{"id":7307,"date":"2018-06-21T09:45:54","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T13:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7307"},"modified":"2018-06-21T09:45:54","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T13:45:54","slug":"writing-about-risky-encounters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7307","title":{"rendered":"Writing about Risky Encounters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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photo: Charles Nadeau, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

The Gift of Fear<\/em> <\/a>is a two-decades old book about recognizing the subtle signs of personal danger in many situations. So often in news stories about the capture of a murderer\u2014whether of a spouse, a girlfriend, or a mass shooting\u2014people say, \u201cWe had no idea he\u2019d . . .\u201d This book, like the FBI report released yesterday<\/a>, says baloney to that. There are signs. People just have to recognize them and accept their validity.<\/p>\n

As a crime writer, I hoped those signs might be usefully incorporated in my stories, whether my bad-guy characters were aware of sending them and whether my good-guy characters perceived them. Or not. Especially or not.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s author is Gavin de Becker<\/a>, who has worked with government agencies and law enforcement on ways to prevent violence and as a private consultant on personal threat assessment for media figures, victims of stalking, and others. Much of the book is written in the grating \u201cyou can do it!\u201d style of a self-help book, but his examples are excellent.<\/p>\n

Especially useful was the chapter on \u201csurvival signals.\u201d In it, he deconstructs the experience of a young woman he calls Kelly who encountered a helpful stranger in the lobby of her apartment building. When one of Kelly\u2019s grocery bags spilled, he insisted on carrying bags up to her apartment. He followed her inside, then held her captive for three hours and raped her. She barely escaped with her life. Other women had not.<\/p>\n

From the outset, Kelly received numerous signals that something about the man was \u201coff,\u201d which made her uneasy, though she couldn\u2019t say why. De Becker says, \u201cthe capable face-to-face criminal is an expert at keeping his victim from seeing survival signals, but the very methods he uses to conceal them can reveal them.\u201d The signals in Kelly\u2019s case are easily adaptable to fiction.<\/p>\n

Seven Key Survival Signals<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n