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The Two Pieces of Writing Advice I’d Give a Young Me
Because I’d love to have known these earlier
It’s 2004, I’m sitting in my office pushing paper. PC McMillan enters. She’s flustered. Her straggly dyed blonde hair splays over the shoulders of her saggy uniform, emphasising her skinny bones. Her big Doc Martin boots clomp on the parquet floor like a pony hurrying across cobbles. I look up and see the intent on her face. She urgently wants to tell me something.
“Fuck sake, Sarge. I’m fucking telling you, he’s the most fucked up fucking bastard I’ve ever met. What the fuck!”
Forget the guy she’s talking about. There’s no story there. He’s just another guilty guy who will get away with his crime because we haven’t enough evidence to lock him up. It happens. Bad people sometimes get away with their wickedness. This isn’t an episode of Columbo. He isn’t going to spill the beans.
I concentrate on Sarah. Her official title is Constable McMillan.
Sarah is young and impressionable. She’s trying to fit in with her older, more experienced colleagues. She imagined we were like the macho canteen culture she’d seen on TV from characters playing drained, disillusioned, distrustful cops.
Some cops mirror society, but most are family-orientated people who try to do…
