Film Courage: Why do you say limit physical evidence to three to five pieces?
Jennifer Dornbush, Screenwriter, Author, Speaker, Consultant, and Forensic Science Specialist: I do
say there are six basic types of evidence in the world that you can use not just for writers but
for real investigators and physical evidence there are three types of physical evidence.
Physical evidence, especially DNA because we've come so far with DNA right now. First of all my
rule of thumb is never solve a case with DNA. That was okay in the 90’s when DNA was evolving
and it was like this bright shiny new thing but now it's too easy and DNA it's so good
which is too easy I think story wise. I say limit your overall physical evidence three to
five because while those are interesting trails of evidence and we need them to connect the dots
to and from our crime to our criminal, a lot of times they can be easily resolved because you're
looking at like a shard of glass, eventually they're going to find out Okay it’s this kind
of glass and it came from that window at that church on that street, okay great we connected
those dots, awesome. But what's more interesting storywise is circumstantial evidence and that's
all that indirect evidence, what people think or hear or infer. It's that gray area and if you look
at like we'll go back to Sharp Objects, most of that is solved through circumstantial evidence,
piecing together memories, piecing together where people were at certain times, piecing
together what people said or heard. There are physical pieces of evidence but it's mostly
connected through circumstantial evidence and I think that's what makes
for good tension because and suspense and gray area in story and unless you're writing a very
straight forensic kind of story type, which is great I mean we have those and we all love them,
Bones is a great example of that, CSI and NCIS those are really fun and they've been on the
air forever, they're classics but they deal very strongly in physical evidence. I think that the
circumstantial, that other gray area, is really interesting to play around with your characters
and that's why I say try to limit your physical evidence and really focus on pulling out character
and how character plays into creating your trails of evidence
if that makes sense. Is direct evidence the same as physical evidence? Direct is
things like photographs, video, witness testimony, it's not really physical evidence,
it's not really circumstantial evidence. So videos photographs those are fun to use but
they're direct, they're pretty this is what you get if somebody videotapes somebody doing
something. Well it's pretty hard to dispute that unless you can figure out some ways to trip that
up. Witness testimony can be very gray or it can be very clear. You can really play it both ways.
What about hearsay? Let's suppose you have a small town, everybody's got their own agenda,
small towns are filled with gossip right and everybody kind of has their own angle
whether it's positive or negative right where does hearsay fall into that? Yeah that would be more
circumstantial type of evidence, what people are inferring, what their sort of concluding based on
whatever biases or things they think they have seen or heard or so but I love it
that's definitely what should be happening in your mysteries Broadchurch I don't know if this British
series and then they made it into a U.S series and I can never remember the name of the U.S. one
[Gracepoint TV series - 2014] that really plays a lot on that what you just said that everybody's
got a different angle in town and a different I saw this and I did this and he said this and
that's fun a lot of fun or mysteries better served in a small town environment.
I don't think it matters I think again it's setting it's tone we can have very
well okay I'll say this because I'm from a small town so I'm very impartial to small town mysteries
because of exactly what we were just talking about with the circumstantial and the hearsay and
people are very tightly connected a lot of times in small towns and it's hard it's harder to be
inconspicuous it's harder to hide things in a small town you are known so that's a whole one
element to play with in terms of if you what kind of setting and tone you're giving your mystery in
bigger cities it's easy to disappear it's easy to be inconspicuous just to hide away and nobody
knows you it's so that's a whole different right tone and setting and but also there's I don't know
it's that that lends its own kind of interesting mystery right because you could be as a killer you
could be killing a lot of people in a big city and it could take a long time before somebody
caught you because you're an unknown whereas in a small town it's harder to hide from that sort of
behavior I guess so it probably just depends too like what kind of crime do you want to explore
it's of course bigger cities you're dealing you can deal with bigger crimes in terms of like
a criminal world a bigger criminal world like mafia or a gambling ring whereas in a smaller
town that's going to be harder to hide it's still happening probably but it's going to be a little
trickier to hide that to hide a mafia ring in a small town although maybe there's something to
that maybe there should be a show about that hmm like the Crawdad movie did you see I did
see that yeah and I thought that was really interesting because she couldn't there were
all these rumors about the quote-unquote Marsh Girl [Kya Clark in Where The Crawdads Sing] yeah
yeah true or untrue and and so it was just I thought that was a great yeah and and
some of the the best scenes were her just kind of like stormy through town yeah and
the the shopkeepers crating their neck and things like that to see oh there she is right yeah this
little fish out of water and everybody's got their thoughts and theories about her and I guess that
would really be a caper it's that story because we are rooting for our criminal the entire time,
don't want to give spoilers away too bad if you haven't seen it by now or read the book I've
heard it's 30 years and then you can give away 30. Oh no that's too long okay how did digital
forensics factor into storytelling I know this is great question I've been actually exploring
this whole world of digital forensics for a while because again it's really emerged as a sign of
science a thing in the real world within the last 10 years and become electronic forensics be it's
very huge field now especially with identity theft and all that I think it's how do we explore that
I think it's challenging because again like it's all happening on screen or inside of a computer
code right and visually it's just not that exciting to watch so I think it has to whatever
and also a lot a lot of people me include I don't understand coding I don't understand
how criminal I don't understand that world of criminal activity I don't because I don't know
I'm not a computer scientist I never studied computers science I never studied coding I
don't know how to do any of that so and a lot of people don't so that knowledge is something then
as a writer if you're going to draw us into that world you're going to have to make it accessible
to us and you're going to really have to rely on the characters stories at this point in history
anyway where we're at now this may be different in 10 years but it has to really still go back
to the very strong basics of story and your hero and your antagonist and really showing us
what they are doing how they are doing it and the stakes and that is an interesting challenge when
the whole world of that is inside a computer right and a microchip or on a inside on a screen so I
haven't figured this out quite yet how to make that completely interesting in terms of if that
were your whole criminal world I think Hollywood's probably still figuring it out because I haven't
seen any shows or a lot of movies that I can even pinpoint that that were that's the focus that's
the main crime solving focus even though in the real world that's people's entire jobs is just
to break down criminals on the web or dark web or wherever so it's a huge huge growing criminal
world that's out there in reality I'm curious to see how we've translated that to a fictional world
yeah that's I'm waiting to see also phones geolocation and and you said you talked about
circumstantial evidence of someone's location well now if someone's phone pinged a certain
tower maybe they had them phone in their possession and like that yeah that's that's
definitely see a lot of that like using technology or people's technology to track them or to track
a killer or figure out their last steps in life where were they like that definitely
yeah that's used all the time and again that's I guess I would call that physical evidence
because it's very tangible it's very maybe it's a combination of physical and direct
and so it's really easy to prove right like oh their phone was here and this tower is
here these are all tangible very real things so again like use them sparingly
of the 11 types of crime stories which is the most difficult to write and why I just think that
depends on who you are because they all are very there's like legal, there's paranormal ,there's
medical, mystery, there's profiler. I think I said before traditional cop, the caper I'm missing a
few but it really depends on what kind if you're creating this it depends on what kind of world do
you want to live in like I don't love the legal world I don't love watching legal shows I don't
really know a lot about I don't like care too much about that legal world so I will for me that
would be really hard if someone was like write a legal crime drama I'd be like so much research ah
I just I just doesn't thrill me so it really just has to depend it really just depends on
who the person is creating it and what kind of world they really want to spend time in
like the medical examiner investigation corner that's a whole other crime story
type with shows like Rizzoli and Isles and Quincy and I feel very comfortable in that
world because I lived that world so but where someone else might be like oh like that's not
the world for me so I think it just depends on what world do you want to spend time in
yeah what happens when you get stuck in a story how do you get yourself unstuck
whether it's a novel screenplay I research I take a shower I take a walk I call a friend
I I let it rest sometimes and I do maybe go do something else for a while and
I can say that it always how any one of those options gets me unstuck
yeah I've never been yeah if I try it yeah so I just have to try something and it will work
I know it will work so it's good to have hobbies that are if you're writing about sort of a dark
world maybe hobbies that are a little lighter and fun and you said you like comedies yeah I
think so I mean even something as simple as like I'll just like I don't know go vacuum or so you're
just doing something completely different than that you're not thinking about the story but
yeah when I unwind I mean I love I love to read I read a lot of non-fiction I love I've been getting
more into reading more crime fiction rather than viewing so much and so I do love to be in that
genre just to stay up in what's happening and what are the new stories and but honestly in my
spare time I'm going to put a comedy on 100 of the time I'm going to watch Ted Lasso over and over.