But since as far as I can remember, neither is the case for me, this throws up another question: do you chose your genre or does your genre chose you?Ĭrime chose me, this I can answer unequivocally. Or, the very reason for my character’s appetite for crime would be the result of a strict upbringing by conservative parents leading to the character’s desire to shock and rebel. If I were developing a character, I would include a childhood tragedy as a catalyst. This brings me back to my original question why crime? While the story is long gone, it does answer the question of when my fascination with the dark side began but not why.

I wish I still had that story as it would be fun to read what my ten-year-old self considered frightening. Yet, all my memories of writing stories in primary school involve trying to incorporate something creepy into every text.Īs a child, I clearly remember writing a short story about a girl who becomes lost in the woods and finds herself in a terrifying scenario involving an abandoned house. Mine was unremarkable in terms of exposure to crime. My childhood was uneventful, but I don’t believe anyone’s first eighteen years of life can be completely humdrum. To be clear, I’m not the product of criminal parents in fact, both my mother and father were extremely law-abiding. Let’s just say bad guys have to have evil intentions, and the story has to be edgy. The characters have to be in peril or insane. For a story to be exciting, there has to be murder and mayhem – or at least madness. I’m not saying that romance and cozy mysteries aren’t great genres they are, just not for me. For me, there has never been even the slightest possibility of writing a romance or even a cozy mystery. My criminal life takes place on the pages of my books.

Now when I say I have an appetite for crime, I’m not confessing to robbing a bank or planning a killing spree. However, when it comes to an understanding of my proclivity for crime, I’m at a bit of a loss. It’s that keen insight into personality types and motivating factors that help when developing characters. To be successful as a writer, I believe one needs to have a knack for understanding human behaviour and what drives individuals to act in certain ways.

Small Town Nightmare by Anna Willett