From the Editor's Desk
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Gravity
What holds your characters to the ground? This is not a NASA question, and it’s not a metaphysical one either. The reality you create for your characters must be adhered to or else the characters are not believable. Case in point: Cops. All cops start out as beat cops, even in small towns. They don’t become detectives, captains or police chiefs without having gotten into the gritty underbelly of society. Which means they are not going to behave, speak, or “date” like choirboys or Miss Mary Sunshine.
Behavior: Get real. How many of you have day jobs that are desk jobs? Do you come home cranky sometimes? Don’t want to make dinner, go out to eat, socialize, be lovey-dovey with your significant other? Now, multiply that by ten thousand. Instead of biting your tongue during a three-hour meeting because your boss is dense as two wood planks, imagine having spent part of your day standing over the dead body of an elderly man who was killed for his social security check. Then the rest of your day is knocking on doors looking for witnesses, and/or filling out the requisite paperwork about your day. Are you feeling me now?
Speech: Be accurate. Dialogue, internal or external, must reflect how the characters think and feel within the context of who they are and what they do. In an office setting, people tend to be civil, and if you’re lucky, collegial. Harsh language of any kind is frowned upon, and if you get pissy and use any of that harsh language, you’re sitting in HR explaining yourself. On the street, dealing with criminals, or people associated (read: fringe) with criminals, those folks are not speaking the Queen’s English. They are not civil, no where near collegial, and the economy of their communication is a necessity when things move quickly and could, and often do, result in bodily harm or death. If that’s who you spend most of your time with, either pursuing them, interviewing them, or arresting them, chances are you don’t speak the Queen’s English either, and the economy of your speech is a necessity so your authority is taken seriously, and you don’t get dead.
Dating: This ain’t Darcy and Elizabeth. All good romances have lots of tension, heightened emotion, and the H/H are in a push-pull until they get to their happily ever after. If Sharon from finance is dating Fred from marketing, chances are they’re going to the movies, meeting for dinner in nice restaurants, and generally getting to know each other in social settings spread over a period of time that allows them to feel comfortable with the progress of their relationship. Most cops work either four days a week, ten hours shifts, or five days a week, eight hour shifts. Their workweeks are rarely Monday through Friday, and there are three shifts a day. The lower you are on the totem pole, the crappier your shift. If a cop gets caught up in an arrest or an incident a half hour before the end of shift, s/he is working OT until the job is done. Making plans is not easy. When a date takes place as planned, (and many don’t) it might be on a Wednesday night because that’s the cop’s weekend, and s/he is rested enough to go to dinner. The person they’re going out with probably has a “regular” day job, which means no tying one on or having a late night on a Wednesday. Buzz kill. For obvious reasons, cops have a different sense of urgency. If they’re serious about you, they – are – serious – about – you, and they want to nail that down fast as possible. Cops play the field a lot before settling down, and, again, for obvious reasons, have a high divorce rate.
All of the above must factor when you’re telling your cop story, and the same holds true, with the requisite career information, whatever career you have your characters in. Otherwise, your H/H are not anchored by the reality of their profession and/or circumstances, and they are not believable.
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