Developing a crime story protagonist

A mini masterclass on developing a sleuth that readers will keep coming back to

Developing a protagonist can feel like a daunting task, almost like picking random qualities (physical, psychological, and mental/emotional) out of a hat, or relying on random prompts in hopes that one of them will crack the code on your protagonist. Worse, you may come up with a dozen ideas that never make it onto the page, and you’re left with a bland protagonist and hoping that if the crime is good enough, or gruesome enough (I grew up in the era of CSI and NCIS, I get it!), it’ll keep your reader reading.

While an interesting case is important in a crime story, if your investigator is boring, you’ll be relying exclusively on the case to keep your reader invested. Sometimes it works, but your odds of success go way up if you have a compelling case and a protagonist that your readers are interested in following. This goes double for series protagonists: if you want readers to come back for book 2, or book 3, or book 37, the cases alone won’t be enough to keep them coming back.

One of the keys to developing your protagonist is their job. If you’ve been around awhile or heard my talk at ProWritingAid, you know that one of the questions I use for developing secondary characters is “How do different characters perceive or feel about your protagonist’s line of work?” But that question isn’t just limited to your secondary characters.

Step 1: What is your protagonist’s line of work?

This is, hopefully, the easy part! The only goal here is to pinpoint the lens you want your protagonist to be working through. Different jobs have different concerns; police officers are going to be concerned with procedure, journalists are going to be concerned with getting a story (and maybe also not getting sued for libel). These different roles are going to have different access to resources to get the information they need about the case — this should also begin to provide you with ideas about how your protagonist is going to investigate and what conflict they’re going to run into. Honestly, if you’re pants-ing your way through a draft of a crime novel, following the steps I’ve outline here can get you 50% of the way there (the other 50%, in my opinion, is knowing who the killer is :))

Step 2: What is your protagonist’s relationship to their work?

This is where you’re really going to start to pull the unique qualities out of your protagonist and have the opportunity to flesh them out.

Your protagonist’s relationship to their work is going to flavor their approach to the investigation. For example, a spitfire cop who doesn’t care about the rules is going to get the truth at all costs. They will flout the rules, regardless of what happens to the evidence, and probably get in trouble with their boss. Contrast that with a duty-bound officer, who does everything by the book — they’re also going to do everything they can to get justice, but it’s going to look different because of their concerns for ensuring that the case doesn’t get thrown out.

Some questions you can ask yourself are:

• How did your protagonist get into this particular career?

• What is your protagonist’s unique approach to their work? (think: the spitfire cop, the duty-bound officer, the defense attorney who will take anyone if they can pay)

• Have they had a specific, marking experience in their career that has shaped their perspective on the role?

• How do they feel about the systems, allowances, and limitations of their work?

• What do they do well, and what do they struggle with?

  
  

Tip: If you’re early in the process and stumped, brainstorm a list of skills associated with the line of work your protagonist is in, then start “flipping levers.” For example, a protagonist who has mediocre investigative skills but stellar people skills. A journalist who is a crap writer but has a great nose for stories. Play with opposites until you find something compelling.

Step 3: Translate this into your protagonist’s approach to the investigation

Once you’ve outlined your protagonist’s relationship and approach to their work, use this as a springboard to determine their choices and philosophy in the investigation. You should be able to start seeing parallels between what you outlined above and what this means for the case, and therefore, the story as a whole. For example: will they or won’t they break the rules to get the information? Will they or won’t they publish a piece of the story before they can corroborate a source’s information?

This can also inform what your protagonist prioritizes as they investigate. Who do they talk to first? What resource do they leverage in an effort to get that first breakthrough?

Even if your protagonist is an amateur sleuth (they don’t have a job that would normally put them into contact with a crime), think about how their work can inform the investigation. Maybe your amateur sleuth daylights as an accountant, and finding the truth is a form of escapism from a bleak job, or their accounting skills could be the lens they use to piece together the clues.

Lastly, use your protagonist’s relationship to their work and the investigation to push yourself to think about how this impacts the way that they treat people. You should by this point know a great deal about your protagonist as a person, just based on these questions. Let those answers propel you toward the ways your protagonist is going to show up on stage as they interact with the people around them.

Are they sympathetic? Gentle? Rough around the edges? A friend to those in need but a real hellion with the jerks in charge?

This is going to give you so much fuel for your individual scenes and help you express your protagonist’s unique qualities on the page.

Bonus: Develop the consequences

I’m beginning to believe that talking about plot is a compulsion with me. I’m not sure I’ve ever written an article that doesn’t move in that direction, and yet…

An interesting, unique, compelling protagonist is amazing. We’ll forgive a great deal if we can’t help but follow the protagonist in their pursuits. But you’ll do your reader one better if the journey your protagonist is on is as interesting as your protagonist.

So, one last thing you can do with all of the juicy work you’ve done to develop your protagonist, is consider the consequences of these details and attributes. How they behave can and should impact the way the story unfolds.

For example: if your protagonist is a police officer, and therefore has tremendous leverage to essentially get whatever they want, and they will flash their badge and bully anyone to get their way, that behavior should have consequences. Some characters may be enamored by it, but otherwise characters should begin to resent it; it creates an opportunity to develop conflict throughout your story, and create a sense of a living, breathing world that is actually affected by your protagonist’s decisions. Or, the goodwill that they have built up may eventually lead to an important breakthrough in the case.

The point here is to connect all of the work you’ve done and use it! There are so many opportunities to layer in obstacles and opportunities (there’s that phrase again), you just have to know to look for them. And once you start, I find it’s nearly impossible not to notice them. And while your reader may not consciously recognize what you did, they will find the experience more immersive, more compelling, and chances are, when they see another one of your books on the shelf, they’ll remember.