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2016-10-08
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How to Write a Casefic - BBC "Sherlock" Edition

Summary:

A meta on how to write Sherlock Holmes casefic in general, and for the BBC "Sherlock" fandom in particular.
Dos, don'ts, and rules of thumb.

Notes:

This meta focuses mostly on casefic for the BBC "Sherlock" fandom. But a lot of the information in it applies to fanfic based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories and their numerous other adaptions as well. So even if you're a Sherlockian who's not specifically into BBC "Sherlock", you may still find this useful.

If you'd prefer a fandom-neutral version of this essay, you can find it here.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: The Planning Stage

Chapter Text

 

Introduction

 

Casefic - as in, fanfic stories that focus mainly on Sherlock and John solving a case - is a surprisingly small sub-genre in our fandom. Out of 89,000 BBC “Sherlock” fics posted on AO3 by October 2016, only about 1,800 were tagged “casefic” or “case fic”. As you can see, it's so small that the powers that be on AO3 haven't even bothered to give us one consistent genre tag yet.

I find this lack of popularity surprising. Clever deductions, jaw-dropping plot twists, cracking good action, and the satisfaction of a puzzle solved and a bad guy brought to justice - could you resist? But still, both as readers and as writers, a lot of us give "Sherlock" casefic a wide berth. There may be many reasons for that - but just in case one of them is that most authors simply don't dare write it, let me try to provide some encouragement! 

So this meta is dedicated to every writer (and every prospective writer) in our fandom whom I've ever heard say “I wish I could write casefic!”. Because you can, you know. There’s certainly not one single fail-proof recipe how to pull off the casefic of the century, but there are certain techniques and patterns that tend to work well. The point of this meta is to describe and explore those.

There are six absolute dos and don’ts in casefic. Six standing orders, six golden rules, six laws set in stone. (Or five, if your casefic is a one-shot.) Observing them or not will make or break your story. You’ll find them in chapter 3. Chapters 1 and 2 lead up to them, containing additional advice and suggestions that you're totally free to take or leave.

Some of this advice is pretty basic, and it’s addressed mostly to people who don’t yet have a ton of experience writing casefic. So I apologise in advance if you feel that I’m occasionally stating the obvious. But I'll also include a few cherries on top - some extra stunts that will make your story truly stand out, and will really put your readers on the edge of their seats and make them gasp at your brilliance. Those I’ll refer to as “masterclass level”. To the true connoisseurs among you, of course even those won’t be news. But in that case, you’re probably wasting your time reading this anyway!

Whenever I’ve referred to an existing casefic by title and author, it’s an example of how to do it well. So if you see your name and your story mentioned in this meta, don’t panic. It definitely means you’ve impressed me. All uncredited examples I made up myself. They’re not part of any real story (that I’m aware of).

 

 

Chapter 1: The Planning Stage

 

1. Casefic is hard work

OK, ugly truths first. Casefic is hard work. Crime fiction in general is a vastly popular genre, but the effort that goes into writing it is underrated. People usually treat it as light reading, which may be justified from the reader's point of view. But that doesn't mean it's a picnic to write.

Casefic is not for impatient writers. A lot of brainwork goes into constructing, researching and then actually writing a plausible, logical case. Always. There's no such thing as an off-the-cuff, conceive-write-and-post in one night casefic, unless it's extremely short. Writing casefic is incredibly rewarding in many other ways, but the one thing it doesn't provide is instant gratification.

So before you embark on a casefic, make sure you’re ready to put that much effort into a single story. I’ll be honest with you: If writing fanfic is, for you, all about getting the mental images out on paper/screen in one go and then moving on without ever looking back, casefic is probably not your genre.

 

2. Inspiration is everywhere

So, still sure you want to write a casefic? I haven't managed to scare you off? That's great. It probably means you have exactly the pertinacity that’s needed to pull it off. :)

The next things you’ll need to think about are questions that you can only answer yourself.

What’s the story you want to tell? What sort of crime happens? In what place, and in what environment? What era within the timeframe of the show are we in? Which canon characters will appear? Which additional original characters will you have to make up? How does the crime get solved? What are the major clues? And what is the story’s impact on the main characters?

It’s your story and your ideas, no tutorial can come up with those answers for you. All I can offer are some general guidelines on where to find inspiration.

 

a) Crimes

If you haven’t got a specific idea of your own yet, work off the canon of the show or John Watson’s official “blog”, and tell the full story of one of the “unfilmed” cases mentioned there.

Or work off Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes stories and re-tell one of those in your own way. Some of the best casefics in this fandom are Conan Doyle rewrites, including the – deservedly - most popular one ever, merripestin's “London Orbital”.

Or pick only certain images and elements from Conan Doyle, and rearrange them as you please - if the writers of the show are allowed to do it, then so are you.

Or read up on past true crimes on websites like History by the Yard. "Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper" has been done so often already that our show writers - justly - decided to honour that with no more than a parodistic nod. But there are a lot of less high-profile historic cases out there - both solved and unsolved - that could be just what you're looking for.

Or scan the news for any real contemporary crimes that could serve as inspiration.

Or do it the other way round – first pick the location, the environment, the setting that you want your story to play out in; then think about what sort of crime could happen there. Haven't you ever walked or travelled past a place that looked like a fantastic backdrop to put a dead body in?

Speaking of dead bodies - murder sells, of course, but fanfic is free, so you're actually not obliged to kill anyone off. All sorts of crimes can feature in a casefic, although the stakes will of course be higher the more serious the crime is. Particularly bizarre crimes, exotic locations, and high levels of gore can help you to get attention, but especially in the latter case, don’t overdo it. It’s fine if your killer has a penchant for dismembering their victims and distributing the body parts all over London’s most famous tourist sights, but there needs to be a good reason why they do it, and you need to address it eventually. You're still writing a casefic, not a script for a splatter movie.

Some cracking good mysteries even turn out not to be a crime at all. In that case, however, there is always a certain danger that the true solution - accident, suicide, or a scam set up by the supposed victim themselves - may read like a bit of an anti-climax. So if you go for this option, make sure that the solution itself, or the story in general, has enough redeeming features to help balance your readers’ potential disappointment. Examples in fanfic that made this work are spycandy’s “The Dancing Detective”, which is worth reading for the sheer cleverness of the true solution, not to mention the humour and the character study; and JenTheSweetie’s “The Absent Glasses”, which redeems itself by a particularly moving human touch.

Whatever your crime and your mystery is – an engaging casefic makes the outcome of the story matter to the detectives. A clever plot with brilliant deductions, interesting locations and engaging OCs is well and good, but if you really want to touch your readers' hearts, don't let Sherlock and John solve it as if it was just part of a nine-to-five job that they do as a matter of course and then head back home and forget all about it. (I'm sure many of their actual cases do feel that way, but there's a reason why the show writers don't find those worth relating!)

We wouldn't love this show if we didn't love its protagonists, and both the best episodes and the best casefics are always those that teach us something new about them – that reveal some intriguing piece of backstory, or that show us some hitherto hidden human quality, and that make the characters grow and learn and appreciate things about themselves and each other that they weren't aware of before. I would go so far as to say that all the really brilliant casefics that I've found in this fandom to date have such an aspect to them. It’s something your readers will love you for.

There are various ways how to make your particular case matter more than most to your detectives.

You can place Sherlock and/or John under a special moral obligation to solve your case, for example if

  • Sherlock and/or John are friends, or used to be friends, with the victim, or with someone close to the victim; or
  • the victim came to Sherlock and John for advice before the actual crime happened, but was dismissed as boring, hysterical, fake, or otherwise unworthy of their attention; or maybe the victim tried but never managed to reach/contact them; or
  • the victim represents a cause or a conviction or a lifestyle that Sherlock and/or John approve of, believe in and hold dear, and that they want to see defended and avenged; or
  • the perpetrator is an old enemy and Sherlock and/or John still have a score to settle with them.

You’re of course free to combine several of these aspects. Garmonbozia’s “The Copper’s Beeches” gloriously has a combination of all four, and my own “Into the Hills” proudly manages to combine the first three at least.

You can also play on Sherlock and/or John's instincts of pride and/or revenge to spur them on more than usually, by

  • making the crime a personal provocation that the perpetrator uses to taunt them with, for example because they think themselves cleverer than Sherlock; or
  • making the perpetrator (physically and/or emotionally) hurt either Sherlock or John or someone close to them in the course of the investigation.

Or the crime could be so horrendous and the threat to Queen and Country so great and the possible consequences so harrowing that only Sherlock can save the day. This option can tend to get a little cheesy if you overdo it, though, so handle with care. There can only be so many people every day who try and blow up the Houses of Parliament.

 

b) Environments

What sort of environment will your story play out in? Is it set in a world of dark alleys, backrooms of dingy pubs, gang warfare, drug deals and all other sorts of shady underworld business? Or is it set in idyllic middle-class suburbia where everything looks perfect on the surface although there’s deep trouble brewing underneath? Or will it move back and forth between worlds, intriguing your readers by the contrast?

You’ve all heard the advice to “write what you know about”. That is sound advice. Authenticity is, by definition, hard to fake. But it’s not impossible to fake. So I’d absolutely want to add, “or write what you can plausibly pretend to your readers to know about”. Because you don’t need to be an absolute expert in the environment your story is set in, as long as you can acquire enough theoretical expertise to appear as one. It’s amazing how far Wikipedia will get you on any random subject. So it definitely is possible to compensate a lack of true first-hand experience with proper research.

If you’re outside the UK and you’re stuck on a factual Britpicking issue (such as police organisation, the educational system, the health system, social habits, food and drink and the like), check out these marvellous Britpicking resources:

 

And by the way - if you have real first-hand expertise, don’t overdo it either. I know it's tempting to show people how, for example, medicine or criminal law or forensic science or computer technology really work, because they’re so often misrepresented in crime fiction. By all means present those aspects in your story as realistically and as accurately as possible. But remember at all times that your chosen environment is only your canvas, and the story is your painting, not the other way round. Take care to stick with storytelling, and don’t make your casefic into an operating manual or a textbook instead. For example, don’t use too much unexplained geek speak - it will confuse rather than impress your readers.

If a specific piece of information is important for your story, but it is specialist rather than general knowledge, let the characters themselves introduce and explain it, rather than stepping out of the story and explaining it in a footnote (or worse, not at all). John and Molly are handy characters for expounding medical phenomena. Legal questions can be raised by police officers. Sherlock knows all about chemistry and related topics. Mycroft and Anthea can bring up political and diplomatic issues.

If you’re unsure whether you’ve left the realm of storytelling and veered into textbook territory, have your story (or at least the relevant passages) test-read by a friend who doesn’t possess your own level of expertise, and listen to their opinion.

 

c) Locations

The locations your story is set in will of course depend greatly on the environment you’ve chosen.

No matter what the general theme of your story is - you already have a variety of extremely useful locations at your disposal: 221B Baker Street, the Met's offices at New Scotland Yard, the morgue and Molly's lab at Barts hospital, Speedy's café, John's surgery, Mycroft's office at the Diogenes Club, etc. Don't worry that setting a scene in one of those canon locations could be considered unoriginal. Your readers won't mind it in the least. On the contrary, they will immediately feel at home in it, without a need of much description and scene setting. It's the appeal of the familiar.

But you probably won't manage to make do only with locations we've seen in the show before. So unless you happen to live in London, or have been there in the past and remember it extremely well, this is another point where research comes in. Google Earth, Google Streetview, the London A-Z, OpenStreetmap and any other such tools are your best friends at this point. Especially if you’re outside the UK, they're also great for getting a good general impression of what houses, streets, villages and cities in the UK look like. You can even find metas by fellow fans on this, such as AtlinMerrick’s very useful “London Done Write”.

The Metropolitan Police's News site, especially the "Appeals" and "Sentencings" sections, will give you a good idea which parts of London tend to be troubled by what kinds of crime. It's a great source for information on police organisation and procedure, too.

If your research doesn't render the location you're looking for, it's fine to be vague. In fact, unless you’ve chosen a well-known London landmark that people will expect to be depicted accurately in every detail, it’ll give you more freedom if you only loosely base your fictional location on a real one.

And remember you're not limited to London – the show itself has long moved out of the confines of the metropolis. Sherlock and John investigating a crime at some other place in the UK is perfectly in tune with the show, and even more so with Conan Doyle's original stories. Just remember that the regular jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police doesn't extend beyond Greater London. So if you want Greg Lestrade and his team to be on board, you'll need to expressly explain their presence. (They may be assisting an officer from the local police force they're friends with, as a personal favour; or they may have been called in as external consultants, which is something that especially the more rural police forces in the UK would definitely do.) 

You're not even limited to the UK. There are two big “if”s here, but if you can come up with a plausible reason for our heroes going abroad for a case, and if you can paint a proper backdrop of the area they’re in, why not? There's a “Sherlock” casefic set in Japan (Lindentreeisle’s “Unthinkable”), and there's one set in Utah (blacktail_chorus’ “Gather at the River”), and they work! I honestly can't tell what of the scene setting in those two stories is based on first-hand experience and what is just the result of very thorough research.

 

d) Original characters

Unless you're planning to let one canon character kill another canon character off, which limits your possibilities rather dramatically, you probably won't manage without at least one original character (OC). Here, too, inspiration is everywhere.

I find it perfectly legitimate to base OCs on real persons I've met. It’s not good manners, of course, to exactly reproduce a real person in fiction unless you have their express permission to do so, particularly if your portrayal of them is less than flattering. But why not adapt certain physical characteristics or personality traits? (Professor McAllister from my “Three Students” is - outwardly! - the spitting image of one of my real professors back at uni.)

Conan Doyle's stories are also full of characters that are just waiting to be reused.

Or – my personal favourite variant - bring in a secondary or even a tertiary (mentioned but never seen) character from the show itself. Give them a backstory and a personality, and in the case of the tertiary characters, a name and a face to start with. Need a rich young lady in distress? Then why not bring back Amanda the secretary from TBB? Or let the owner of the legendary Chinese restaurant at the end of Baker Street that stays open til two bring Sherlock both his Chop Suey and a new case one day. The appeal of the familiar will work in your favour here, too.

If you want to take your story up to masterclass level, you could even assign a minor canon character a secret but shocking pivotal role - a technique employed to perfection in verityburns' “The Green Blade”.

To conclude this section, a word on villains in particular - or on antagonists, rather, since not every person who comes into conflict with the protagonist of a crime story needs to be inherently evil.

A general and useful rule for writing crime fiction is that the antagonist should not overshadow the protagonist, but they still need to be a worthy opponent. There's no thrill in a genius detective taking down a blundering idiot.

When writing “Sherlock”, it's of course difficult to come up with a believable antagonist who is anywhere near Sherlock's own level of intelligence. But they can be “worthy” - meaning sufficiently dangerous - in other ways, too. Sheer physical superiority can serve the purpose, if there are physical confrontations in your story (think the Golem). It could also be their utter unpredictability that gives them an advantage (think Moriarty). It could be their ruthlessness and total lack of any scruples (as in dioscureantwin's “The Adventure of the Body Snatchers”). It could be their fanatical belief that they're in the right (as in GhyllWyne’s “Though the Heavens Fall”). Or it could be a secret hold they have over one of our heroes (as in Garmonbozia’s “The Copper’s Beeches”).

For creating antagonists in particular, Conan Doyle's original stories are a wonderful source of inspiration, too. A chilling modernisation of the infamous Baron Gruner from “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”, for example, can be found in Scriblit’s “The Holiday”.

Readers tend to find three-dimensional villains - complex, conflicted characters that they may even sympathise with - more interesting that your average thug who’s just evil and that’s it. But it’s not a must. How detailed a picture you paint of your villain depends on the length of your story and on what else you want to focus on. If your casefic already has other special features, such as - for example - an original and well-drawn OC in a different role (as victim/witness/client/POV character), or a beautiful emotional bromance subplot for Sherlock and John, don’t beat yourself up if you’ve no time and space to waste on making up the most original villain ever imagined, too.

The one type of antagonist that I’d avoid is the certified madman. Of course, criminals very often have mental health issues. Psychopaths exist. But the only crimes that are ever interesting in casefic are crimes that have a real motive. So even if your antagonist is mentally deranged in some way or another, they need to commit their crimes for a better reason than “they just like to see people die/suffer” or "a voice in their head told them to kill". They can be monomaniac, they can be really disturbed and really disturbing, but there has to be an understandable reason why exactly they do what they do in your story. Random violence against random victims is, as even Jim Moriarty himself would certainly agree, booooring. Because it poses no intellectual challenge to either the detectives or the readers, and that's what casefic is all about.

 

3. Who's telling the story?

When you've decided on a plot, an environment, your main locations and the major characters involved, you need to decide which character actually tells the story. Quite apart from the question whose voice you trust yourself to imitate best, choosing the point of view (POV) carefully is also incredibly important for how the case plays out, which revelation comes when, and who knows what at what point. (And yes, unless you write in script/screenplay format, there's no way around choosing a POV!) 

The conventional narrative perspective in crime fiction is, of course, that of the (main) investigator. When writing “Sherlock”, however, that becomes a serious problem. It's difficult to do Sherlock's POV justice in any genre of fanfic. And in casefic specifically, Sherlock’s acuity and cleverness regularly put him several steps ahead of everyone else. So if you let your readers share his every thought straight away, that pretty much ruins the mystery. Then again, if you let them share only a fragment of his thought processes and keep the rest secret to preserve the mystery, you're breaking one of the six golden rules of writing good casefic - the one that says that whatever you do, you can’t lie to your readers.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew how to resolve that dilemma. There’s a reason why he told the original Sherlock Holmes stories from the POV of an admiring Everyman, rather than - with a very few exceptions - through the eyes of the Great Detective himself. The same still holds true more than a hundred years later. John Watson is and remains your ideal POV character for “Sherlock” casefic. He’s close enough to the action to see and hear everything important. He’s close enough to Sherlock to be allowed to share the detective's theories (and, if applicable, worries and frustrations and fears) as the case progresses. And yet - as a rule - he’s never in possession of all the facts (or at least of their proper interpretation) until the denouement at the end, because he isn’t any quicker than the rest of us. Telling the story through John’s eyes gives your readers a fair chance to keep up with developments, while allowing you to preserve the mystery as long as you need.

You’re not obliged to take John’s POV, however. There are many excellent casefics in our fandom that are told through the eyes of a third person that gets caught up in the events - as friends, as victims (of a non-lethal crime, obviously), as clients, as witnesses.

Of this, there are two variants:

One option is to pick a secondary canon character as your POV character. To make that work, most writers end up putting the secondary character into John’s usual role as Sherlock's assistant and confidant. That's fine, but it requires some explanation. It can work for stories set pre-series, before John ever came on the scene (like Mrs Hudson in DiscordantWords’ “The Pillar upon Which England Rests”, or Greg Lestrade in my own “Aiding and Abetting”). It can also work well with characters who are close to John rather than to Sherlock (like Sarah Sawyer in AJHall's "The Affair of the Asphyxiated Acafan"). I'm thinking that Mary in seasons 3/4 would be another obvious candidate for this, or even Rosie in a future fic. But I yet have to find an example for either.

The other option is to create an OC as your POV character. In fact, many readers really enjoy the so-called outsider perspective. Among other things, it can add wonderful humour and even unexpected depth to a story. Brilliant examples of this technique are AJHall’s “Rigging Screws” and esterbrook’s “As Others See Us”. If you enjoy making up OCs, and looking at Sherlock and John through their eyes, then this is your perfect chance!

This third party perspective - both variants, canon character and OC - has its limits though. Unless you literally make your POV character move in with the boys, there’s no way the character will see and hear and know everything that’s going on. So unless you want to resort to slightly clumsy techniques such as, for example, making your POV character accidentally overhear a conversation between Sherlock and John and/or the police in which Sherlock expounds his theories, you’ll need to keep very good track of what the POV character can plausibly know and what they can’t know at any given point in the story. For example, unless the POV character is involved in the investigation in an official capacity, or unless the crime happened in their own home, they’re not likely to be allowed onto the crime scene or into police meetings and briefings.

You’re not even limited to a single POV. It’s a common technique in crime fiction to tell the first chapter/scene (usually by way of a prologue) from the POV of a secondary character (often either the victim or the perpetrator of the crime), and then switch to the investigator's POV for the main story. That’s perfectly permissible. More complex POV switches than that are tricky, though. If you think switching POVs is the best way to tell your story, make sure there’s a clearly recognisable pattern to it (like alternating between Sherlock and John for every chapter/scene). Don’t under any circumstances - and this is basic writing advice that applies to any genre - switch randomly in mid-scene, just because it seems more convenient to suddenly be in someone else’s head.

 

So - got your crime, locations, characters and POV? Then you’re all set. Now write! :)

Chapter 2: The Writing Stage

Chapter Text

 

Chapter 2: The Writing Stage

 

1. Getting started

Writing the scenes/chapters of your story in chronological order makes the most sense, but isn’t always easiest. That empty page staring back at you while you're trying to come up with a good opening line can be paralysing, at times.

I tend to start with the scenes of the story that I like best and that I’m picturing most vividly in my head - in short, the scenes for the sake of which I'm writing the story at all. Then I fill in the gaps. If you’re willing to go back over your entire story again and again to ensure the proper sequence of events and check for continuity errors, that’s perfectly permissible.

The only strict rule I have is to always write the denouement last of all. I take lots of notes of what needs to be covered in it while I write everything else, but I've found that it saves a lot of retroactive editing if I leave the actual writing of the solution for last.

But back to the start of your story, no matter at what point in time you actually write it. Most tutorials on “How to write crime fiction” will insist that the story needs to start with a BANG. A first sentence “like a shotgun blast in the middle of the night”, and a dead body on the very first page, as this - otherwise quite useful - meta on writing original crime fiction demands. In fanfic, I’d say that’s fine but certainly not required. You can just as well start your casefic in the traditional Sherlock Holmes way - with a client bringing Sherlock and John a case to 221B Baker Street, or Sherlock and John getting called to a crime scene by the police. Or in any other way, really. Again, as so often in fanfic, the appeal of the familiar will keep your readers reading even if they’re not at maximum stress levels from the first line onwards.

However, do try and get your readers hooked by the end of the first scene/chapter. Especially if you post in instalments rather than the whole story in one go, people are unlikely to read on or subscribe and come back if, by the end of the first scene/chapter, there’s no indication that the case you promised them is going to start any time soon. And even if your story absolutely requires the crime to happen (or come to our heroes’ attention) only much later on in the story, make sure you’ve given your readers something else to pique their interest, some mystery, some unanswered question, something that needs following up, by the end of the first scene/chapter.

 

2. Narrative structure

Some writers find it helpful to make their stories follow a certain structure - three acts, or five acts, like a classical drama. Others prefer to just start writing and see where they end up. Up to you. Casefic tends to be most satisfying when you set your story within the concise boundaries of the unity of time, place and events - which the literary-minded of you may know as the “Classical Unities” or “Aristotelian Unities”. Most of Conan Doyle’s own short stories follow that pattern, taking course over a single day or a couple of days at most, in a limited number of locations, and never deviating from the focus on the actual case. In one-shots, this will happen almost automatically. But it works well in longish chaptered stories, too.

Of course your story can also be of epic scope, covering weeks or even months, and moving from Baker Street to the ends of the earth and back again if the plot requires it. Do make sure though that in that case, both your motivation and your stamina will last long enough to see it through. Like the route to the summit of Mount Everest is littered with frozen corpses, every fanfic archive I know is littered with abandoned WIPs (works in progress) that were so vast in scope and so complex in plot that they ended up defeating their own authors. At least if you're new to casefic, it's probably wiser to start with something smaller.

Likewise, time gaps (that require chapter headings like “one month later”) aren’t an absolute no-no, but they’re awkward at best and really only suitable for prologues and epilogues. It's difficult to maintain the dramatic tension if your protagonists take a break investigating, and only pick up the case again a lot later. The more your detectives are affected by the crime and the more it matters to them to clear it up, the less likely it is that they’ll give it a rest for a while.

The only elements that you really do need to include in any casefic are, obviously, the crime, the process of its solution, and the solution itself. In that order, please.

It’s easiest to tell the story in straightforward chronological order. Switching back and forth between the present and flashbacks to past events is masterclass level, and only works if the pattern is clearly recognisable to the reader, such as when you add on a frame narrative at the beginning and at the end, like bookends.

Never leave your readers in any doubt about what moment in the timeline they're in. Avoid time jumps in particular – don’t relate events in a different order than they really happened in. That comes close to messing with your readers, and thus violating one of the six golden rules of good casefic. Non-linear narrative can be very impressive when done skillfully in other genres, but if you try it in casefic, your story will suffer. Unreliable narrators and casefic don't belong together for the same reason.

 

3. Deductions

Let’s face it - a Sherlock Holmes casefic isn’t complete without at least one stunning, snappy deduction from the world’s only consulting detective. They’re hard, but they’re always worth it. Your readers will absolutely love you for them.

In the show itself, there are two types - explained ones and unexplained ones. Unexplained ones can be used for comic relief (like the famous lower third of the door handle of Chinese restaurants in "A Study in Pink"), or if you need Sherlock to distract a potentially obstructive minor character (like the waiter with the pregnant wife at the start of the reunion scene in “The Empty Hearse”). But they should be used sparingly, as they’re not half as satisfying as the explained ones. And any deduction that your actual mystery really hinges on absolutely does need to be explained satisfactorily, or again, you’re in danger of cheating your readers.

As for how to come up with a clever deduction - keep your eyes and ears open. Sometimes they will occur to you suddenly and out of context, and you’ll only manage to fit them into a story much later. (I can clearly trace one of the puzzles in “The Adventure of the Grey Messenger” back to a moment more than a year before I ever started planning and plotting the story itself. I'd hilariously misread someone's exotic name on their name tag, and immediately thought “that needs to go into a casefic one day”. Lo and behold, there it is.) It really is worth it to take a (mental or written) note of all those little things immediately as they occur to you, no matter whether they already have a place in a story or not.

The common definition of a deduction is forming a link between one’s sensory perception and one’s background knowledge. So if you ever notice that some things have a specific smell or taste or sound, or leave certain specific traces, take a note of those. Or work backwards – what could you deduce from certain circumstances? Which of your usual activities leave what traces? Whatever field you have specialist knowledge in (through your job, or through a hobby – everyone of us has something they know better than most others!), feel free to turn it into a deduction.

If you’re hard-pressed to come up with an entirely original deduction of your own, don’t despair. You’re absolutely free to steal from Conan Doyle’s stories for this purpose, too. Remember, the first brilliant deduction that Sherlock ever stunned John (and all the rest of us) with in “A Study in Pink”, the one about John’s sister’s phone, was just an (albeit magnificent) modern rewrite of one of Conan Doyle’s own most famous deductions from “The Sign of Four”.

 

4. Creating suspense

One reason why casefic makes such a satisfactory read is the intellectual challenge of the puzzle, but the other half of the fascination is the thrill that comes with dealing with a dangerous opponent. It’s of course up to you to what amount of thrill and suspense you want in your story, or whether you prefer to focus mostly on the intellectual game instead. But I personally find that the best casefics have a good measure of both.

There are lots of ways how to create suspense, or ratchet up existing suspense levels.

 

a) Danger

The simplest (but still the most efficient) is actual physical danger. There are many forms this can take. For example, you can

  • make the perpetrator commit/threaten to commit another violent crime, or an even worse one; or
  • make the perpetrator try and escape detection by trying to kill, kidnap or otherwise silence an unwanted witness; or
  • make the perpetrator try and escape detection by trying to kill, kidnap or otherwise silence Sherlock and/or John; or
  • make the perpetrator try to coerce Sherlock and John into abandoning the investigation by hurting/threatening to hurt someone they care about.

These scenarios all make for great thrills and will provide excellent opportunities for some cracking good action - chases, rescues, John being his much-loved BAMF army doctor self - and maybe even for some lovely H/C afterwards.

But whatever danger it is our heroes are facing, don’t overdo this either. No matter whether your story is short or long,

  • increase the dose gradually,
  • save the highest danger level for the climax of your story,
  • and don’t try the same trick more than once.

Depending on the length and complexity of your story, you can certainly have several separate dangerous situations over the course of it. But make sure the danger level rises continuously, i. e. make each of your dangerous moments more dangerous than the one before, not the other way round. Also, alternate dangerous moments with moments of quiet and (relative) safety. Danger is only narratively effective if it’s perceived by the characters (and hence by the readers) as something that’s shockingly out of the ordinary. So don’t try and keep up the same danger level continuously over the course of several chapters/scenes, or even over the entire story. If there’s never any relief, your readers will get used to even very high stress levels, and will eventually become immune to them, which will ruin the effect you’re going for. So to maintain the narrative effect of your several separate danger doses, take care to let the characters wind down in between. Comic relief and banter are excellent for that purpose. Or if comedy doesn’t fit the mood, quiet domestic bliss at 221B Baker Street and/or a bit of H/C can do the trick, too.

Rule of thumb: Don't make a main character nearly die more than once in the same story. Also don't make more than one main character nearly die in the same story. Or else your readers will soon recognise the pattern and just start yawning.

 

b) Constraints

Other ways to increase suspense, without necessarily exposing anyone to physical danger, include placing constraints on your investigators that make it more difficult for them to solve the case and/or prevent further crimes.

You can use time constraints. Very simple: Put your detectives on a ticking clock. “Solve the crime in 12 hours, or BOOM.” (“The Great Game”). “Defuse the bomb in 2 minutes 30 seconds, or BOOM.” (“The Empty Hearse”). "Make her say 'I love you', or BOOM" ("The Final Problem"). The possibilities for this are endless and, although this may be news to the writers of the show, not actually limited to bombs.

How about the official police are coming to arrest the wrong person, and Sherlock and John must find the proof of the person’s innocence by the time the coppers get there? Or, the suspect is about to leave the country and they must solve the case and get a warrant in time to stop them? Or, they must have found the incriminating documents before the suspect returns to his office and has them arrested for breaking and entering?

You can also use constraints of place. Put Sherlock and John alone on an island, or have them snowed in in an isolated place, or make them get lost in the wilds (like in chainsaw_poet’s “A Week in the Country” or in my “Into the Hills”). Scenarios like these already create suspense by limiting resources and means of communication, even before there’s actual danger. Then add danger on top, and you have an excellent recipe for getting your readers onto the edges of their seats. The disadvantage is that you usually have to move outside London for scenarios like these, which means more explanation, and more research. But then again, who says Sherlock and John can't get stuck on the top of the Big Ben clock tower, or be afloat in a boat on the Thames without either oars or engine?

 

c) Removing certainties

An even more sophisticated way of creating or increasing suspense is to remove a reassuring certainty. There are things that our heroes tend to rely on as a matter of course. Remove one (or several) of them and see how that changes the atmosphere.

Examples:

  • Mycroft is the British Government who can ultimately control the police and any other official agency, and bail Sherlock and John out of all sorts of difficulties and tricky situations. But what if Mycroft is suddenly incapacitated or otherwise out of reach when they get in trouble? Or, worse, what if the case puts Sherlock and Mycroft on opposing sides?
  • Greg Lestrade is a loyal and steadfast friend who’s always ready to bend police rules to suit Sherlock’s purposes. But what if it’s not Greg in charge of the investigation this time, but someone who dislikes Sherlock and John and isn’t willing to cooperate with them? Or Greg gets overruled by his superiors?
  • 221B is a safe refuge for Sherlock and John that they can always come back to and recoup. But what if it comes under surveillance or even under attack one day, and our heroes are no longer safe there?
  • Sherlock and John are seen as good guys by everyone, and nobody doubts their honest intentions. But what if one of them suddenly comes under suspicion themselves?

“The Reichenbach Fall” very effectively combined the latter three scenarios. I’m still waiting eagerly to see the first play out in the show one day. A great casefic that very cleverly employs scenario No. 4 is Lindentreeisle's “Major Pieces”.

 

d) Cliffhangers

A technically simple but very effective way to keep up the suspense is a cliffhanger - as in, cutting off your scene/chapter just when your readers are dying to know what comes next.

They’re easy to do in chaptered stories, and they hardly ever fail to impress. At masterclass level, you can even work them into a one-shot, usually by way of a POV switch at just the right - wrong - moment.

Write your scene so it deliberately moves towards the cliffhanger; don’t try and work them afterwards into an already existing scene, or they’ll break the flow. Don’t ruin a great action sequence by snipping it in half in the editing process; if it was never intended to be interrupted by a scene/chapter break, then do your cliffhanging at some other place in the story.

There’s not much else to say about them. They work.

 

5. Ending the story

Traditionally, a detective story ends with a denouement in which the main investigator reveals the solution to the mystery, and with a showdown in which the good guys confront the guilty party, and the guilty party gets their just deserts in some way or another (usually by getting arrested, getting killed, or killing themselves). This is essential to a casefic, too. The readers need their questions answered, and there have to be consequences for the characters involved. You can't cheat them out of either.

As G. K. Chesterton, one of the godfathers of classic detective fiction, put it in his “How to Write a Detective Story” essay: “The point of the story is light, not darkness.” The crime itself is only the starting point that upsets the natural and just order of things. Restoring that order is what the rest of the story is all about, and what your readers will want to see. So the denouement is what you're writing towards, the core and centrepiece of your story. Make sure it lives up to that, even if you've already spent a long time on the story and are itching to get it over with.

Depending on the length of your story, it 's often a good idea to space out your revelations a bit. In a short story, especially in a one-shot, it's usually fine to just let the investigators accumulate clues and pieces of information, and then present the correct interpretation of them at the end, all in one go. In a longer story, however, it's more satisfying for the readers if you give them a few pieces of the solution along the way, a few fragments that they can use to build their own theories on. Let the solution take shape gradually, rather than keeping them completely in the dark until the very end.

This latter technique will also enable you to have some nice surprises throughout the story, some unexpected twists, some jawdrop moments - and it's those that will make your readers keep turning pages. At masterclass level, you might even manage to pull off a double twist: Make all your clues point in one direction, so by the time your readers arrive at the denouement, they think they have the solution – and then stun them with the revelation what the solution really is. Remember that moment when John stepped into Sherlock's view at the swimming pool in “The Great Game”? That, and the subsequent appearance of “Jim from IT”, is a prime example of a double twist.

Another variant of this, also at masterclass level, is the “case behind the case”. In this, you make your readers think, when they read the denouement, that the – by then – obvious solution is the whole picture, only to reveal at the very end, as a cherry on top, that there was still more to it, another layer, a case behind the case, a secret behind the secret. In this case, unlike with the double twist, the primary solution is the real solution and as such stands on its own, it’s just not all there is to it. Burntcopper does this brilliantly in “The Case of the Disappearing Dancer”.

But of course, no matter how much or how little you reveal before the end, always save the full picture until last.

Whether you combine the denouement and the showdown into one scene, or have two separate scenes for them, depends of course on the specifics of your story. If your plot is complex, the denouement will probably require a lot of talking, while showdowns usually require action, so in a long and complicated mystery that takes some time to explain, it’s usually best to keep the two separate, for example by making one evolve into the other. Which comes first depends on your story, too, particularly on whether you want the villain to be present at the denouement and in what role (discovered/undiscovered).

Whatever your denouement and your showdown look like, finish the story soon afterwards. You may still - justly - feel the need to wrap up a few loose ends or subplots that aren’t part of the actual solution to the mystery. Or if the story ends on a particularly sad and tragic note, you may feel the need to lighten the mood with a bit of comic relief, to reassure your readers that our heroes will eventually be fine again. But don’t make the story drag on and on.

Rule of thumb: Allow yourself one more chapter/scene after the denouement/showdown (including epilogues), but no more.

Try and tie up all the loose ends. Always tie up the major loose ends. You owe your readers the answers to all the questions you’ve made them ask. Don’t leave them hanging in the air. If, for example, you’ve included big red herrings, such as an innocent character behaving suspiciously for a reason that turns out to have nothing to do with the crime, explain the true reason. Or if you’ve created an engaging OC that you want your readers to care about and sympathise with, give us a hint how they’ll move on from the case, and what will become of them. If your case has deeply affected Sherlock and/or John emotionally, give them some closure (or at least a promise of closure). With minor loose ends or mini-subplots, a single explanatory line will often do, but it will be sorely missed if it isn’t there.

Chapter 3: Six Golden Rules

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Six Golden Rules

 

Rule No. 1: Make sense.

Because you must. In casefic, both the solution and the process of arriving at the solution must strictly follow the rules of logic. You can make your plot twist and turn until your readers are dizzy with the shocks and surprises, but they trust you to keep the boat on an even keel. So make absolutely sure your own charts are in good order to start with.

Check your story, over and over again, for any logical flaws and continuity errors. Never lose sight of who is doing what, when, where and most importantly why. Work with a detailed timeline to keep track of the sequence of events. If your puzzle depends on the specific layout of a location, draw a plan to make sure you stay consistent. Always be aware of all your characters’ reasons and motivations for doing what they do, at any time.

If you realise that something’s happening but you can’t really say how it came about, or if something needs to happen but you don’t know how to get there, you’re dealing with a plot hole. And plot holes want to be fixed. If you really get stuck, go back and redraft/rewrite as much of the story as necessary. Maybe let the matter rest for a couple of days, don’t try and force it. Some more good advice on how to overcome writer’s block can by found in this very helpful meta by JBaillier.

But as long as you feel your story is deficient in the department of logic, do something. Just ignoring a plot hole or a logical flaw never helps. They never just go away on their own.

And don’t take the easy way out! However handy it may appear, you should never resolve your mystery through accident or coincidence. Of course accidents and coincidences can feature in the story. Our lives are made up of them, after all. Single clues can fall into the investigators’ laps; but the solution as such can't. They have to work it out themselves, not receive it as a gift. Because that’s what heroes do.

Likewise, never fall back on supernatural explanations. Supposedly supernatural phenomena can of course be part of your mystery. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set us a thrilling example of this in “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, and the show writers have happily followed in those footsteps with their own “The Hounds of Baskerville” and “The Abominable Bride”. There are some very good casefics along those lines, too, among them owlcroft’s “Medium Dark” and TheWhiteLily's "The Devil's Sceptic". But the supernatural can’t be part of your solution. There absolutely needs to be a rational explanation for everything. And to solve your case, dubious techniques like psychic “deducing”, relying on intuition, hypnosis, contacting spirits etc. are of course completely out of the question, too.

 

Rule No. 2: Do your research!

No, seriously. This applies to everyone, not only to the Andersons of this world. The most creative and original casefic will impress nobody if it’s based on facts, scenarios, premises or mechanisms that are provably non-existent or wrong.

I said above that you don’t need to be an expert in your chosen environment as long as you can successfully pretend to be. But that doesn’t excuse you from checking your facts as thoroughly as you possibly can. There are wonderful resources out there on the internet that you can tap for the purpose. As I also said above, it's amazing how far Wikipedia alone will usually get you.

I personally believe that this rule - getting things right - applies not only to the pivotal facts that make up the actual case and its solution, but to all facts in a story. Most factual errors and inaccuracies in a story are due to lack of research. And lack of research is lack of effort, and lack of effort is lack of respect, both for your own story and for your readers. In my opinion. I’m aware that people's sensitivities in this department vary greatly, from utter perfectionism to being willing to gloss over even glaring mistakes if the rest of the story is still engaging and interesting in other ways. But honestly, if you're going to spend hours, days and weeks of your life writing that story of yours, wouldn't it be a crying shame if it didn't end up being the very best you can do? And if you can't bring yourself to bother to make it that, why should anyone bother to read it?

Don’t make this too hard for yourself, though. If you find it difficult to attain the necessary level of confidence to write about a certain subject as if you’re truly at home in it, then sometimes it’s better to simply avoid it altogether.

For example, if you don’t know the first thing about medicine, and don’t have a beta reader or another friend who can provide the necessary details, it’s probably not a good idea to make your story rely heavily on the detailed depiction of injury/illness, their treatment, hospital procedures and such – no matter how much you like the scenario. There are simply too many readers out there who will know better.

Similarly, if you have little or no knowledge of the criminal law system, police procedure and forensic science, and you can’t find the information you need on websites like this meta on how to write believable murder scenes, it’s not a good idea to make your story hinge on a particular legal or procedural point. People will call you on it if you’re wrong.

Rule of thumb: Be vague rather than wrong. If you can’t find the exact piece of information you’re looking for, don’t be too specific about what it might have been. We were never told which poison exactly the evil cabbie used on his victims in “A Study in Pink”, but I’ve never heard anyone complain.

 

Rule No. 3: Don't cheat your readers.

A crime story is always a mix of truths, lies and omissions. The characters are trying to hide the truth from each other, and you as the author are trying to hide the truth from your readers, until you're ready to dazzle them with it at last.

But that makes it all the more important that there should be some things your readers can absolutely rely on at all times. This means that in your capacity as author, you can’t lie to them. This applies to all facts, big or small, pivotal or circumstantial. If you say that something is A, it can't turn out to be B. If you say it is not A, it can't turn out to be A anyway.

Examples: If you say the door into the room where the victim was found was locked, then it was locked, and you can't make the solution to your mystery hinge on the fact that it was actually not. If you say Sherlock went home and slept tight for the rest of the night, then he did just that, and you can't reveal later that he sneaked out again to do some further investigating without anyone else noticing.

Likewise, you can't lie by omission. Your descriptions, no matter whether of a person, a place, or a sequence of events, must be complete. All elements that are relevant to the solution of your mystery must appear in it.

Example: If you describe Sherlock examining a room in the victim’s house, and you write only that he closely studied the objects on the mantelpiece and on the window sill, but you say nothing at all about him being interested in the desk (or don't even mention that there is a desk), then you can't reveal later that Sherlock found an all-important document in one of the desk drawers.

It’s a very different matter, however, if you relate the situation through the eyes of a character (rather than as the omniscient author), reporting not objective facts but only the character's perceptions of them. That will give you the necessary room to turn. If something only appears to be A to your POV character, they could still be wrong, and it could be B after all!

To go back to the above examples:

It’s perfectly permissible to write that when John tried the door handle, it wouldn't give – and still reveal later that the door was not locked but only blocked by furniture on the other side. Because then, you don’t present the door being locked as an absolute truth. You only describe John’s perception and (mistaken) conclusion.

Likewise, you can perfectly well describe Sherlock saying goodnight to John outside 221B and John seeing him enter the house and close the door behind him - and still reveal later that he sneaked out again as soon as John's cab had left.

And if, in the third example, John is in the victim's room with Sherlock but happens to be called away by Lestrade just when Sherlock is done examining the mantelpiece and the window sill, and only enters the room again a couple of minutes later, then of course Sherlock can have found an important document in the desk in the meantime, and kept that secret until later. Just don't forget to mention that there is a desk there.

So when you're speaking as the author, you must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But you're totally free to make your POV characters (in the above examples, John) miss and misinterpret things. To disregard the former rule is cheating; the latter is part of the game. That’s an extremely important distinction.

Rule of thumb: Your readers should always be on a par with the POV character, i. e. the readers should know as much or as little as the POV character does at any given point. That means you have to relate all the POV character's perceptions, accurately and fully, straight away, even if the perceptions themselves later turn out to be inaccurate or incomplete.

And keep your readers and your POV character on a par for as long as you possibly can. Sometimes, towards the end of the story, you may find yourself wanting to make a secret even of your POV character’s own thoughts and knowledge, to preserve the suspense for a little longer. But please do that only as a last resort. There’s always something very clumsy about it when characters literally start whispering into each other’s ears to stop the reader from hearing the murderer’s name too soon. And cutting a scene off right after Sherlock says to John, "And this is what really happened...", only to pick up the story again at a later point in the timeline, is hardly better. I personally feel that's maddening rather than intriguing. If you must do it, do it only once and as close to the real denouement as you can. Definitely don’t do it early on in the story, and don’t do it regularly.

The “don't cheat your readers” rule applies to all facts, but it is of paramount importance when it comes to the pivotal ones, the ones that the solution of your mystery rests on. Which leads us to -

 

Rule No. 4: Place your clues properly.

A cardinal rule for any good crime story is that at the end, your readers should not only be able to understand the solution and every step that led to it, but they should also feel that they had an equal chance to solve the mystery themselves. So, laying out the solution of the mystery before your readers so it all comes together and makes sense, with every step and every deduction logically explained, is a must - but it’s not enough. It’s equally important to enable your readers, over the course of the story, to almost come to the correct conclusion themselves.

The effect you’re going for in your denouement is your readers slapping their foreheads exclaiming “Why didn’t I see that!”. What you definitely don’t want is your readers scratching their heads going “Now where did that come from?”. I can’t stress this enough. Your readers’ overall enjoyment of your casefic (or not) absolutely depends on which of those two reactions the story has given them. If your solution (or an important element of it) comes out of nowhere, your readers will - justly - feel cheated and turn away from your story in disappointment, no matter how clever the solution was in itself.

I mean it when I say this can make or break a story. It's always a terrible shame when a writer has come up with a highly original and very clever plot, only to ruin it by presenting the solution like a rabbit out of a hat, with not even a theoretical chance for the readers to come to the same conclusion themselves. In the literary tradition, this phenomenon is called a Deus ex machina, and it should be anathema to any self-respecting crime writer.

Here's how to avoid it:

Your readers must be, at the time when they get to the big denouement, in possession of all the facts that form the solution of the case, or at least of all the facts from which the solution may be inferred. So you have to mention things beforehand, or at least strongly imply them. This is technically known as "placing a clue". Whatever isn't mentioned or at least implied in your story technically doesn't exist in it, and what doesn't exist can't be part of the solution.

Seriously, there are only two things that are really hard to do well in casefic - one is to make the story make sense, and the other is this. But both are indispensable for success.

Think of placing your clues as of planting seeds. You should do no more than that. Let them grow into a flower gradually over the course of the story. Don't bring your little seedling to full bloom before the grand finale. But the seeds need to be there from the beginning.

Clues can take many shapes and forms, depending on what your mystery is, and on how it gets solved.

Clues can be actual physical objects, or the physical layout of a location.

If a specific object found at the crime scene turns out to be a vital clue, then the readers must have “seen” it there with their own eyes, even though they may not attach any importance to it at first. Example: If the ugly porcelain figurine of a Dalmatian dog on the victim’s desk is a vital clue, then you must inform the readers that it was there, as soon as your POV character themselves perceived it (or, if they never set foot in the place themselves, was told about it by another character.) You can’t not mention it, and then claim later at the denouement that it was always there.

Or if there's a window overlooking a certain location, and you're planning to reveal at the denouement that a witness observed and overheard an important secret conversation from it, then your readers must have “seen” that window, and you must also say or imply that it was within hearing distance from the scene, well before the denouement.

The same rule applies also to vital non-physical items, such as pieces of information, and even to whole characters.

Every character who turns out to play a pivotal part in the story, especially the villain, must have been introduced to it in some way or another before the denouement. They needn’t necessarily come on stage in person, they can just be mentioned by someone else. They also needn’t be introduced in every detail - their name, their exact relationship with the other characters and their physical appearance can (and sometimes should) remain secret until the end. But there needs to be some prior indication that they - or at least someone like them - exist at all.

Likewise, every theme that turns out to be important in the story, especially if it provides the motive of the crime, must have been introduced to it in some way or another before the denouement (though not necessarily in the context of the actual crime). If your crime is the result of a conflict among drug dealers, introduce the drugs theme before the denouement. If your crime has a political background, mention the relevant political issue before the denouement. If you’re writing about a crime of passion, hint at the possibility of the personal conflict behind it before the denouement. You get the point.

The same rule also applies to any important item of a character’s backstory, especially if it's of your own invention and not a confirmed canonical fact that everybody knows anyway. If it comes into the solution, then you need to set it up before the denouement, too. It's usually a good idea to deliberately recall even generally known canonical facts, to prevent them coming out of the blue in the context of your specific story. For example, if you're going to solve the mystery by pulling an old enemy of John’s from his army days out of your hat, there should be a previous mention of John’s military past in the story. Likewise, if the solution to the mystery lies in Sherlock’s junkie past, or in Mrs Hudson’s unhappy marriage and life in Florida, it’s a good idea to refer to those parts of their lives at least in general terms before they become pivotal.

Likewise, if your story hinges on a certain aspect of a character’s personality, or on any specific skills or abilities of theirs that aren't general canon knowledge, you need to establish those, too. For example, if one of your characters has the ability to lip-read and this allows to them to gather important information that they could not have obtained otherwise, you have to tell your readers about that ability, or at least strongly imply it (for example by mentioning or showing that the character in question is deaf/hard of hearing), before you use it as a plot device in the denouement.

But of course you don't want to draw undue attention to the important facts too early on. Remember, you want your readers to feel like they could have solved the puzzle themselves, but you don’t want them to actually do it! That means you have to walk a fine line between being too obvious and being too obscure. This is tricky, but there are rules for this, too.

For example, it's always a good idea to place the clue and the revelation of the clue's actual importance as far apart in the timeline as possible. That increases the chance of your readers simply having forgotten all about it by the time they realise its true significance.

Generally, there are three ways how to plant your clues without being too obvious. Variant 1 is hiding a relevant fact in a forest of irrelevant ones. Variant 2 is hiding a relevant fact in a context that has as little as possible to do with the actual crime. Variant 3, usually the most elegant, is to suggest an incorrect interpretation of a relevant fact.

To go back to the above example of the ugly porcelaine figurine of the Dalmatian dog on the victim's desk: Let's assume that there's a secret document or digital data carrier hidden inside it, which is vital for the solution of the mystery. That means you need to let your readers "see" that dog as soon as your POV character perceives it (or is told of its existence), but of course you want to obscure its importance for the time being. This is how you can do it:

Variant No. 1 (Hide the clue in a forest of irrelevant details): On the victim's desk, there's the dog, but there are also other unexpected and even stranger and more intriguing objects, for example an antique bronze dagger of uncertain provenance, a framed photograph of an unknown attractive young woman, and a data CD broken in half (which all turn out to be irrelevant or of only minor importance), so the investigators' focus is on those other objects instead (at least at first).

Variant No. 2 (Hide the clue in an unrelated context): There's a mention of someone hiding a document or digital data carrier inside an object at some earlier point in the story, but in a context that has nothing to do with the crime. Maybe Sherlock and John joke about what's the real purpose of Mycroft's umbrella. The moment our heroes finally remember that, they realise the dog's function, too.

Variant No. 3 (Suggest an incorrect interpretation of the clue): It looks strange at first that the dog should be there at all (the victim had no dog, nor did he like them), but soon a plausible (but ultimately incorrect or at least incomplete) explanation for its presence suggests itself (it's an heirloom, it's a souvenir...). So our heroes mistakenly dismiss it as having no deeper meaning than that, until their final moment of epiphany.

Please note that these variants aren't mutually exclusive. On the contrary, you may find yourself applying all three to one and the same clue!

At masterclass level, you can also plant your clues by combining two whole, seemingly unrelated cases. Case 1 is your main case, which takes up most of the space in your story, and gets all the readers’ attention. Case 2 appears to be a mere sub-plot at first. It is depicted (or even just mentioned) only in passing and in much less detail. This second case could be something Sherlock is working on concurrently but without much enthusiasm, or something he worked on earlier but never solved, or something Mycroft wants Sherlock to work on while Sherlock himself is not interested. But in fact, the two cases turn out to be related, and the second case eventually provides the solution to the first.  (This is actually just a particularly refined application of the Variant No. 2 mentioned above. Refined because here, the clue (i. e. the second case) appears in a context that only seems to have nothing to do with the actual crime, while in fact it has everything to do with it.)

The show writers tried their hand at this semi-successfully in “The Great Game” (semi, because while Westie’s death did turn out to be related to Moriarty’s line of business, the Westie sub-plot was not actually pivotal to the conclusion of the episode - maybe because there was no conclusion…). They later pulled off the same trick more successfully in “A Scandal in Belgravia”, in which Sherlock keeps getting hints about mislaid and disappeared corpses but only links them to the Bond Air scheme at the very end. They employ the same technique in "The Hounds of Baskerville", too, when Sherlock makes the connection between the seemingly ridiculous case of Bluebell the Missing Rabbit and the research going on at Baskerville.

(And I can tell you, I'm absolutely itching to give you some examples of casefic where I thought this worked well, too, but that would be such a terrible spoiler that I'll refrain.)

So much for the theory. Ultimately, the question whether you've been too obvious or too obscure while placing your clues, and whether there are too few or too many, can only be answered with regards to the actual story.

Which leads us straight into

 

Rule No. 5: Do a trial run.

Many fanfic writers work with a beta reader anyway, and if you do, then you've got this point already covered. Even if your beta reader usually only checks your stories for language stuff such as spelling, grammar and typos - if you're doing a casefic, ask them for their opinion on the content as well.

If you generally prefer not to work with a beta reader, or if you simply haven't managed to find one yet, still try and get a (fandom) friend to test-read the story and just put in their reactions on your plot twists and your revelations, every “oh!” and “ah!” and “OMG!”, and of course also every “WTF?” and every “well that was bloody obvious”. Ask them how well (or not) your clues worked. If they’re willing to go into details, ask them specific questions like “At what point exactly did you realise that the young lady the victim was seen with before he died wasn't his mistress, but his secret illegitimate daughter?”

You’ll sometimes be surprised at their answers. Because both the obviousness (or not) of your clues and your red herrings, and the effect that your plot twists and cliffhangers and revelations will have on the readers, are really, really hard to foresee. So if you don't want to accidentally ruin your best surprises by timing them badly, and your clever conclusions by either over- or under-explaining them, I'd absolutely urge you to get a second opinion before exposing the story to a larger audience.

 

Rule No. 6: Never start posting a casefic before you’ve completed it.

Really not. Please. Even if you work with a very detailed plot outline, never, never post even the first chapter of your story before you’ve finalised the last (and all others in between, too, if you share my bad habit of writing out of sequence). Just don’t do it. You’ll be in so much trouble, and all of it home-made and therefore completely unnecessary.

Because you will want to go back and change things. But you won’t know which ones, and how exactly, until you’ve written the whole story, solution and all. Even the cleverest among us will occasionally write themselves into corners. This is especially true when it comes to the proper placement of clues, as discussed in Rule No. 3. Trust me, you really need to have the whole story down on paper/screen, right in front of your eyes before you (and your beta-reader) can judge correctly whether the clues come in the right number, at the right time, in the right order, and in an adequately obscured form.

Most chaptered casefics (and this rule obviously applies only to them) simply are too complex to be put down, flawless and perfect, in one fell swoop. Don’t put yourself under that pressure. It’s a battle you’re not going to win. On the contrary - premature posting will inevitably result in dissatisfaction on all sides. You'll be unhappy with the story because in retrospect, of course it could have been better if you'd polished it properly. And your readers will either be frustrated if the story's not as good as it could have been, or you'll overtax their patience by asking them to go back and re-read an earlier chapter that you had to do heavy retroactive editing on. Or, at the very worst, you may not find your way out of one of those damned corners at all, and your story will end up in the graveyard of abandoned WIPs, yet another monument to the truth of the saying that haste makes waste. You really don't want any of that to happen.

So please don’t sacrifice the quality of your story to the short-lived gratification of instant feedback. Your story deserves better than that.

 

And now I want to read it. So make sure you drop me a line when you post yours! :)

 

Further reading:

There’s a ton of material out there on the internet about “How to write crime fiction”. Two contemporary metas I’ve found useful are on thecreativepen.com and on nownovel.com. Or if you like, read up on what the classics have to say on the matter - at least ninety-five percent of it is still true:

And it’s also helpful to simply read a lot of crime fiction, and casefic by fellow fanfic writers. That way, you’ll soon find out what works and what doesn’t. That's how I figured out everything I've said here, too.

 

Notes:

I’d like to thank everyone who’s discussed the appeal and the technique of casefic with me over the past months and years, enabling me to grasp the theory behind the fun - most notably my beta reader Cooklet; my co-author for “The Adventure of the Grey Messenger”, RubraSaetaFictor; and also GhyllWyne, silverblazehorse, dioscureantwins and Kittyhawk57.

I’d also like to thank everyone who’s written and posted great casefic for our fandom and thus provided me with both hours of entertainment and excellent demonstration material for this meta. Some of those stories ended up mentioned in this meta; the rest you will find in my bookmarks and/or in the casefic section of the BBC “Sherlock” for Canon Addicts collection. And if I've missed out on any of your own favourite casefics, absolutely drop me a rec!

If you’ve found this little tutorial helpful, please let me know. If you have questions, or suggestions for improvements and additions, ditto! I’d love to hear what you think. :)