Developing a fancase "palate"

[Elyment]

Skip to the bottom for the TL;DR relevant question

As a relatively new user on AAO, I've been planning/writing a few potential fan cases of my own and have been having trouble coming up with compelling murders. After reading several trial writing guides and tutorials (and a failed attempt at ignoring the advice they gave me), I'm convinced that planning is a mandatory and key part of developing a new case. However, when I look at my pseudo-scripts, I'm struggling to balance detail and nuance with intelligibility. I generally have a pretty good idea of how I want my characters to change and grow over the course of the case, and I also have a pretty decent grasp of the overall plot elements and story I'm going for, but when I go digging into the details, things fall apart. In short, I have the broad strokes story and themes in mind; it's just the crime writing that kills me.

Maybe it's a lack of imagination (and a definite lack of experience), but my approach to the "work backwards" theory of murder mystery writing doesn't seem to be helping me much. I add and toy with potential "gimmicks" on top of a basic outline, but they don't feel natural and/or make the case convoluted and uninteresting in general. In a simple A shoots B and frames C scenario, I try to create believable witnesses without making any one of them obviously the killer or innocent. What I end up with is lineup of suspects who are all habitually equipped with gloves, silencers, and ridiculously effective sedatives to perfectly steal the weapon, kill B, and frame C. I feel like I'm always creating lame excuses for A's fingerprints to NOT be on the gun while C's prints are, and my attempts to create the pieces of evidence that can be "flipped" or explained from different angles are pretty weak and telegraphed. In addition, with crimes involving framing the defendant, I've pretty much only come up with plot convenient physical disguises (another "gimmick"), environmental factors (fog, blackouts, etc.), or the classic "stranger syndrome" (where no one knows each other) as valid ways to approach writing those cases. With crimes involving framing, witnesses become even harder to write because they are either oblivious or fooled by some disguise/misunderstanding. Not that there's anything wrong with the gimmicks I mentioned earlier - they're perfectly valid answers in other cases - but I feel like I keep coming back to those three over and over because I'm trying to write a framing story, not because they necessarily fit with the setting or plot.

If it isn't obvious, I'm not very experienced in fiction writing. I'm well aware that it is completely possible to write compelling, interesting cases. I'm almost finished playing the original PW trilogy and have been exposed to most spoilers for the other games, so I know how coherent stories are totally possible. Plus, a few fan cases here on AAO have surprised and impressed me with tight stories and gameplay on par with the canon. At this point, I think I just need to be exposed to more fan cases to see how people deal with these problems. One thing I've picked up already is that I don't think I'm taking advantage of the setting surrounding the case enough to create room for doubt/theory building.

So, to skip my semi-rant to the relevant question: Can anyone make any recommendations for fan cases here on AAO that would be worth checking out as a "good example" to study for writing help? Thanks!

[Enthalpy]

I'm less happy with the "work backwards" theory of murder mystery writing myself, nowadays, and I want to revise that tutorial, but it's on a long to-do list of mine.

You described the specific example of your problems getting a way for framing the defendant to work, but can you describe the general problem is in more detail? "when I go digging into the details, things fall apart" is vague. Is this problem just when you're trying to come up with the crime?

[Elyment]

I'm less happy with the "work backwards" theory of murder mystery writing myself, nowadays, and I want to revise that tutorial, but it's on a long to-do list of mine.

You described the specific example of your problems getting a way for framing the defendant to work, but can you describe the general problem is in more detail? "when I go digging into the details, things fall apart" is vague. Is this problem just when you're trying to come up with the crime?

If I'm interpreting your question correctly, I believe you're asking about the problems I have with the specifics of the murder itself beyond just the framing stuff. I'll give a rough outline for a case I had in mind and then talk about the problems I have with it.

Going back to the A shoots B and frames C scenario, I wanted to keep things relatively simple, so the "key" to the case will be determining time of death. By key, I don't mean it will necessarily be the last contradiction or nail-in-the-coffin piece of evidence, but I want it to be the turning point of the case where the defense gets the legroom to explore a thread of reasoning to find the true killer. The central truth of the case which I want to build on goes as follows:

Spoiler : :

Before the events of the crime, A needs to somehow obtain C's gun.
At some time X, A will shoot B twice with C's gun in B's office alone and then flee the crime scene.
B should die from blood loss as a result of the gunshot wounds.
Somehow, the shots are not heard by anyone else. (I will propose some means which I've thought of so far later.)
No one is to enter B's office from now until the body is discovered by the authorities.
Then at a later time Y, A will shoot two blank rounds in a different location to throw off the time of death either with C's gun or a gun she brought herself. Naturally all witnesses present who hear those blank shots should assume that they were the ones that killed the victim. The autopsy report should not give away the time of death right off the bat either. In addition, the ballistics report shouldn't show that C's gun was fired four times. C's gun will have been shown to have fired twice and the bullets should match those found on the body (otherwise it'd be obvious to the prosecution that another gun was involved).
Because the murder weapon gun is in C's possession (physical or otherwise, it doesn't need to be that clear), C is suspected of the crime and arrested on the spot.

That's the core of the case that I want to add details to. Here is a rough stream of conscious where I run myself in circles (I feel like it's a bit excessive, so I'll put it in a spoiler so it isn't an immediate scroll wall):

Spoiler : :

Well, if I want C to be suspected of the crime, having him simply own the gun isn't really a solid enough case for the prosecution to accuse them with. Let's say I've already crafted decent motives for both A and C to kill B. It shouldn't affect how B gets killed, but I'll get it out of the way for now.

If C's fingerprints aren't on the gun, then the prosecution needs to lean more heavily circumstantial pieces of evidence. (For now I'll ignore the potential problem of glovemarks and fingerprints) Maybe C should be spotted fleeing the scene of the crime immediately after those shots? He can't flee from the inside the office because he would see A shoot B, and if they're outside in the open, then someone with C can immediately create an alibi for them. If I want to go down this route, then I need C to somehow be isolated from other witnesses immediately before, during, and after the blank shots but not in the crime scene. Hm. Putting a room across from the murder scene office could work. It would allow for a witness to see C leaving the room across from the murder scene but mistake it as the murder scene. But then I need to keep C alone in the adjacent room up to and after the blanks. If C flees into a hallway full of people, it isn't likely that he would be singled out as the likely killer, even if he technically owned the gun. The hypothetical hallway needs to be relatively empty then (0-5 people). I'm going to assume that everyone runs for the exit when they hear the blanks, so what would make C stick out other than exiting from a room and being the owner of the gun...Seems promising, but I'll need to think of more ways to tie C and A to the crime scene without making it obvious that A is suspicious.

Maybe I want C's fingerprints to be on the gun after all to give the prosecution some "decisive evidence". Why would his prints be on the gun while A's aren't? Maybe A wore gloves? That still doesn't explain how C ever held the gun in the first place. Maybe C keeps the gun on his person for self defense. Well now A doesn't have a way to get the gun from C and fire it. Maybe A plants the gun in C's room so that C would pick it up naturally when the blanks were fired. Well that would now mean that A needs a separate gun to fire the blanks and a way to get C to pick up the gun without C noticing. Not to mention the fact that C's testimony would basically solve the case outright without the player ever needing to discover the trick behind the cause of death...Doesn't feel very feasible. This is where I go off the deep end and start considering sedatives and other measures to keep C asleep or incapacitated while the murder happens and wake him up from the blanks so that he will pick up the gun in fear of being attacked but it just gets convoluted for no real reason other than forcing my plot to work.

Now, how does A fire a gun four times but only two shots be heard (while also ensuring that the ballistics test will show that C's gun fired the two fatal shots and nothing else)? The two shots and bullets from C's gun must match with the shots and bullets that B, the victim, received. If not, the police will obviously see something fishy going on and not jump to convict C. So A almost certainly needs a second gun, likely one that she brought herself, to fire the blanks with. Well now how does A ensure that the shots from C's gun aren't heard? Maybe she brought a suppressor/silencer...I'm no gun expert but I'd be willing to bet that compatibility would be an issue, and even if she did, then how would I reveal that in the trial without giving away the whole case? If I stick a silencer in the investigation/court record, then by chekhov's gun it'd be pretty obvious what went down to any attentive player. Soundproofing the office is an option, but I doubt any real-life, commercial soundproofing could fully mask a gunshot.

I'm willing to accept that I may be getting hung up on details a bit; I know that the original AA trilogy has sometimes glossed over details like fingerprints of the killer on the murder weapon in cases like 1-4 and 3-3 (from what I remember, the culprit's fingerprints should have been on the weapons, but they weren't for unexplained reasons). However, I feel like if I were playing a case and that kind of inconsistency came up, it would bother me and seem like an oversight on the writer's part, so I'm not sure how strict I need to be. Anyways, please point out anything in the word vomit above that doesn't make sense or carries assumptions to the writing process that I've overlooked. I'd also love to hear some suggested fancases to play through that exemplify tight crime writing. Obviously, I'm not planning to plagiarize; I just want to be exposed to different ideas and see if I can find any other interesting approaches to writing crime.

[Igniam]

Spoiler : :

The first thing I think when I read this was that there are a lack of non-murder-related plot details. I'm not sure if you already have one planned or not, but it might be constraining what I would expect are some solutions to the issues.

For the gunshot, I could use the presence of other loud noises, like a place with a loud audience (circus, convention, singer event) or loud music (nightclub), and that would lead me to making the scenario of either an actor in a circus who uses a gun as part of their act (which adds fingerprints) or a bodyguard in a nightclub with scheduled shifts, and event Y simply happens once the public audience has left. Since you mentioned it was a short trial, I suppose the "POV is there during the actual time of death but doesn't realize it" plot would be a bit too obvious, so the actual time of death event happening would be subtly hinted through some evidence that mentions the event.

I'd also say that C's gun was theirs and so naturally had fingerprints on, while A did something like hold it by the barrel (if A wore gloves and held it normally they'd smudge C's fingerprints)

You didn't mention this, but I think in a modern setting, the wrong time of death would easily be detected, so you'd also need to find a way to work around that.

[Enthalpy]

I'll wait to see what you have to say Igniam before saying much more.

I'll just say that when I'm in the stage that I don't feel very "constrained", I find that I have to make a decision that seems "good enough" and build the rest of the case from there. Otherwise, I end up going in circles and not deciding anything.

[Igniam]

I said the 'constrained' part because to me, it sounds like OP also might have another story in mind (the characters are gendered and the crime scene takes place in a specific location) and to me, those seem like pretty variable aspects for the case, which would constrain them if they wanted to make bigger-picture changes like I proposed.

[Elyment]

Spoiler : :

The first thing I think when I read this was that there are a lack of non-murder-related plot details. I'm not sure if you already have one planned or not, but it might be constraining what I would expect are some solutions to the issues.

For the gunshot, I could use the presence of other loud noises, like a place with a loud audience (circus, convention, singer event) or loud music (nightclub), and that would lead me to making the scenario of either an actor in a circus who uses a gun as part of their act (which adds fingerprints) or a bodyguard in a nightclub with scheduled shifts, and event Y simply happens once the public audience has left. Since you mentioned it was a short trial, I suppose the "POV is there during the actual time of death but doesn't realize it" plot would be a bit too obvious, so the actual time of death event happening would be subtly hinted through some evidence that mentions the event.

I'd also say that C's gun was theirs and so naturally had fingerprints on, while A did something like hold it by the barrel (if A wore gloves and held it normally they'd smudge C's fingerprints)

You didn't mention this, but I think in a modern setting, the wrong time of death would easily be detected, so you'd also need to find a way to work around that.

I can definitely see how I'm not looking at the surrounding crime scene for possibilities to create/mask gunshots. You nailed my problem with the specific location limiting my options, so I'm considering scraping the idea and saving it for another trial with different characters in a separate case. The characters I had in mind just wouldn't have a compelling reason (that I could think of so far) to be at one of the scenes proposed above. I'll look into more possibilities for the setting and for the murderer creating their own distractions and loud sounds, but at this point, the premise doesn't feel very compatible with my characters as I've imagined them already.

As an unrelated aside; I felt that I could maybe get away with a time of death that occurred in a window of time (4:00pm-4:45pm). I'm not aware of the accuracy of modern autopsies, but I have seen cases were the TOD is put in a window. I thought I could "get around" the problem of very accurate autopsy reports by making the victim bleed out, assuming that it's harder to pinpoint the TOD as a result. If this isn't the case, please let me know.

[Tiagofvarela]

As an unrelated aside; I felt that I could maybe get away with a time of death that occurred in a window of time (4:00pm-4:45pm). I'm not aware of the accuracy of modern autopsies, but I have seen cases were the TOD is put in a window. I thought I could "get around" the problem of very accurate autopsy reports by making the victim bleed out, assuming that it's harder to pinpoint the TOD as a result. If this isn't the case, please let me know.

As far as the games go, my understanding is that traditionally they only bring up things if they are going to be relevant, not really explaining them otherwise. Especially the earlier ones.
I'm thinking of burn marks, but things such as the TOD is typically just whatever helps the mystery, and if there's a way to fit an explanation for larger TODs then that's brought up. If not, then it's simply never questioned.

That said, a period with many hours isn't the norm, and when it happens the suspension of disbelief gets pushed. Not your case, though.

[Enthalpy]

A time of death with a range of an hour is completely fair, in my view. I'd think most of the canon games hand windows of death at least that large.