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Sample idea: Training your villain
Let's say your villain is planning to murder someone, but he's
not completely sure how he's going to do it. So he has a few
dummy runs first, killing innocent people using different methods
to see which works best. Sometimes he might take a piece of the
body home so he can study it further and learn from any mistakes
he made. If he makes a real mess of it, he'll destroy - or try
to destroy - as much of the evidence as possible. He has much
to learn, but he's patient and willing to keep on trying, gradually
adapting his methods, until he gets it right.
As more and more bodies turn up, the killing method becomes
more refined - cleaner, quicker, with less evidence of who did
it, and sometimes little or no way of identifying the victim.
Of course, your readers (probably) don't see any of this as
it happens. They might only see it from the detective's point
of view as the police find the bodies the villain used for practice.
Somehow the lead detective and his staff have to work out what's
going on and whether any of these deaths are connected. Can they
predict where and when he might strike again? Does the villain
even know that himself?
What forensic evidence has the villain left behind? Are there
any connections between the victims, or the locations or timings
of the killings? The more recent bodies will be more difficult
to work on, as he has learnt to cover his tracks. But that wasn't
the case with the earlier bodies, when he was inexperienced and
careless. Re-examining the earlier bodies will probably be the
best way of tracking him down. But how can the detective prove
that those bodies are linked to the more recent ones?
How many more innocent people will the villain kill before the
police manage to find him? Or is he now fully trained and ready
for his final killing: the perfect murder?
It might be a good idea to make his final victim someone important
or prominent.
[EXTENSION 1] If the villain does kill
his final victim, will that be the end of the killings? He might
have developed a taste for it now, or it might have become a
compulsion. He might not be able to stop. Or perhaps
there's another killer. Perhaps some of the bodies the police
found were killed by someone else. There could be two serial
killers out there, operating independently. Perhaps one of them
is a copycat killer, or thinks the other villain will take all
the blame.
[EXTENSION 2] How about if the first villain
stops killing after the first few victims, because he realises
he's no good at it, or the urge to kill has gone away, or he
no longer feels so angry with his intended victim. The second
villain might then begin his own killing spree, but he's much
better at it. The police might link the cases, even though they
are actually separate.
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