds success, I would make it a series. But the downside to that is, is that the MC has to come out successful, and that is putting limitations on my story I find. Could I possibly have my cake and eat it too, and perhaps have the MC do a lot of wrong and illegal things, but then somehow miraculously escape a long prison sentence because of it?

 

Okay thanks. The gang is a terrorist type group though, going around creating acts of terror, to put fear into society and get their message heard. They are not doing anything for money. The dirty cop is not in it for money either, but is a believer in their cause. So he is sort of a terrorist mole, in the police department, or at least they are testing him to see if he is good enough to be one. I kind have to make it a blood in though, cause all the rest of the plot rests on the victim of the blood in and the investigation of the blood in itself. The whole plot comes out of the blood in investigation and the victim who is rescued particularly.

So does it make sense to have a blood in, if the gang is not about money, but is about terror and the cop in not in it for money, but a believer in their cause?

Another thing, is that if a cop does not do any dirty deeds for the gang, how can the gang trust that the cop would not rat them out? A lot of times gangs will test new recruits by getting them to kill someone to make sure they are not undercover cops.

So if the gang wanted to recruit a cop to be a mole, wouldn't they test him to, to make sure he is dependable, since he is a cop and all?

 

Maybe the sequel could start with your guy in prison, finding out that he needs to do the thing on the outside that you were originally planning on him doing anyway, then him telling a sympathetic prison guard so they can plan a big escape?

 

Well the character is a police detective, and if he is in prison, he will not be able to work on new cases. Each sequel was suppose to be a new case, and I had other cases in mind already, but he cannot do that if he is a fugitive that has to hide for the rest of his life.

 

Hmmm...

Maybe the villain's death could be enough to prove that the villain existed, so your MC could pretend that he was at the scene because he was kidnapped and taken to meet the villain for the first time instead of because he was hunting the villain for something that said villain did to him earlier?

That way, you could have the next books be complicated by the fact that some of the detective he works with don't believe the official story, they suspect the truth and the now MC has to deal with a number of Inspector Javerts in addition to the new villains.

 

Well everyone knows that the villain existed, but I do not think that is the problem. The problem is trying to put the MC in a situation where he is so desperate that he kills the villains and makes it look justifiable, out of revenge, but in a way where he can actually get away with it. But since I was not able to get around the fourth amendment laws for the story, it is very difficult to do that successfully. I am considering maybe the MC should just go to prison for the rest of his life, and forget about a series maybe.

 

Sorry my post, posted twice.