Saïd Sayrafiezadeh on Debt, Cults, and Our Inner Algorithms
The narrator of your story “ Minimum Payment Due ” is mired in debt and, from the outset, trying to
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Despite rumors to the contrary, detective fiction is alive and well. In a world that often seems out of control, people seek order wherever it may be available. Procedural stories—no matter if they feature amateur sleuths, police officers, or private investigators—offer a way to find that order, a sense of completeness often missing from daily life. ( The Art of Baking a Cozy Mystery .) Here are four tips to help make your modern-day detective stories stand out and four more to help cover some of the basics. 1) Don’t fear tech. We may not like it, but the reality is that modern life revolves around a smart phone. So if you’re writing a story set in the current day, your protagonist is going to have one, unless you set them up as a luddite. Readers expect to see something of themselves in fictional characters and the first thing most of us do when confronted with a question we can’t answer is to reach for our phones. That doesn’t mean your main character gets all the answers from a screen, however. But they should get some. Those answers of course need to lead to interaction with other characters, because real drama comes from people, not search engines or encrypted laptops. 2) Update your plot. All the stories have already been told; everyone knows that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take what’s been done before and put a fresh spin on it. Society has changed radically since Raymond Chandler’s time, but the human condition has not. Greed, lust, revenge. All the base flaws are still with us. Put those weaknesses in a modern setting. Cyber bulling, climate change, gender ideology, the list goes on. Think of the opportunities provided by the internet alone. 3) Craft uniquely flawed characters. Brainstorm an irresistibly flawed protagonist, someone readers can connect with, feel empathy for. Make sure your main character does not come across as superhuman, however. Sure, they can be driven, but they also need to feel and react like real people. Find something unique to impart to your protagonist, whether it’s […]
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The narrator of your story “ Minimum Payment Due ” is mired in debt and, from the outset, trying to
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