Writing resources?

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

I've written fanfic before--westerns, SciFi and fantasy. I'd like to write some CM but the very specific terminology and profiling lingo has me stumped. What resources do you writers use to research this important aspect of the stories?

Thanks!

Comments

[buffyaddict13.livejournal.com]

hi hon.

i felt the same way when i joined fandom. this sounds dorky, but i just watched the eps over and over. i took notes. i also read both tie-in novels. and i read matociquala's fic.

i also used the online scripts website but that seems to have closed or shut down which makes me weep into my keyboard.

i also spammed this comm with countless questions.

*is not that helpful*

good luck!

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been rewatching the DVDs, hoping to pick up the rhythms, the details. I figured that would be a major source. *g*

I didn't know about the scripts, but that sounds like that's not available anymore. Too bad.

I've just discovered matociquala's fic, so that's good. :)

I'd read the first tie-in and was a bit put off by the characterizations and the focus on what everyone is wearing. *g* Did you like the second book? I haven't read that one yet.

Spamming the con sounds fair enough. After all, they reap the benefits by getting a cool story.

Your suggestions are helpful. Some fandoms expect a lot of detailed research which would be daunting in this fandom. Glad to hear I don't need Reid's scoop of knowledge. *g*

Thanks!

[seraphina_snape]

My favourite is this page which has links to several police and criminal slang term glossaries. It's interesting and offers quite a bit information.

I don't find the Wikipedia article on police jargon to be very good for fanfic writing, but the links at the bottom are worth a look.

You could also try the Criminal Minds Wiki glossary, which explains the terms used on the show.

~ sera

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

John Douglas' book Mindhunter is also a good place to start. He wrote it back before anybody in the general public had any idea what profiling was, and while it's a little simplistic, it explains everything quite clearly.

Also, it's really interesting. *g*

(I'm insane write mysteries, so I have a whole shelf of books on forensics and criminology, but you don't need all that stuff for fanfic.)

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

I just got a used copy of Mindhunter at Amazon for a penny plus shipping. Thank you for the tip.

And you're right. Fanfic is about the characters for the most part; I just didn't want to be spouting pure BS for the plot, though. *g*

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

Oh. I did not know about the Wiki site. Thanks! And the other websites are quite interesting, too. That gives me quite a bit to browse. *g*

Very nice, thanks!

[buffyaddict13.livejournal.com]

i think the tie-in characterizations were a bit off in the first one as well. for instance i was REALLY annoyed by reid's "i don't like emily" thoughts. becuase i think that's crap. but whatever. i meant i thought it was useful for the terminology and some of the procedures. i'm almost done with the second book i think it's a little better. the only fault i have is it seems to spend a lot of time on rossi like the first book did with gideon. i'd rather see everyone get equal time, but that's just me.

oh, and i completely forgot to mention: i read a lot about profiling and serial killers on wikipedia and spent some time on the fbi website. both those things helped.

good luck!

[alethialia.livejournal.com]

i also used the online scripts website but that seems to have closed or shut down which makes me weep into my keyboard.

Yeah, what's going on there? I swear I was just reading CM transcripts on TWIZ (http://www.twiztv.com) (or, because I'm not paying attention) Shadow Anthology (http://www.kilohoku.com/) last week and now they're gone.

...unless I'm totally losing my mind.

[buffyaddict13.livejournal.com]

thank god it's not just me! i used that site constantly and i'm so upset it's gone. it looks like whoever owns it needs to pay the domain fee or whatever. i will weep buckets if there's not another place to read the scripts.

*sadface*

...unless I'm totally losing my mind.

reid can help track it down. :D

[alethialia.livejournal.com]

Well, you can always look up the cached pages. The main CM index cache is here (http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:O0kzsqLtKPQJ:www.kilohoku.com/cm.html+site:www.kilohoku.com+shadow+anthology&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&ie=UTF-8), though of course those links won't work. But if you search just that site putting something like "site:www.kilohoku.com criminal minds" in Google's search field (results here (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=site%3Awww.kilohoku.com+criminal+minds&btnG=Search)) it will pull up a lot of the individual episodes and you can get to Google's cache of each that way. If you have a specific ep you need.

The smart fan would have saved them all to a local hd, though I'm sure the site maintainer wouldn't be overly thrilled at that (not that she would know, if one didn't put them on the 'net, though).

...which is why CM should have something a la SPN's SuperWiki, which hosts transcripts (http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Category:Transcripts) (though the list is far from comprehensive and the quality of the transcripts isn't, shall we say, thrilling). It's good as an example, though.

[hopskotch-hotch.livejournal.com]

Hey there!

Your question really made me think, and from just scanning through comments so far, I'm sure I'll be using some of the suggested resources too.

If you want to get into some in-depth stuff on psychopathy (for example;background, terminology), I can highly, highly recommend reading anything by Prof Robert Hare. He's a world expert in psychopathy, and has actually developed the psychometric instrument used to identify this. He has a great website of related resources: http://www.hare.org/
There's a very good links page on this site also.

I was involved in hosting a seminar he gave at my uni a couple of years ago (one of those once-in-a-blue-moon opportunities - he was just passing through) and his stuff was riveting. Very interesting guy. And he liaises a lot with the media in his work as a forensic psychologist, so his books are not overly technical.

This website is also an excellent forensic psych resource (one of the best I've seen) - it has a huge glossary of terms, lots of links and other resources: http://www.forensiceducation.com/forensic_files/index.htm

Recommended to anyone with an interest!

This is general info. about the area (not CM-specific) - Buffy is right, it's a great idea to take notes when you watch episodes. I think a lot of people do this to get a feel for the show when writing fic.

Hope this is helpful in some way :)

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

Sounds very interesting. Thanks!

I can see that I'll have to ward against doing too much research instead of writing! But it is great to have specifics to excellent resources instead of wasting time trying just to find them. :)

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

I'm not having any luck finding the scripts at kilohoku. Is it possible to use the Wayback machine to find the scripts? One would need the url of a script.

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

Oops, nevermind. The site owner has blocked the Wayback Machine.

[alethialia.livejournal.com]

Go to the main google search page and enter "site:www.kilohoku.com criminal minds" (without quotes) and after criminal minds put in the name of the episode you want. I put in seven seconds and it came right up for me (so what I put in google's search was: "site:www.kilohoku.com criminal minds seven seconds"). Instead of clicking on the google link, click on the cache link under that.

Hopefully that works for you.

[derangedfangirl.livejournal.com]

I find already existing great fanfic for the fandom, especially novelizations of episodes, to get the cadence and rhythm of the various characters' speech patterns and how they look, rather than just how they sound on the dvds.


*shrugs*

As far as writing case-fics, I usually look up other solved cases of serial murders and sort of... combine things, make some stuff up, etc etc. As a whole, though, the fandom isn't HORRIBLY picky... it's hard to be, as few of us are experts on the subject ourselves, lol.

hope that helps