I need some advice. Right now I'm working on a literary story with some suspense elements, and I'm new to writing anything in the suspense genre. The story is about a young girl who gets taken from her home. The story is told in the third person, divided up between the young girl and members of the neighborhood who are searching for her.
I have a lot of key characters, like the girl, her kidnapper, and the family and one or two important neighbors. I don't want to clutter up the plot by inserting a police investigator with a back story. I don't want my readers to CARE about the investigator. As this investigator interviews the neighbors and moves through leads, I want my readers to be focused entirely on the people he's interviewing.
So my solution was to call this investigator "The man" or sometimes "The man with the pad."
My question is, how important do you think the back story of an investigator in a kidnapping case is? Would you accept it if an author chose to make him insignificant if there were stronger characters making up the story?
I have a lot of key characters, like the girl, her kidnapper, and the family and one or two important neighbors. I don't want to clutter up the plot by inserting a police investigator with a back story. I don't want my readers to CARE about the investigator. As this investigator interviews the neighbors and moves through leads, I want my readers to be focused entirely on the people he's interviewing.
So my solution was to call this investigator "The man" or sometimes "The man with the pad."
My question is, how important do you think the back story of an investigator in a kidnapping case is? Would you accept it if an author chose to make him insignificant if there were stronger characters making up the story?
