In 1910 the notorious Dr Hawley Crippen fled Britain aboard the Montrose to start a new life in Canada, after murdering his second wife, Cora. The fugitive was recognised by the ship's captain, who used his ship-to-shore wireless set to inform the British authorities about his infamous passenger. 
Chief Inspector Walter Dew booked passage on a faster White Star Liner, SS Laurentic, and arrived ahead of Montrose, whereupon he boarded the ship and arrested Crippen.
Crippen was tried, convicted of his wife's murder, and hanged in November of that year.

Crippen was the first suspect to be caught with the aid of wireless telegraphy. At the time, it is said that some felt this advance in technology sounded the death knell for the crime novel - how could a fugitive evade justice if this new-fangled communication technology allowed their whereabouts to be communicated instantly to the authorities?

110 years on and every new advance in crime-fighting technology has provoked similar reactions. In fact just a few years ago, I was chatting to a long-standing crime writer about the use of modern technology "I've stopped setting my books in modern times, I stick to the 80s as I understand the technology," he told me. And that got me thinking.

Modern technology is an opportunity, not a constraint.
There, I've said it. 
I write contemporary British police procedurals. I try to be as realistic as possible, and so cannot ignore the ways in which the latest technology now shapes the way that investigations are performed. But it can be daunting.
Over the next few months, I intend to publish some blog posts looking at some of the ways that writers can incorporate the latest advances in technology in their books, and hopefully show how rather than being a straitjacket that makes modern story-telling more difficult, it actually opens up new and exciting ways to tell that tale.

This and the next blog will focus on mobile phones, with later blogs on DNA evidence, social media and other modern technologies. Don't worry, there will still be plenty of posts focusing on the craft of writing also.

London Calling... The scourge/usefulness of mobile phones in crime novels.

In 2020, almost everybody carries a smartphone. Criminals have been using mobile phones to run their operations since the days of the house-brick-sized Motorola. But every advance in mobile technology has both benefits and drawbacks for criminals, and by extension, writers. So let's look at a few of them.

Tracing calls.
Many people have mobile phone contracts, keeping the same number for years. For many of us, our mobile number is the only number we can remember and the only one that we ever give out. I've had a mobile for over 20 years, and that number has followed me across the better part of 10 handsets and a half-dozen providers. Should the police stumble across my number in connection with a crime, my mobile phone company can tell them who I am and where I live in seconds. An easy way to track down your master criminal! Who sent the threatening text message to the murder victim?  Clickity-Click, Joe Blogs, suspect identified!

But it doesn't have to be that way. It is perfectly legitimate for anyone to buy a Pay-as-You-Go SIM card, with cash, no questions asked. No need to give any details, just pop it in the phone, activate it and away you go. They have prepaid credit that can be topped up online, or if you value your anonymity, with cash at the local newsagent. And many people do. Criminals, especially drug dealers, will often buy several of these SIM cards, alternating between them or discarding the number after just a few uses. This means that as soon as the police have a phone number that they can link to the criminal, it's already out-of-date. You can use this in your writing to make things more challenging for your investigators.

Burner phones.
Criminals often go one step further than multiple SIM cards, they have multiple handsets that they throw away when they've served their purpose. The device will include records of calls and texts made and received and perhaps even an address book, so criminals don't want that electronic list of their historic offences in their pocket when they are collared.
The common term for these is a 'burner phone'. Cheap, basic handsets are easy to buy, either legitimately or from a mugger. 
But there is a protection against this. All devices have a unique identifying code called an IMEI number - look at your phone instructions for this - you can register the number with your network provider, so if your phone is stolen, they can block it. This obviously reduces the attraction of phones being stolen purely for their resale value, which is why many head off overseas, and those stolen to be used as burners have to be used quickly before they stop working. 
The IMEI number will  be logged every time the phone connects to the network - can you use this in your book? If your victim's expensive phone was stolen, perhaps it was sold on? Trace the current owner, and perhaps it will lead your investigators back to the person that originally stole it? 

Call logs.
Who did your victim call? Who else does your suspect keep in contact with? Assuming that you can put a name to a number (see above), this web of connections between mobile phone numbers can be an invaluable tool. On production of a warrant, the police can demand to see this web from the network providers, going back at least 12 months.
But it can't do everything. First of all, this log merely lists the numbers called or texted, date, time and duration. IT DOES NOT have the content of those calls and texts. You can show association, but can't prove that two people chatted about the crime. The network doesn't save the content of the texts, so you would need access to one of the devices to read them. Similarly, calls are not recorded. To get that, you would need to have arranged for this to happen in advance - a wiretap if you like. That requires a warrant, granted by someone more senior than the local magistrate.
Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that all calls are recorded by GCHQ or the NSA etc. True or not, unless it's national security related, PC Plod isn't going to have access to that.

In next weeks blog, I am going to take this a little further and look at the other ways you can use mobile phones to help tell your story, such as location data and the ways that phones store this data.

Do you have anything interesting to add? Feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time, 
Paul.

Mr Jones, allow me to introduce you to Mr Jones.

Oh dear. We've all been there. Trying to figure out if the 'Steve' your boss has asked you to email is Steve in accounts, or Steve in sales.
I once worked somewhere that had FOUR J. Smiths. All the email system listed them as was jsmith@institution.com, jsmith2@institution.com, jsmith3@institution.com etc. It didn't help that two of the women also had the same first name. The entire staff mailing list would get periodic reminders from these poor workers asking us to double-check who the intended recipient was when sending an email.

As writers of fiction we can usually avoid this situation by choosing different names for our characters - after all, I'm the one in charge here!
Tip - keep a list of character names to avoid using the same name twice, and perhaps try and use different first letters as well as avoiding names that rhyme! Andy, Sandy and Mandy may all have different first letters, but it can make it more difficult for readers to follow them.

But sometimes, repetition is unavoidable.
Take a family, who all share the same surname. There's a father and two sons, Mr Elton, Mr Elton and Mr Elton.  Mrs Elton is Mr Elton's wife. Mrs Elton is Mr Elton's wife (and also the mother of Mr Elton and Mr Elton), and Mrs Elton is the ex-wife of Mr Elton, who is due to marry the second Mrs Elton next summer.

Unfortunately, that's how names work and you will need to deal with it.

Dealing with multiple instances of a surname
The most obvious solution is to use their first names. That works fine in dialogue - outside of formal speech, people are far more likely to deal with a person by their first name these days. In a police investigation, officers will usually use a victim and suspect's first names when they are discussing the case, so it would feel natural for them to do so in your story.
But what about in the prose?
In an interview for example, the convention in crime fiction is usually to refer to the subject by surname.
"I don't know what you mean," said Smith.
"Yes you do," replied Harrison.

I was confronted by this problem (again!) when writing next summer's book. I have a father and three sons, plus a daughter and two wives. All have the surname Patel. All of these characters are interviewed, or discussed by the investigation team at some point. Fortunately, none of them are ever seen interacting with each other. But even so, one of my beta readers did admit that she lost track at one point of who was in that particular interview.
I tried rewriting the scene by referring to them by their (clear and distinct) first names.
It didn't work.
Everywhere else in the book (and all my other books!) I stick with the surname-only convention for third-person narrated prose. So I had to use tricks to remind the reader who was in the room during that scene.
If you are struggling, try some of the following:
1) Introduce the scene with their full name eg
Manoj Patel was a man in his forties ... 
or
"Please state your full name for the tape." 
"Manoj Patel."

2) Gender - occasionally use He said or She said. This immediately differentiates between a husband and wife or brother and sister, for example.

3) Use the character's first name in dialogue. This can be a little more tricky in a formal situation, but it will work well if used correctly eg
"Tell us what happened, Manoj," said Sutton.
Patel said nothing, and stared into space.

In this instance I have reminded the reader who is being interviewed, and also paired his first and last names again as a recap.

But be careful not to over use names, or the writing becomes clunky and amateurish. Just sprinkle them in periodically, for the benefit of those who may be distracted or interrupted whilst they read.

Dealing with the same first names
Plenty of cultures follow the tradition of naming the sons after their father - sometimes for several generations.
Take a fictional American family with three generations of Charles Jones.
They will sometimes deal with the surnames in the following way (eldest to youngest).
Charles Jones Senior, Charles Jones Junior, and Charles Jones III.
But how do you ask the correct person to pass the spuds at Thanksgiving? Perhaps consider giving each of them a nickname.
Dad is Charles, Son is Charlie, Grandson is Chuck.
Again, you can insert subtle reminders of who is who into the text eg
Charles looked at Charlie, barely hiding his contempt for his son.
or
Charles started the engine. "Where are we going, granddad? asked Chuck.

Do you have any tales to tell or advice to add?
As always, feel free to comment here, or on social media.

All the best,
Paul

Last week, I discused how to choose appropriate character names.
This week, I want to address choosing names outside of your own ethnic background.

Khaaaan!!!!
One of the most popular Star Trek villains of all time is the genetic superman, Khan Noonien Singh.
First appearing in the 1967 episode Space Seed, the character was also the eponymous bad guy in the second Star Trek movie, 1982's The Wrath of Khan.
Khan remains an incredibly popular villain, even outside Trek fandom. But there are a couple of things about him that haven't stood the test of time so well.
First, he was portrayed in both these instances by Ricardo Montalban - a respected Mexican actor chosen, in part, because they needed someone with dark-skin to portray a character of Middle-Eastern heritage. That's a casting decision that would likely be avoided today.
The second issue is his name: Khan Noonien Singh. Khan is most closely associated with Muslims. Singh is a name traditionally given to Sikh males. Bi-racial or bi-heritage children do of course exist in significant numbers these days, but without an explanation being given, authors - especially those who are not from that background - run the risk of having their work dismissed as poorly researched.
*It should be noted that this seemingly incongruous pairing is addressed in Greg Cox's 2001 novel Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars (Volume 1): The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, but it is considered non-canonical.

How do you name a character that is from a background different to yourself?
I am a white male, of British ancestry, as are all of my closest relatives. But confining myself to only including characters from that ethnic background would lead to books that are not reflective of the modern society in which we live.
I was forced to address this issue head-on in two of my novels: DCI Warren Jones 4: The Common Enemy, and next summer's release, which I recently submitted to my publisher. In both books, there are significant characters whose family heritage is the Indian subcontinent. Therefore, my suggestions apply directly to the subcontinent, but will likely apply to other situations that you may encounter.

How did I avoid the "Khan" problem?
The Indian subcontinent is vast, and during its long history has been divided and sub-divided many times. The current configuration of countries and territories is largely a 20th Century construction. Furthermore, the continent is home to many different religions and caste traditions and languages. All of which have names - given and family - associated with them. Some names are traditionally female, some male and some both. There are also masculinised/feminised versions, rather like Paul, Paula or Pauline.

The website Behind the name has a random name generator.
https://www.behindthename.com/random/
But it only has the option to choose "Indian". So you will need to do some further research. Most entries have a short sentence listing the name's provenance and variants on it - but don't take their word for it. I can't stress enough that this site should only be the first step in choosing a name.

Unless it's relevant to the story, keep it simple. Assume that both parents of your character (or their families) originally came from similar regions, religions and backgrounds and choose names accordingly. Give the character first and last names that are from the same traditions.

Then research the names further. Wikipedia often has short background articles for popular names.

Next, when you've chosen two names that you think will work, do some research on that pairing.
First, does that person already exist? The fact that there are individuals in the world with the same name doesn't mean you can't use it, but if that name is associated with an (in)famous person already, it may be a distraction for your readers. There are a lot of Sam Smiths in the world, but if your character also happens to be a musician, perhaps reconsider.

Then do a final check that the pairing actually works in the real world. For this, I  type the name into Facebook search. If I get a couple of dozen hits for people with that name (and their profile pictures suggest they are the correct gender and ethnicity), then I will assume that the name is not outlandish enough to raise eyebrows from readers from that background.

Fingers crossed, no complaints so far!

Next week I will conclude this particular topic by looking at how to deal with the problem of multiple characters with the same name.

Feel free to comment, either here or on social media.
Paul

I hate choosing names. I really do regard it as a chore, rather than a pleasure.
I don't mean my core characters, that can be quite fun. Choosing a moniker that I will live with for some years is something I've grown to enjoy.
Rather I hate naming the secondary and minor characters: The shopkeeper that appears once, but has a vital clue, the brother of the victim, who is briefly a suspect and gets a whole chapter dedicated to their interview, the detective constable that accompanies a main character on an arrest. Those are the people for whom choosing a name is difficult.

For that reason, I defer choosing names until the last minute; an activity to be undertaken when I can't think of any other valid procrastination activity.

When I am writing, I use place holders. In my current manuscript, there are two witnesses to an event on New Year's Eve. They are currently known as NYE_Male and NYE_Female. Note the use of the underscore (_), it makes it easy to find and replace them later.

So where can you find names?
Sometimes, they are given to you - literally. I have numerous work colleagues begging to be included in a book. That's fun: I always write them with a couple of in-jokes; a former physics teacher with a meteorology degree, who we used to call a jumped-up geography teacher, naturally became a ... geography teacher. The namesake of a tall, skinny, bald colleague is short and stocky with a ponytail.

I also take part in 'name a character' charity auctions. Click Sargent get in character is a wonderful cause, raising money for kids affected by cancer. I always leave a couple of suitable characters (male and female) un-named for this purpose. Where possible, I will also tweak the character descriptions to include a couple of the biographical details they furnish me with to make it a bit more personal.
https://www.clicsargent.org.uk/getincharacter/

But where else can you find names?
My books are set in the English county of Hertfordshire. We recently visited St Albans cathedral, and whilst there, I photographed a war memorial. The plaque was 100 years old. I reasoned that those listed are likely to have 'traditional' Hertfordshire names; ideal for a character whose family have been local for several generations. As a mark of respect, I don't use real pairings of first and last names, but they provide great inspiration.

Similarly, there are lists of the 100 most popular names in a region, on the internet. There are also lists of 100 most popular baby names for a given year. That's often useful for deciding if a name is realistic for your character; there's a good chance that a cool-sounding first name for a baby born in 2000 would raise eyebrows if used for a modern-day eighty-year-old.
By all means use unusual character names, but consider if you need a little backstory to justify why they or their parents chose that name.

Names in families can be thematic. For example, take a family with three girls. The eldest is called Rose - perhaps her younger siblings are also named after flowers, such as Lily or Saffron. I'd probably steer clear of Japanese Knotweed 😁

There is a lot to consider when choosing names.
Tune in next week, when I discuss naming characters outside your own ethnicity.

Feel free to comment, either here or on social media.
Best wishes, Paul.

Editing. Ugh...
So you’ve finished that first draft – congratulations! Now’s the time to have a long, hard think about whether everything in that book deserves its place. It’s time to “kill your darlings”.

There are plenty of reasons why a story element might not make the final cut (I’ve looked at these in the previous three blogs), but removing what might be a beautiful piece of prose is always painful.

So here is my advice. Cut what needs to be cut - but don't delete it. Copy and paste it into an ideas document. Not only is that less distressing than deleting it entirely, but it also means it's there to use in a different book.

I have a file with a mixture of completed prose - paragraphs of polished story that wouldn't look out of place in a finished novel, loosely plotted sub-plots and even fully fleshed-out characters. 
​
Some of these idea fragments will never see the light of day; others may end up in a new book (perhaps heavily disguised). Still others might be the inspiration for a new idea. If the darling was a sub-plot, maybe it could form the basis of a short story?

Whatever happens to those fragments, one day you might be glad you buried your darlings in a shallow grave, rather than cremated them.

Now where did I leave that shovel?

Kill your Darlings! The chances are, that if you are interested in writing, then you have probably heard this refrain. But what does it mean, and how can you tell which darlings need to be killed?

All books are jam-packed with interesting characters, fun scenes, interesting research and hilarious occurrences. I’m sure that your first draft is full of all these and more. But have they earned their place? Every book is different, every writer is different and every reader is different. But one thing is the same: there are things that belong in your book, and things that need to be chopped.

In the previous two blog posts I have made suggestions about how to identify some of these darlings and how to decide if they stay or go, today I want to suggest a few more.

Speed it up or slow it down?
One of the most common reasons to cut material is to control the pace- cut things to make the narrative flow faster. But don’t just assume that faster is always better. Think about what you want your readers to be doing. Some novels hit the ground at a sprint and don’t let up until the last page.
For others, you may want to give the reader time to catch their breath and think about what you’ve written. Perhaps a less kinetic section with more details or character interactions is needed every so often.

No, they’d never do that!
It’s very easy to get carried away when writing fun scenes, but sometimes it doesn’t fit the character’s personality or established skill-set. If you’ve spent all book (or series!) having your character grumbling about how unprofessional their work colleagues are, you’d better have a really good justification for retaining that amusing scene where they get drunk and sing Dancing Queen at the office Christmas karaoke.

Should that character be made redundant?
We've all done it; that amazing character that comes fully-formed into our heads and just has to be written about. But do they need to be there? In books, the reader has to remember all the characters in a scene after you've told them they are present. It's not like TV or film, where you can see everyone in the room, even if they aren't speaking or doing anything. 
Does a character need to be in that scene, or could they be omitted, with their lines and actions plausibly handed over to someone else? Does that character even need to exist in that book?

Thanks for reading. Next week I will be suggesting what to do with those newly massacred darlings, so please pop back or browse the archives for more tips.
Please feel free to comment either here or on social media.
Paul

Aside from a few oddballs, most writers will tell you that editing that first draft is one of the hardest - and least enjoyable - parts of writing a novel.

“Kill your darlings” is a widely shared piece of advice handed down from experienced writers to novices. Don’t be too wedded to story elements; each part of your book has to earn its place, or it needs to go.

In the last blog post, I suggested a few things that you might consider when identifying these darlings. Carry on reading for more ideas.

Nobody cares!
OK, this is going to sound harsh, but you really have to decide how much of those pages of research into a really fascinating subject are necessary to tell the story. There are no rules for this but consider the impact on the story's pace and what sort of book you are trying to write. Information dumps are rarely a good idea (although one incredibly popular thriller writer has managed this). 
But remember, it's impossible to please everyone - I get reviews telling me how fascinating the science that I include in my books is, and others saying they skipped over it.

Does the story work without it?
I crafted a lovely idea for a sub-plot with a nice red herring. But there were already some diversions written into the story, and this one took up space. There was nothing wrong with it, but with 15,000 words needing to be cut it had to go.

Does it add necessary extra detail?
I write a series with ongoing characters. These characters grow over time and I am conscious of the fact that many of my regular readers are, in part, popping back to see how Warren and the team are getting on in life.
Because of that, I often find myself imagining their interactions; we learn about them as people and I enjoy writing those scenes. But how necessary are these passages? Do they negatively impact the pace (in which case maybe they could be moved, rather than deleted), do they add anything meaningful or are they just a bit self-indulgent?

Is it worthy of its space?
Similar to the points above, there may be good reasons to include passages in your book that would be out of place in someone else’s story.
I enjoy writing humour and like to slip in some banter or even the occasional daft situation, but my books are not comedies. A two-page setup for a brilliant gag would not be an appropriate use of space in one of my novels. On the other hand, readers of the Discworld series read them for that very reason. 
Similarly, early Tom Clancy novels are filled with pages of detailed trivia about weaponry and military hardware that his fans love, but which others may not. 
So consider your audience, and be prepared to kill those darlings!

Thanks for reading and come back next week for more suggestions on how to kill those darlings, or browse the archives for more tips.
Please feel free to comment either here or on social media.
Paul

Aside from a few oddballs, most writers will tell you that editing that first draft is one of the hardest - and least enjoyable - parts of writing a novel.

Aside from the obvious chore of correcting grammar gremlins and wrestling ugly sentences into shape, it's also the time to have a long, hard think about whether everything in that book deserves its place.
 
“Kill your darlings”, a quote often (mis?)attributed to William Faulkner, is one of the most valuable pieces of advice that more experienced writers can share.
Sometimes it helps to consider another great 19th Century writer, Charles Darwin. Imagine that everything between the covers of a book is fighting for survival. Only the fittest will make the final cut. Everything has to earn its place.
There are plenty of reasons that a story element might not make the final edit. Over the next few blog posts I’m going to consider a few of them. 
 
Size matters
A few weeks ago, I finished the first complete draft of what will become DCI Warren Jones 7. According to the number in the bottom left-hand corner of MS Word it weighed in at a whopping 145,000 words. That is at least 15,000 more than I want.
There are plenty of well-known authors whose readers will lap up 900 pages without question (and even some genres where anything less than 750 pages is considered a pamphlet), but frankly, I'm not one of them and I dare say neither are you. I could hand it in to my editor as it is, but I know exactly what she’s going to say, so why not save us all some time and get those scissors out now?
 
Does it advance the story?
In plot-driven genres, particularly those with an expectation of pace, it's important that the story keeps on driving forward. If a narrative element doesn't do that, then ask if it needs to stay. You don't have to cut it, but perhaps there has to be another reason for its inclusion.

​Do convolutions give the reader convulsions?
The contortions necessary to parse this sub-heading illustrate the point for me here.
Bond movies need a couple of set piece spectaculars each film – it’s what the audience are there for, and so viewers are more forgiving of convoluted storylines that are clearly just paving the way to the big stunt. But how often have you watched another film and found yourself rolling your eyes as barely credible plot twists deliver the excuse for a multi-million-dollar car chase?
Do you have to twist your story to make a key scene plausible? Obviously, that’s part of being a writer. But ask yourself if that scene is really necessary for your book. If it is, then twist away – that’s one of the best bits of writing. If the story works without it, then consider killing that darling.
 
Thanks for reading and come back next week for more suggestions on how to kill those darlings, or browse the archives for more tips.
Please feel free to comment either here or on social media.
Paul

​For the past few months, I have been posting weekly writing tips each Tuesday on social media, using #TuesdayTips

​This is an archive of all the content so far.

​For the past few months, I have been posting weekly writing tips each Tuesday on social media, using #TuesdayTips

​This is an archive of all the content so far.