What crime readers expect
Crime overlaps with mystery but isn't the same. A mystery centres on the puzzle; crime fiction often centres on the world the crime exposes: a police department, a family business, a city's underside. Readers expect moral weight, believable procedure and characters shaped by their work.
Subgenres matter. Police procedurals follow investigators and their institutions. Noir follows compromised people toward bad ends. Heist and caper stories follow the criminals and run on planning and betrayal. Domestic crime brings it home. Each has a different relationship with justice; decide whether yours is delivered, denied or complicated.
Length and structure
Crime novels commonly run somewhere around 70,000 to 100,000 words. The Full-length preset is a good starting point; Epic suits a sprawling procedural with several investigators.
A procedural usually opens with the crime or its discovery, then follows leads that narrow and widen, a suspect who looks right and isn't, pressure from above, and a break that comes from the investigator's particular skill or flaw. A heist runs in a different rhythm: assemble the crew, plan, execute, then deal with what goes wrong and who betrays whom.
How Inkora writes crime fiction
Put the crime in the brief: what happened, who did it, why, and how the investigation (or the getaway) should unfold. The planner writes a full synopsis including the ending, a cast with motives and flaws, and a chapter outline you can reorder before writing.
Crime plots depend on small facts: who was where at 11:40, which car, which phone, what the witness said the first time. The continuity pass records facts like these after every chapter, and every later scene is written with an instruction never to contradict them.
What to put in your brief
The brief is the “Your book idea & instructions” box in the new-book wizard. The more specific it is, the less generic the book. Here is an example, with the settings that go with it:
Police procedural, Glasgow, present day. DS Fiona Kerr, 41, recently back from suspension for punching a suspect, is given a cold case nobody wants: a 2009 hit-and-run that killed a student. A new witness has come forward. The trail leads to a respected city councillor and to Fiona's own former DI, who closed the case. Motive: the councillor's son was driving; the DI took a payment. Ending: Fiona proves it, but the son is now dead and the DI takes his own deal, and Fiona has to decide what justice is left. Grounded procedure, dry humour, third person limited.
Other wizard settings
- Genre
- Crime
- Audience
- Adult readers of police procedurals
- Tone
- Practical & no-nonsense
- Point of view
- Third person limited
- Length
- Full-length (60,000 words)
Example outline: Cold Kerb
A brief like the one above gives a plan along these lines. You can rename, reorder, add or delete chapters before any writing starts.
- 1
Back on Shift
Fiona returns from suspension to a desk, a cold case and a colleague who won't sit near her.
- 2
The 2009 File
A thin folder, a student's photo and a closing note in her old DI's handwriting.
- 3
New Witness
A woman who was fifteen at the time says she saw the car and was told to forget it.
- 4
Paint Transfer
Evidence that was logged and never tested is still in storage.
- 5
The Councillor
A charity dinner, a handshake and a son who isn't there.
- 6
Old Loyalties
Fiona visits her former DI and he warns her off kindly.
- 7
Lab Result
Midpoint: the paint matches a car registered to the councillor's company.
- 8
Pressure From Above
Fiona's superintendent pulls the case and she keeps working it.
- 9
The Son
The driver died of an overdose in 2016; his sister knows why.
- 10
Bank Records
A payment in 2009 into an account belonging to the DI's wife.
- 11
Interview Room Three
Fiona interviews the man who taught her to interview.
- 12
What's Left
A charge, a deal and a visit to the student's mother.
Condensed to 12 chapters; the Full-length preset plans 20.
Common mistakes
- Procedure that's wrong for the country you set the book in.
- A detective whose personal life is a list of clichés rather than a source of choices.
- Evidence that appears when the plot needs it rather than when it would really be found.
- Villains with no motive beyond being villains.
- Timelines that drift between chapters. Fix key times in the brief.