Characters and Cliches

Inspired by a post on Mark Billingham’s talk zone, I got thinking about this topic last night. There is a fine line with clichés, and crime fiction authors are often dangerously close to crossing it, for a variety of legitimate reasons. However, in many cases, I think that throwing out the ‘cliché’ classification is unfair.

What are some of the common traits of police officers in crime fiction? Bad at relationships. Unusual car/music/residence. Lone Wolf Syndrome – disregards authority and prefers to work alone, or with one standard sidekick. Constantly breaks the rules.

Consider real life. The current standard is that approximately 50% of all marriages here end in divorce. Which means 50% of society is bad with relationships. In fact, more than 50%. Many people stay in unhealthy marriages who should leave. A broken marriage is not the only indication of relationship issues.

It’s commonly known that cycles are repeated. Children from homes where there’s been a divorce are more likely to have a marriage end in divorce, just like children who grow up with abuse are more likely to become abusers.

Move on to cars, music and home. In my opinion, in this era of cookie cutter houses people are looking for things to distinguish themselves more and more. I’m honestly not sure what constitutes unusual musical taste – opera? Looking at my CD collection I have everything from Blue Rodeo to Il Divo, Harry Connick Jr to Barenaked Ladies, INXS to U2 to Jackie Leven to Tom Waits to Oscar Lopez. Madeleine Peyroux. Leahy. The Rankin Family. Deric Ruttan. Count me as odd, I guess.

It’s actually incredibly challenging to write stories where coworkers get along. Insubordination adds another level of tension to the story, adds a ‘race against time’ factor to police procedurals, because the reader knows that sooner or later the boss will figure out what the cop is up to and put a stop to it. But not if our intrepid sleuth cracks the case first.

Equally problematic is having extremely bizarre characters. Face it: We’ve probably all done the interests surveys that tell us what careers would be most suited to our personality type at one time or another. I always knew I could never be a nurse because I have a very weak stomach. I handle it better than before, but day in and day out I couldn’t do it. I can freak out just watching someone inject someone on TV. I don’t know that I could do that to people.

The point is simple – certain personalities are suited to certain jobs, and then the person has to be able to meet the job requirements. If you’re writing about cops, it’s going to depend on how seriously you take making the book believable. The more believable you try to make it, the more limited you are with the personality types.

I was determined not to follow stereotypes in my own writing. Perhaps a bit too much so. However, a positive working relationship between my detective and his supervisor was central to Suspicious Circumstances. When I wrote What Burns Within (which I did not write immediately after SC –there were several projects in between, some children’s, and other full length manuscripts) there were both types of relationships at play. For the most part, I’ve tried to work within what I consider a more typical reality. Frankly, senior officers aren’t going to keep rogue cops in their division if they can help it. Cops like team players, because lives depend on it, and when you work murders you won’t be cut as much slack. The higher profile the department, the more scrutiny.

However, you’ve effectively eliminated one whole avenue of developing suspense in the storyline by having a positive working environment, and the truth is, there will always be tensions in any working environment. I’ve been focusing more on how people can let good relationships get in the way of the work, and instead of going over the top to create artificial tension to use realistic situations and dynamics to add layers to the story.

Now that I’m writing the sequel to What Burns Within I’ve had to deal with a major staff change within the team. And this has impacted all the other working dynamics. What I’ve found that’s far more interesting (to me anyway) to play with is the delicate balance of trust. It can take a lifetime to regain the trust you lose in a split second, and trust between partners is imperative.

That’s been my approach, but I can see the issues with crossing the line and becoming a cliché. Worse, though, I can see the danger of boring the reader. Should we not have relationship issues just to make sure we don’t fall into a stereotype? 99.9% of couples have relationship issues of some kind. It would actually be extremely unrealistic for there not to be relationship issues that came up for characters.

Then we get into defining character. One of the best ways to identify the character in our minds is through their interests, tastes and values, and the relationship dynamics in their lives. Possessions and music become the standards for interests – after all, how often do cops have time to sit and watch TV? Music can be listened to while driving, making it a more accessible and realistic form of entertainment to reference. I’ve been told to give characters unusual ticks, a limp, speech impediment to make them stand out from others, but that drives me up the wall as a reader and writer as well. It seems gimmicky if that’s the only reason you do it. I want the reader to come away feeling that This could be the person next door or, if not next door, Across town. I want there to be a sense the person is real. And I don’t want to give my character scoliosis just because I have it and having a slight limp physically distinguishes them. Face it, cops actually have physical requirements and must be able to meet certain standards to perform their duties. This was something Evil Kev and I laughed over, when someone complained why all these firefighters were written holding a hose the same way. Because there’s a proper way to hold one and lives depend on it! Equipment doesn’t always work if it’s mishandled.

In my opinion, if you want to knock writers for anything, knock them for the greatest sin, which is producing an absolutely forgettable book. Okay, I do prefer books that have some originality. There is a certain amount of pulp I’ll brush off because it feels as though someone’s made a checklist of necessary ingredients and put them together, but somehow, it lacks the spark. There are plenty of people who’ve written published books that in my own mind I would refer to as writers. The reason I’m distinguishing is that their work feels just like the pulp I described – necessary ingredients put together but lacking spark.

The best authors breathe the breath of life into their characters. They’re real enough to step off the page. They capture the reader in such a way that the reader wants to spend more time with them. Likeable or unlikable, they intrigue and captivate. It is not in our happiest moments of our lives that we come to grips with powerful truths, but in the moments we face loss, face our deepest fears or doubts about ourselves and others. It is when we’re confronted with the possibility of loss that we begin to assign value to those relationships, people, careers, possessions. This is why the finest hour for a great work of crime fiction is often the protagonist’s darkest. This is, for me, what sets Rebus, Jack Taylor, Dennis Milne, Tom Thorne, Brant, Pearce, Tess Monaghan, Joe Frye, and other favourites of mine apart. And the series books I stick with are the ones that keep showing me more of that character, taking me deeper. In doing so, these authors not only entertain, but teach me a thing or two about life. I’m left feeling my understanding of what it is to be human has been broadened by having spent a bit of time in their company, and that’s what I consider to be time well spent.

“The trouble with too many contemporary novels is that they are full of people not worth knowing. The characters slide in and out of the mind with hardly a ripple. They levy no tax on the memory, they make little claim on the connecting power of identification. They make only the skimpiest contribution to an understanding of the human situation. They leave you cold.”
~ Norman Cousins