Some thoughts on crime fiction.
Whatever crime you do isn’t actually what we want to see on screen, unless what you do has to do with relationships in conflict.
This is an early lesson imrov actors learn. If you have a scene where two people are fishing, the last thing you talk about is fishing.
The same is true of crime fiction. John Harper, Stras Acimovic, Adam Koebel and I often chastise ourselves that the Bloodletters don’t spend any time actually “hawking”. We’re usually fighting, but sometimes we’re brokering deals or fronting to other factions, or hunting down own foes in their homes.
But why? Because those things are interesting! Sure, we’ll show montages of here and there of someone getting a tattoo with demon blood, or our junkies collapsing in the alley, but how much fun would it be for us to play out a drug dealer with an addict? If the addict had something we wanted besides a few chits, plenty interesting, but otherwise, we care about the other factions and rivals (really one in the same) in the city.
There is a reason why the default crew were Thieves (now Shadows). The default action of thieves is taking something from someone else. It’s crime, but it’s also relationships in conflict, and that’s why it’s exciting.
So, call yourselves hawkers or smugglers or breakers or cultist or astronomers, it’s all the same. The action we want play (and want to see) is which of your neighbors soups you’re pissing in, and what they do to your soup in turn.
[Note: I’m not advocating changing anything in Blades, just not worrying too much (or at all) if you spend all your time doing other things.]