Feb 06 2011
An introduction to bounty hunting
Bounty hunters may be a useful point of reference for your superhero story:
- Like most superheroes, bounty hunters have a non-government job that entails some violence.
- They hunt criminals without all of the assets of a police force (authority, the ability to threaten prosecution for noncooperation, forensics labs, generous access to state records, virtually unlimited backup, etc).
Learning more about bounty hunters may give you some ideas about how to write superheroes cracking cases, so I’d recommend checking out this Washington Post article (hat-tip: Contra Glove). In particular, I liked the tactic of calling the fugitive’s cell phone*, posing as a FedEx dispatcher and then asking the fugitive if he will be available tomorrow for a package delivery. “Can you confirm the street address?”
(I also found the use of MySpace pretty hilarious, but I’m sort of hoping that your Lex Luthor isn’t on MySpace).
*You can get somebody’s number by asking family members, friends, disgruntled exes or sometimes the cell company.
Hmm. Bounty hunting on the edge of the law? May want to query at this site-
http://lawandthemultiverse.com/
Could you go more in depth on bounty hunting? I have the Jango-Fet type stuck in my head, and I don’t think he called Obi-wan to see if he could pick up a package.
Hmm, I’m not sure what I can add there. Fett’s armor is sort of cool, but he doesn’t have a lot going on besides that (e.g. contrast to someone like Batman or Darth Vader who does badass things AND has interesting dialogue). Are we talking about an antagonist here? If he’s a recurring character (rather than, say, a minor obstacle quickly disposed of), I think personality and/or unusual choices are critical. Alternately, if he doesn’t have a personality, perhaps he does a great job bringing out interesting moments in other characters, a la the Ringwraith in LOTR.
I see what you mean. I have noticed some characters just there to advance the story and to motivate the MC to do things they might normally do.
But what I’m trying to ask is for more information on bounty hunting itself. What if you or I were writing a book from the point of view of Fett? How would he think, how would he interact with other aliens, interrogate, investigate, and track his prey. Same for Bobba, except he just tends to stand around instead of track people.
might not normally do*
I still don’t think there’s enough information on this Bounty Hunting article.
Fix yer game Jeb. I mean Mac 😉
Thanks for your request. I suggested an article on sci-fi bounty hunting to a badass guest author, but I don’t anticipate that I would be able to work on it in the immediate future. Right now, the Blackhawks are in the finals, and all of my $200,000+ clients are in their busy season.
Oh okay, no problem. Tell me when it’s up 😀
Actually, I read your blog daily, so I’ll prolly know when it’s there.