Write a thriller: Character drives plot

Memorable characters are at the heart of crime writing success

Joseph Wambaugh was a Los Angeles Police Department detective sergeant before he became a bestselling writer of fiction and nonfiction. He knows police procedure better than any other crime writer. But what makes his books great is the fact that he probably knows policemen better than other writers, too.

Take a look at his classic Hollywood Station. The plot is just fine. But it’s really a thin veil for Wambaugh’s extensive character examinations of Hollywood cops. Much of that character work, incidentally, is done in highly realistic dialogue. Conveying character in dialogue is something Elmore Leonard often emphasized in interviews, and we’ll think more about it in a forthcoming post. One phrase that sticks with me from Elmore is that he created characters by conjuring up “an attitude” for them, and most often he found that in their manner of speech.

The best way to build a character is, as I suggested in my previous post, to put yourself in their position and really try to experience the feelings of that situation. Robert McKee writes in Story that you should consider each scene with this question: If I was character X at this moment, what would I do? I’d suggest you add to that: And what would I feel? That way you’ll build a character whose responses are true to you, and that makes them likely to resonate with your readers.s