In a post on Killzone, PJ Parrish says that modern crime fiction is often more focused on the victim’s than the protagonist or murderer…and maybe that’s a good thing.
For example, Agatha Christie’s victims were rarely fleshed out. Instead, Christie focused on the motives and machinations of the murderers, and the techniques used to find them out. Once the murderer was sussed out, the lives of the remaining characters could return to normal. In current genre novels, however, readers are drawn to empathize with the victims, as the crime and investigation focuses more on the circumstances of their lives and the repercussions of their deaths.
“I believe readers want fully fleshed out victims, characters they can connect with — even if they are dead,” Parrish says. “Maybe especially if they are already dead when the story begins.” Your victims have to be more than plot props if you want your readers’ empathy.
“But building empathy for a dead character takes some doing,” Parrish says. “A big mistake many writers make is assuming that just because a character is dead, readers will automatically feel empathy for them.” This often means the writer skips over any attempt to help the reader empathize and portrays their detective as aloof and uncaring. “If your protag isn’t feeling anything for the victim, how do you expect your readers to?” Parrish asks.
So how do you create empathy for a character who might not get any speaking lines? Parrish suggests:
- Details matter. Parrish suggests assembling a thorough character profile for your victim, even if you don’t use it all. “Diaries, journals, photographs, yearbooks, a Facebook page — all are rich fodder,” she says. “Be careful you don’t make your victim a saint. Make them human.”
- What did your victim want? “What your victim wanted might have been what got them killed,” Parrish suggests. “You need to know this.”
- Connect them to your suspect(s). Even a serial killer picks his victim for a reason, even if the seems random to us. For a traditional whodunnit with multiple suspects, each should have a connection to your victim.
- Use other characters. The testimony of other characters is a rich source of information about your victim, both positive and negative.
- Revisit a victim’s physical world. “Culling through a victim’s possessions can be incredibly evocative and emotional, as any of us who has ever had to sort through a relative’s things after a funeral knows,” Parrish says.
