In the world of crime fiction, we spend a lot of time writing about extraordinary things. Extraordinary crimes, incredible leaps of logic that lead to the solving of those crimes, amazing strength of character.
And yet it is often the ordinary aspects that make crime fiction so compelling and lend it so much of its mystery. It is the fact that crime fiction is so often about normal things – albeit with a touch of the extraordinary – that help us to relate to it and keep us coming back to it time and time again.
I think character is the prime example of this. Crime novels are very often about ordinary people – people who are just going about their everyday lives. Until, of course, some horrendous crime happens and all of that changes. Putting ordinary people into distinctly not-ordinary situations is one of the key ways crime fiction allows us to create tension and intrigue. It helps us to imagine ourselves in similar situations, and makes it back a bigger punch as a result.
Then there is the other side of this – writing about people who at first seem very ordinary; complete innocents who just so happen to be caught up in something beyond their control. But then when we get further into the story, we discover that everything is not as it seems: our ordinary person actually has a complex and perhaps not-so-innocent background.
I think it is this combination of the normal and the not normal that makes crime fiction so interesting. Of course, this could be applied to all genres of fiction, but I think crime does it particularly well as it is something most people are able to relate to in some way and there are so many potential situations and stories we could explore.
So the next time you come to write some crime fiction, as well as exploring the things that are out of the ordinary, don’t forget that it is often the normal, simple, familiar things that resonate with us the most.
What do you think?