John Dean – Crime Writer

August 24 2025

Opening up new opportunities

I have written many times before about how fascinating I find the organic nature of writing, as opposed to the more controlled planning process, but I think it’s worth returning to the theme from time to time in order to remind authors of the importance of letting stories develop themselves where possible.

My work on the first draft of the latest DCI John Blizzard crime novel is a case of point. When I was planning the book, I had, as usual, a basic synopsis mapped out, focusing my mind on the thread of the story before I began to write.

The synopsis had developed a single storyline but sitting alongside it were what I can best describe as fragments of information that popped into my mind, including three several female characters whose job titles were all I knew about them.

I have been working to introduce more diverse characters into my novels, including more women in order to correct my concern that the series was too male-dominated.

All I knew about the three women who came to mind were that they all been  recently appointed to head up the police force’s surveillance, economic crime and cybercrime units.

Suddenly exciting opportunities opened up and I sense that all will become regulars in the series.

Their appearance meant that, as the story developed in this novel, I could explore new themes – the changing face of the police service, the blight of mysogony, and the struggles of an old school copper like John Blizzard to come to terms with the impact of digital crime.

The result? Several sub-plots were born and a theme introduced that allowed me to conclude a story line that had always felt  important but had remained unfinished and largely ignored in previous books.

August 7 2025

Creating ‘real’ characters

Here’s an interesting exercise that an author at any stage of their development can use when they are working on their novel and need to ensure that they have created ‘real’ characters.

Select your character and jot down 20 things about them without hesitation.

If you can do that in a minute or so you have a ‘real’ character; if you struggle to get there then you still have work to do.

If it helps focus your mind, when you are writing your list, include four physical characteristics, four key events in their past which shaped the person they have become, four main elements of their personality (such as generous, secretive, irritable, easy-going etc) four details about their job (or how they fill their time if they don’t have a job) and four things which helps them fill their spare time (such as walking the dog, reading, enjoying a drink, birdwatching.

Use those sections and you will soon have your twenty entries for your list. Add things like their worst fear, their biggest achievements, their biggest regret, details of their home, their living arrangements, their relationship, their family/friends etc etc and your list will soon soar past 40.

That it does so is important because it gives you and the reader the feeling that this is a real person and not a cardboard cut-out – and, as an added bonus for the writer, it will provide many potential ideas for plots that are worth exploring.

Picture used courtesy of Pixabay/www.pexels.com

Will the real Jack Harris please step forward?

The origins of fictional characters has always fascinated me, particularly the extent to which many creators draw on real people as a starting point.

I talk to a lot of authors and many of them freely admit that some of their major characters are partly taken from real life.

I have no problem with that – I do it myself – but you have to be careful if you do it. You would be advised not to simply lift a real person lock, stock and barrel and drop them onto the page.

When I draw on a real person it tends to be just the start of the process and I will only use a small part of their make-up. Maybe it’s their physical appearance, big, small, athletic etc. or one or two elements of their personality, affable, irritable, nervous, irreverent.

From that starting point, creativity takes over as the building of the character begins. Ideally, the inspiration for the character should not be able to recognise themselves in the final version as the real person is subsumed into someone new and unique.

Can I give an example? Well, yes, I can – my detective chief inspector Jack Harris. He began life with a ‘lift’ from a real person, namely a police officer I interviewed several times, and very much admired, during my career as a crime reporter.

Harris is not him and he is not Harris, but my fictional character’s physical appearance is very much based on the real one – tall, muscular, strong-jawed, blue-eyed and with a fondness for hilly and mountainous landscapes.

After that, the character of Jack Harris became pure fiction but it helps me as a writer to have the real person in mind as I write.

Does the real police officer know he is the inspiration for Jack Harris? I would very much doubt it, I certainly never told him, and it is twenty five years since I last met him. I imagine he’s retired by now.

And what about the main character in my other long-running detective series, you may well ask? Well, DCI John Blizzard started with my inability to wear a tie properly (it quickly goes to half-mast) and was built up from there. However, the rest is fictional, based on how I would like a detective to be, operating without fear or favour in pursuit of justice.

The first nine DCI Jack Harris novels are available in a best-selling ebook format boxset for just 99p on Amazon. Key in Detective Jack Harris Books 1-9 at https://www.amazon.co.uk to purchase your copy.

The first seven John Blizzard novels are available in an ebook format boxset  for £6.99 on Amazon. Key in The DCI Blizzard Murder Mysteries 1-7 at https://www.amazon.co.uk to purchase your copy.

When your characters do the plotting

People who read my posts will know that I am fascinated by the mixture of planning and organic development that goes into writing

What do I mean by organic development? Take a character in my latest DCI Jack Harris novel, which has just passed the 35,000 word mark. He was very much planned – I needed a taxi driver to take two of my characters from an airport to their hotel.

Once he had dropped them off, his role in the novel was over and he would not appear again. Except he disagreed and by the time the taxi had arrived at the hotel, his banter, appearance and demeanour, and the fact that he clearly had so much to give, meant that he not only stayed in the story but became a major character and opened up a central plotline that I had not considered at the planning stage.

That’s when you know that your writing really is working 

Characters with a job to do

I am always interested in what triggers a new character for a writer. When and how do they burst into life?

I am thinking of this once again because I am working on the latest DCI Jack Harris crime novel for my publisher The Book Folks and, although some of my regulars appear, I needed some new characters as well, preferably trailing behind them a new plotline or two!

For me, characters often start out with the jobs I need them to do within the story. They are not there to fill space, they’re there to agitate, to keep secrets, to antagonise the police, to terrorise the community, to make the reader think etc etc. Once their job is identified, they can grow as the narrative develops.

In this case, I wanted to create an Interpol officer to give the story a global feel. Once I knew the job the character was to do, she came to life – I can see her clearly now – and she will undoubtedly evolve further through the storytelling as she does her job and helps the story take its own direction.

How characters evolve

I have written before in various blogs about my fascination with the way that characters evolve during the writing process.

For me, when they are revealing things about themselves which you as the writer had not planned, that is when you know that writing is truly working. That your characters have made the transition from cardboard cut-out to real human being.

I am being given a striking example of that the more I work on the latest DCI Jack Harris novel for The Book Folks.

Major characters tend to fall into two categories – rounded (also known as changing or dynamic) who change throughout the story, and static (flat) characters who don’t – and Harris definitely falls into the first category.

He is constantly surprising me as I write, developing as a human being as we all do when we are exposed to life’s events, a process which not only deepens the character for the reader but which also throws up potential new plot lines and gives fresh energy to the story.

I believe that the key, as the writer, is to let your characters speak to you, let them reveal themselves, let the process develop organically.

Once you have done that then is the time to sit back and review what you have accrued. To decide which pieces of information are relevant to the book on which you are working and which ones don’t quite fit but can be stored away for future novels.

Make sure your reader cares about your characters

As a writer, a lot of my time is taken up with the creation of characters who engage the reader. I think the key to getting it right is to create someone about whom the reader cares; the reader does not necessarily have to like them, but they should care about what happens to them.

If you place a character about whom the reader has no feelings in a dangerous situation, the reader won’t be that bothered if they survive or not. Make the character one that they care about and they won’t be able to put the novel down.

So, how do you get your readers to become emotionally involved with your story and its people?

The trick is to create characters who experience events in the story in a very real and personal way, one with which the reader can identify as characters encounter the type of fear, joy, insecurity, despair etc that we all experience in our daily lives.

It can also help if the reader can see the character change as a result. These are known as round, dynamic or changing characters. Round characters are multi-dimensional and complex. They are nuanced and often contradictory, this engaging the reader.

Static characters are the opposite. They do not undergo substantial change or growth in the course of a story but can be just as effective in their resolute approach to the world.

Whichever way the writer chooses to go, the key is to make their characters so real that the reader is disappointed that they are not out there somewhere in the real world.