{"id":10701,"date":"2023-11-02T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10701"},"modified":"2023-11-01T15:22:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T19:22:55","slug":"writing-believable-cop-dialog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10701","title":{"rendered":"Writing Believable Cop Dialog"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Criminal lawyer Repo Kempt<\/a> wrote an interesting column for LitReactor a while back, \u201cCops Don\u2019t Talk Like That!\u201d Convinced I\u2019m prey to every bad writing habit going, I read it carefully. I also joined the Public Safety Writers Association<\/a>, comprising retired cops, FBI, EMTs, military, fire fighters and people who write about them\u2014a great group generous in reviewing members\u2019 ideas and words. They\u2019re my insurance policy against cliched portrayals of law enforcement!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his column, Kempt emphasized that good dialog is one of the best ways to make law enforcement characters believable. And he offered a tip: listen in to actual police radio frequencies to get a feel for it, or listen to podcasts with actual police from different parts of the country talking about their cases, as there are significant regional differences in jargon. \u201cFigure out where your story is set, and tune into law enforcement transmissions or podcasts in that area.\u201d Works for a story set in the 2020s, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood dialog\u201d is hard to achieve when we’re exposed to a lot of lousy, formulaic dialog from television and movies\u2014and, yes, books. In a display of lazy writing, a lot of writers rely on cliched personalities and behavior to save them the trouble of figuring out something new. For example the clich\u00e9 of the troubled alcoholic detective doesn\u2019t require a lot of writerly delving; we\u2019ve seen it so many times, we already sort of \u201cknow\u201d this character. The author is cheating readers out of getting to more meaningful, nuanced and fresher insights when relying on that trope, or the one where an older cop is near retirement (guilty!) or a jaded veteran is teamed with an idealistic young rookie, or the cop is fighting a custody battle. These are not constant topics of conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gallows humor between partners or in the squad room is another standby. Some authors\u2014John Sandford (admittedly, I\u2019ve only read one of his) and Tami Hoag\u2014do this very well. A UK author I read recently turned this plus into a giant minus by making every <\/em>cop statement a launchpad for another cop\u2019s snarky comment. Truly clever comments are appreciated. Reflexive snark becomes tiresome. As one of Kempt\u2019s interviewees said, \u201cReal police dialogue is more normal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Believable dialog added a lot to author SA Cosby\u2019s latest, All the Sinners Bleed<\/a><\/em>. The Black sheriff of a rural Virginia county is juggling a lot of difficult issues\u2014racism, a cluster of child murders, a badgering county commissioner. Cosby\u2019s sheriff and his team each have a distinct, convincing personality. I\u2019m especially aware of this because I listened to the audio version ably narrated by Adam Lazarre-White.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 400 Things Cops Know<\/a><\/em>, author Adam Plantinga points out that cops don\u2019t scream at suspects in the interview room and includes the advice to new officers, \u201cIf the public screams at you, don\u2019t scream back. Because if they piss you off, they own you.\u201d In other words, you have to stay (or at least appear) emotionally uninvolved, no matter what. A scene in the last episode of Unforgotten<\/em> (season 5) violated that principle and didn\u2019t ring true to me. A character made a (self-justifying) confession, and the detective interviewer, not persuaded, slow-clapped his performance. Perhaps she didn\u2019t believe him, but the slow-clap seemed not something a senior officer would do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what about grammar? Plantinga says, \u201cEven if you pride yourself on speaking the King\u2019s English, as a cop, your vernacular will soon regress to match that of those you encounter. . . . Hearing mangled diction is the linguistic backdrop of your day and eventually you yield to it.\u201d He quotes Tom Wolfe\u2019s Bonfire of the Vanities<\/em>: \u201cIn a room with three people who said She don\u2019t<\/em>, he couldn\u2019t get a doesn\u2019t<\/em> out of his mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Criminal lawyer Repo Kempt wrote an interesting column for LitReactor a while back, \u201cCops Don\u2019t Talk Like That!\u201d Convinced I\u2019m prey to every bad writing habit going, I read it carefully. I also joined the Public Safety Writers Association, comprising … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"How do cops talk? Maybe not like you've seen on tv. Writing believable dialog helps draw readers into your crime story. Tips and resources.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,632,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-police","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2MB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10703,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10701\/revisions\/10703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}