How to reveal the bad guy
Monday, May 17, 2010

Today I’ll continue to write on ”Mord i Malmö”, the writing assignment adapting a crime novel into a movie script.

I’ve received feedback from the commissioner and overall he sounded positive. Since I have restructured the story quite a lot I thought he would have had more comments about that, but on the other hand he wasn’t completely unprepared since I had sent him a sketch of my ideas for the structure.

The bad guy is a bit of a problem for me. In the book he turns up very late, but if someone pops up like jack-in-a-box in a movie it is not considered good structure, because you want to give the viewer a fair chance to “solve the case” for themselves.

I know for my self how annoying it is to watch a crime drama and I think I know how it is based on what is presented to me and then the detective gets another guy and presents a whole bunch of new facts, nailing the guy to the crime.

So I wanted the bad guy to appear early and be a part of the story.

But how?

As it is now I got the impression that the commissioner thought he was too visible. And he is. And I think it is obvious that he is the bad guy.

On the other hand we don’t know why and who he is.

If I make him more like a shadow, a dark figure, we still know that this umbra-character did the crimes but the tricky part is to figure out who it is and it might be that or that character.

If we see his face, as it is now, it is obvious who isn’t the killer.

It’s not easy to get it right. But it is as it should. Where would the fun be if it was too easy?