One of my best friends and writing buddy talk on the phone almost every night. We talk about writing, what’s on television, my kids, her work, whatever happens to be on our minds at that moment.
So the other night Stefanie, that’s her name, says to me, “I wonder if authors worry about the criminally insane trying to imitate their stories. I mean, the your second book’s premise is really doable.” She’s one of the few who have read it in its rough form.
Well, first of all, she’s right. The crimes in the second book are easily reproducible if you have the knowledge. So while we were talking I Googled the phrase “crimes based on novels” and you wouldn’t believe what I found. Thousands upon thousands of links to stories about people with serious issues who decided it would be a good idea to commit crimes based on works of fiction.
After giving this some thought, I realized it makes perfect sense that crimes in good novels should be reproducible. Writers spend a lot of time researching what they write about. I’m just completing my second novel and am working on ideas for a third. I’ve already researched drug allergies, poisonous plants, guns, bullet wounds, faking your own death, refrigeration of corpses, black market organ harvests, bank robberies, and the list goes on and on. While I abandoned some of these ideas, others I used like you wouldn’t believe.
The thing with fiction writers and research is you have to know the topic well enough to write it so it rings true to the knowledgeable reader. You don’t want a police officer who’s reading your book to scream, “A cop would never do that!” or a nurse to say, “There is no way a doctor would give that drug to that patient.” However, you don’t want to bog down your reader with a lot of unnecessary information. So writers end up doing a ton of research for three sentences in a book.
So the next time you’re reading a book remember, someone spent a lot of time making sure the facts are right. Oh, and one other thing, Don’t try this at home!
You mean like the novel, and movie that inspired the idea of hijacking airliners and running them into buildings (also was on the columbine killers’ wish list). I do have to wonder also how many times this happens (which comes up often in my life) where you develop an idea (like stuffed crust pizza — my idea when I was like 11) and someone else comes up with and becomes notable for that idea separately and independently.
I mean seriously, am I to believe that Pizza Hut had my house bugged for suggestions back then? Why, that would be insane paranoia, and what kind of grinning maniac would suggest that right now like I am?
I will say that somewhere there’s a doctor willing to do exactly what you’re suggesting. The trick is finding that doctor without one of the many you’d ask on the way to him tipping off the authorities that *someone* is asking the wrong questions. I suppose if you knew a doctor as alifelong friend of the family… or if you were influential in some way… If this was not a possibility, then there would have been no Rush Limbaugh’s assistant getting caught with 300 pills on hand (coming fresh from a meeting with the doctor).
Just some thoughts I had, but if anyone in town is asking I said NOTHING.