Weekly Plot Help - Week of November 3rd

[alison-sky.livejournal.com]

Got a problem in your NaNo? Who doesn't?! But we've got a way to help!

Post here with your plot problems, and all through the week members of the community will scan through and see if they can help.

AKA - The best way to procrastinate is to help others!

So post your problem. Then take a moment to look at everyone else's and see if you can help them.

People helping people. That's what makes this community great :)

So have at it!

Comments

[caitak.livejournal.com]

My character was kidnapped by a serial killer two and a half months before my story begins (he let her go because he only kills people who have done something he deems 'bad' and then sets up their deaths to look like a suicide/mugging gone wrong to 'punish' them, in his mind she had done nothing wrong), at the end of the story she will come face to face with the guy when he kills her mother-in-law (who is also his biological mother who abandoned him, thus making him into the man he became.

Through the story my MC keeps finding deaths which may actually by murders carried out by the killer. My problem, she knows the killer's name but there isn't enough evidence to convict him of the murders. But she knows who he is. Why can't they just go pick him up if they know his name? I'm wanting him to crop up throughout the story without getting caught until the end. Any suggestions?

Also, what could the killer do to crop up in the story? I'm wanting the MC to be worried about telling people that she thinks she's seeing him in case they think she's being paranoid. So far I've got the idea of seeing him in a crowded supermarket, on public transport, when she's out investigating another case.

They're in Scotland if that makes any difference. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[jynxgirl.livejournal.com]

Why can't they just go pick him up if they know his name? Probable cause. They need more than a name to go on, and much as victim statements are helpful, their memories aren't always the best, so the police need a lot more to go on than a name. Especially in our forensic centered criminal system. :)

The killer could start semi-stalking your victim. Some places don't yet have stalking laws, so the MC wouldn't be able to file any complaints.

[random-acts.livejournal.com]

Ooh, are you a fellow Scot?

In terms of whether he committed the murders in the story, even if they know his name, if there's no concrete evidence that he has committed any crime, I don't think that they would be able to charge him. They might take him in for questioning but I think under Scottish law (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1995/Ukpga_19950046_en_1.htm) you can only hold someone for 6 hours unless you arrest him and presumably they can't arrest him unless they have appropriate evidence.

And to flip it slightly, what if the fact she knows his name and keeps linking him to murders without real evidence leads to him making accusations of harassment against her? And so the police can't keep going to pick him up in case he sues? Being accused of harassing him would make her even more paranoid as well!

[sugar-shrapnel.livejournal.com]

Throw in a restraining order and she couldn't seek him out and everyone would treat her as crazy when she said he kept accidentally turning up in her local coffee house, on her street etc. Good for building tension.