Please welcome back SMFS list member Jim Doherty as continues
delving into the various ways of researching and writing the accurate police
procedural. This is a multi part series that began on Saturday and will run
through Wednesday of this week.
2) THE JOHN
CREASEY METHOD – WRITE FIRST, RESEARCH LATER
You may already know more than you think you do about police work in
general or the police force you want to write about specifically. If you can put that knowledge to work for
you, then you can save yourself some time and effort.
John Creasey published his first novel in 1933. For next 10 years he wrote in many mystery
sub-genres, such as amateur sleuth, espionage, criminal protagonist,
adventurer, as well as other genres like westerns, science fiction etc.
At the end of that ten years, he was well-known for his protean
productivity.
One day he learned that his next-door neighbor was retired Scotland Yard detective.
“Write about us as we are,” his neighbor advised. “You can leave out the dull stuff.”
With his neighbor as technical advisor, Creasey created Chief Inspector Roger
West of the Yard, whose first appearance was in the 1942 novel Inspector West Takes Charge.
Creasey’s method was to write a draft first, have his neighbor read it, correcting errors, and then write a second draft incorporating the corrections.
Result: A technically accurate police novel.
Despite the authentic details the West series was very melodramatic. West may have been doing realistic police work, but the plots were still out of Sax Rohmer and Edgar Wallace.
Thirteen years and sixteen West novels later, Creasey, inspired by Dragnet, which proved that police work could be interesting in itself without the crutch of melodrama, and also by a friendship he developed with another Scotland Yard detective, Commander George Hatherill, Operational Head ofCID , wondered
if the “dull stuff” his neighbor had advised him to leave out was, to the
layman, not really dull at all. He
created George Gideon of the Yard, a fictional counterpart to Hatherill, this
time leaving that supposedly “dull stuff” in.
Awards, excellent reviews, a major movie, a stage play, and a TV series
all followed.
Each novel showed Gideon supervising the investigations into a number of different, unrelated crimes, many inspired by real life cases. They are still among the best cop novels ever written.
And he used the same method. Write a draft, submit it to Hatherill for corrections, and write a final draft incorporating those corrections.
By this time, however, there were fewer corrections. After 13 years, Creasey wrote about Scotland Yard with the self-assurance of one who knows what he’s talking about. Using the “write first – research later” method, Creasey had, over time, perhaps without being aware of it, engaged in a form of long-term, slow-motion total immersion.
Nevertheless, the obvious drawback to this method can be the appearance of superficiality.
Jim Doherty ©2020
A cop of some kind or another for more than 20 years, JIM DOHERTY has served American law enforcement at the Federal, state, and local levels, policing everything from inner city streets to rural dirt roads, from college campuses to military bases, from suburban parks to urban railroad yards. He’s the author of the true crime collection Just the Facts – True Tales of Cops & Criminals, which included the WWA Spur-winning article “Blood for Oil,” Raymond Chandler – Master of American Noir, a collection of lectures about the pioneering creator of hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe used for an on-line class; and An Obscure Grave, featuring college student and part-time cop Dan Sullivan, introduced in a series of short stories, which was a finalist for both a CWA Dagger Award and a Silver Falchion given at Killer Nashville. He was, for several years, the police technical advisor on the venerable Dick Tracy comic strip, and was a guest writer for a short sequence that ran in April and May on 2019. Coming in 2020 are The Adventures of Colonel Britannia, written as “Simon A. Jacobs,” an unlikely (but incredibly fun to write) mash-up of Jane Austen’s Persuasion with CaptainAmerica
Creasey’s method was to write a draft first, have his neighbor read it, correcting errors, and then write a second draft incorporating the corrections.
Result: A technically accurate police novel.
Despite the authentic details the West series was very melodramatic. West may have been doing realistic police work, but the plots were still out of Sax Rohmer and Edgar Wallace.
Thirteen years and sixteen West novels later, Creasey, inspired by Dragnet, which proved that police work could be interesting in itself without the crutch of melodrama, and also by a friendship he developed with another Scotland Yard detective, Commander George Hatherill, Operational Head of
Each novel showed Gideon supervising the investigations into a number of different, unrelated crimes, many inspired by real life cases. They are still among the best cop novels ever written.
And he used the same method. Write a draft, submit it to Hatherill for corrections, and write a final draft incorporating those corrections.
By this time, however, there were fewer corrections. After 13 years, Creasey wrote about Scotland Yard with the self-assurance of one who knows what he’s talking about. Using the “write first – research later” method, Creasey had, over time, perhaps without being aware of it, engaged in a form of long-term, slow-motion total immersion.
Nevertheless, the obvious drawback to this method can be the appearance of superficiality.
Jim Doherty ©2020
A cop of some kind or another for more than 20 years, JIM DOHERTY has served American law enforcement at the Federal, state, and local levels, policing everything from inner city streets to rural dirt roads, from college campuses to military bases, from suburban parks to urban railroad yards. He’s the author of the true crime collection Just the Facts – True Tales of Cops & Criminals, which included the WWA Spur-winning article “Blood for Oil,” Raymond Chandler – Master of American Noir, a collection of lectures about the pioneering creator of hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe used for an on-line class; and An Obscure Grave, featuring college student and part-time cop Dan Sullivan, introduced in a series of short stories, which was a finalist for both a CWA Dagger Award and a Silver Falchion given at Killer Nashville. He was, for several years, the police technical advisor on the venerable Dick Tracy comic strip, and was a guest writer for a short sequence that ran in April and May on 2019. Coming in 2020 are The Adventures of Colonel Britannia, written as “Simon A. Jacobs,” an unlikely (but incredibly fun to write) mash-up of Jane Austen’s Persuasion with Captain
That's the other approach--write the initial drafts first, then fill in the needed details that must be properly researched. That works too and does save time.
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