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Plot-less Story?!

O

OceanicLanturn

Non non non!
Hey everyone, I'm thinking about giving my first shot at a non-Pokemon Story. I'm currently thinking about writing about a detective story, and it's actually more about the cases than the characters. Will this work?

It's basically a 'Series of Short Murder Cases' piled into one. Should I use new characters made by myself? Or should I maybe use a canon
s (eg. Detective Conan) characters.

Thanks! ;013;
 
Kutie Pie

Kutie Pie

"It is my destiny."
It doesn't sound like a plot-less story... I think. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. You want to write a mystery story, but instead of developing characters, you're developing the cases that surrounds the characters.

Um... I think you'll need the characters to move the cases along, honestly. They're murder-mysteries, obviously you're going to need to leave some clues behind that will lead to the one character that did it. Like every good detective story, you'll have to introduce the characters along with the case, and make sure you introduce the character who did it without saying they did it until the very end. Of course, since I never wrote murder-mysteries, I could be dumb in this department and that it's possible to write murder-mysteries without focusing on characters.

You can do what you want about characters. If you're going to use characters you made-up, you're going to have to have some character development, even when you're using other fictional characters. Because some people won't know who the heck the characters are otherwise I don't know who Detective Conan is, and unless you make the cases so intriguing that they're more potent than the characters, you're going to confuse readers. So... it's not a plot-less story. You can have it to where these collections of short stories actually all come together at the end, like they were the result of some crime lord or something. You know?

That's what I got from this thread, so... yeah.
 
R

Random Comment Guy

Member
I am not entirely sure I understood what your asking but I will give it a try. You want the book to not focus on the characters. At first I thought what if you just used different characters in every single story but really that would just be a compilation of short stories...maybe that is what you are going for? But then I thought what if you wrote it using the same police force throughout. You could use different characters every chapter as they are all working to solve the crime and it would allow for the mystery to continue to be solved throughout the story even without the same characters pushing it chapter after chapter. Do you get what I mean?... Hopefully I helped. If you need me to expand on that idea I can try haha...
 
F

Firebrand

Indomitable
Most detective stories are about the cases moreso than the characters. If you haven't read any of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, you probably ought to. They are pretty much the epitome of Short Murder Cases. I think what you're basically saying here is that you want a very plot driven story. Okay, most stories here are plot driven more than character driven. But the problem remains that for a story (especially a detective story) to be enjoyable, you need a narrator of some kind, and someone solving the cases who is likeable.

The reason Sherlock Holmes has endured so long is because of his incredibly interesting character and the way Watson acts as his foil. They have an interesting relationship with interesting exchanges, and the reader is in it as much for that as they are for the cases. What I might advise (if I understand your idea correctly) is to assemble a cast of characters who solves cases. Your best bet would be the homicide department of a police force. So, in Story 1 Character A and Character B solve a certain mystery, and Character C makes a cameo appearance, or contributes in some small way. Then, Story 2 is all about Character C's case. In Story 3 you focus on Character B and Character D, who like the other characters has made a few appearances in Stories 1 and 2. And through all this Character A hasn't disappeared, he's still in the background, occasionally chiming in on conversations or talking to Character B. That way, you wouldn't be strictly following the exploits of any single given character, but rather a large slew of them in rotation.
 
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