Allison Brennan
I’m thrilled to have New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Allison Brennan, visiting today. She took a break from her busy writing schedule to share with us how she loves research to kill off characters in her books. Plus comment for a chance to win a print or eBook copy of Silenced, the most recent book in Allison’s Lucy Kincaid series!
**Congratulations Amanda for winning a copy of Silenced!**
Knock off your characters
by Allison Brennan
I love research, and one of my favorite things to research is how to kill off characters.
I suppose that might tell you a little TOO much about my personality. But honestly, I’m one of the mellowest people you’d meet. I don’t hold grudges. And if I did, I wouldn’t kill you. One, I don’t want to go to prison. Two, I don’t want to go to Hell. It keeps me in line!
I particularly love my book on poisons. I’ve used it many times to come up with a realistic and unusual way of killing off people. For example, in Cutting Edge, I picked water hemlock as the way my psychopath killed off her ex-boyfriend. I had to do a bit of research on how this might be done, because hemlock is bitter, so I cloaked the taste in over-sweetened lemonade. In my upcoming Stalked one of the victims has a heart attack. I had to find a poison that would not only bring on a heart attack, but would be hard to detect in the autopsy unless the coroner was specifically looking for it.
One thing writers need to be mindful about is not showing research. Meaning, you should know how everything happens and why, but putting all your research on the page makes for a boring, slow-paced story.
While I have several books on my shelves, I find myself returning to the same four or five all the time. The Book of Poisons is one, the Practical Homicide Investigation (a textbook that cost me $100 but has been totally worth it), DSM-IV Made Easy (for criminal psychology), and a short book called “The Crime Writer’s Handbook: 65 Ways to kill your victim – in print.”
I found the latter, written by Douglas Wynn, at Barnes & Noble when I first started seriously writing, back in 2003 or 2004. The table of contents includes “Methods of Murder” such as:
Animals: Poisonous spiders and scorpions
Allison’s research shelves
Axe
Embolism (Air)
Hanging
Karate
Sharp instruments
Just to name a few! What I love about this little black book is that, premier-pharmacy.com/product/arimidex/ though small, it’s dense with information and includes both real-life and fictional examples of all the methods of murder he discusses, as well as how forensics and crime investigation would work (whether you could get away with it!)
For example, under “Poisons (industrial): Mercury” he explains what it is used for clinically, the dangers and precautions, and what it does. Then goes on to illustrate real-life examples where mercury was used to kill:
“Roland B. Molineux supposedly poisoned two members of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club of New York in 1889, by anonymously sending through the post mercuric cyanide mixed with Bromo-Seltzer crystals. He was first convicted of the murders but at a subsequent trial acquitted.”
Under “Drowning” he illustrates that murder by drowning is not common, but there are real-life examples:
“Denis Nilsen, during his London killing spree of 1978-1983, dispatched two of his fifteen victims by making them insensible through drink and then putting their heads in a bucket of water.”
A fictional example Wynn uses: “In Ross Macdonald’s The Doomsters a woman is stunned with a wine bottle and then dumped in the sea to simulate suicide.”
In addition to my books, I follow a lot of crime news on Twitter, watch television, and read the crime blotter. I know, I’m not normal.
I know television gets it wrong a lot, but sometimes they use things I already know in new and different ways. NCIS does this a lot – using poisons, unusual weapons, acid, drowning, and more. Inevitably, something said or done has me thinking, “What if …?”
In Sudden Death my villains tortured the victims with acupuncture needles before slitting their throats. In Playing Dead my villain buried his victims alive. And in The Hunt he took women out into the middle of the Montana wilderness, then hunted them with a big game rifle.
There are of course the standard methods of murder. Guns, knives, strangulation. And they’re standard because they’re the most common. Sometimes, like I almost did in Stalked, you can get hung up in trying to do something different that you forget the story. Remember: it’s all been done before. Do your research, but focus first and foremost on the story.
What is one of your favorite ways to kill a character? Comment for a chance to win a copy of Silenced, the most recent book in my Lucy Kincaid series.
Catch up with Allison here on her website , Twitter, and Facebook. Winner of Silenced will be announced October 18th! Winner can select print or eBook for U.S. and Canada only.
What a brilliant post, I must read some of your books. I haven’t killed any character’s, I haven’t even written any character’s but it would have to be something difficult to detect like an insulin overdose for a character who is genuinely diabetic.
Thanks for the giveaway opportunity.
Adele, I like your idea of an insulin overdose and now wondering if that’s been done before in a novel and how. Something to research! Good luck with the giveaway!
Hi Adele — it’s always fun to try for the unusual. I wrote a short story once where the killer almost got away with it. She killed her husband for his land by replacing his heart attack medication with her own thyroid medication. It took awhile, but he ended up having a heart attack and because of his history, they didn’t look deeper into other possible causes. She would have gotten away with it if she hadn’t also then, when her step son refused to sell the land, she started poisoning him with her husband’s heart attack meds by crushing them in his orange juice. She’d almost convinced him the stress of trying to run the resort was killing him (he was dizzy and prone to collapse), when my heroine figured it out.
Yes, research is always fascinating, and a book on poisons sounds fun in a dark way. The girl in my WIP has a talent with mixing concoctions, and your post inspires me to do research on what she might come up with in a desert (where she lives).
Catherine, a desert would be such a unique place to find a poison to use…perhaps in a rare plant, flower (hmmm….the rare poisonous Fireseed plant for your book 2?) Good luck! Maybe you’ll write a post about your research and what you came up with!
The nice thing about the Book of Poisons is that it tells you where you might find the poison in nature, and how difficult it would be to use it to poison someone. Have fun!
Hi Allison and Donna,
Well, you two have put my head in a dark and dreary place this morning! Since I’m not a crime writer I haven’t gotten too fanciful with my death scenes yet. Perhaps this is yet one more place I could misplace my creativity…
Kathryn, I dont know…your new book in progress sounds fairly dark to me! Any characters in it need killing off? 🙂 Perhaps your next book. Allison has really got me inspired now to do more research about this in my current book I’m editing. I would love to find a unique way to kill off a character with a twist.
Sometimes, the tried and true methods work best! 🙂
murder is never easy no matter which way its done.but if you want silence poisen is best.
Poison is one of my favorites, but that’s not surprising. Women generally prefer poison as a murder weapon over men!
Most of my settings are in medieval Japan, so everyone who dies does so by the sword, though some wounds are self-inflicted. I did poison one person, but it didn’t become part of the story. Need to use my copy of the Book of Poisons more because I’m writing outside of Japan now.
Medieval Japan! What a violent time.
Allison,
Always love your posts. I tend to kill off my characters with basics like knives and falls, but poisons sound interesting. I may have to buy that book (evil grin).
Like I said, the basics work — largely because they are “popular” in real life. Sometimes, writers can get too esoteric with the way they kill off characters (one of my problems in the first draft of STALKED.) It was one of those “Wow, I have a great idea now I have to make it work” but it didn’t work over the course of the story, so I revised. Love revisions!
Killing off characters is definitely therapeutic. One of these days I need to write a story about the villain falling seven stories into a wood chipper. (whoops–I think I just tipped my hand that my mind is a messed up place some days, lol!)
Angela
Angela, I just laughed so hard at that! (’cause I love this stuff). I assume the wood chipper would be on! Now getting visions of Fargo. What a mess that chippered guy would be. How much man can a wood chipper chip?
Hello, Allison. Fascinating and absolutely revolting! LOL You think anyone–like police or feds–are reading this? We’ll all get picked up. Clearly, I need to be more creative. In five unpubbed books, I’ve always used a gun. Even took a CHC so I’d be more believable. Thanks for getting the creative juices flowing. Maybe drugs in book six. 🙂
Guns are very effective. Poisons have a lot of restrictions — accessibility, forensic evidence, and that many of them don’t act immediately. There are a lot of physical signs that clue investigators in that the victim may have been poisoned. And they could get to the hospital in time. Not all poisons can you recover from, but many if you know what it is, you can stop the damage.
Guns have limitations because of ballistics, etc. so best thing for your villain to do is steal the gun, or have an older gun that’s never been used in a crime. I figure if someone is willing to kill someone, stealing a gun is no big deal. I’d also get rid of it afterward, which runs the risk of it being found later. But there are ways …
This is post could get me arrested if found on my computer…. I think about that when I imagine a forensics team going through my computer’s history. So, therefore, I don’t plan to off anyone.
Thanks for a very informative post with great references. I can hear my bookcases groaning now as I head to Amazon.com.
Mitzi
LOL Mitzi! I’m done worrying about the FBI tracking my computer. I’ve done research on so many things that I’ve probably been flagged. I even once watched a bunch of online amateur sex videos (free!) when I was writing KISS ME, KILL ME to get an idea what is out there so when I wrote about the girls who had cybersex that I wasn’t stretching the bounds of credibility. Trust me … I toned down what I learned! :/
Use frangible bullets. No ballistics. Simple, no complicated poison preparations.
You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you??? 🙂
You know how it is, while away the idle hour. 😉
I love reading your books. Thanks for sharing how you come up with ways to knock your characters off. I find myself in shocked when I read how some of your characters meet their end. I love it.