GenresFiction
Crime
The job, the gang, the courtroom, the aftermath.
Crime fiction is interested in the offence and the people around it, not only in the puzzle of who did it. Sometimes there is no puzzle at all. We know who stole the money, and the book is about whether they can live with it, get away with it, or be caught by someone who is not especially pure either. Readers of crime are often happy in a grey area, so long as the book is clear about what it is asking them to enjoy.
The world of the crime needs to feel practical. How the money moves, who looks the other way, what a mistake actually costs. Glamour is allowed, and so is squalor, but a criminal who is brilliant at everything and sad in a fashionable way gets old. Give them a limitation, a loyalty, or a debt. The law can be the enemy, the tool, or just the weather. What matters is that the crime changes the life it touches, including the life of the person who committed it.
The kinds of book inside it
Heist
The pleasure is in the plan and the way it frays, so the reader should understand the job well enough to feel it go wrong.
Noir
The city is compromised, the hero is rarely clean, and the ending often confirms that the rot was there before the plot arrived.
Courtroom
The case is argued in public, which gives you speeches, tactics, and the gap between what is true and what can be proved.
Gangland
Loyalty and territory do the organising, and a personal story works better if you show how the organisation actually holds together.
Caper
Lighter than a heist, often comic, and the reader is invited to enjoy the nerve of it without being asked to admire real harm.
Vigilante
Someone decides the official version of justice isn't enough, and the book should be honest about what that decision costs the person who makes it.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a story summary in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.