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The one thing – and the only thing – that a crime novel must not do is bore the reader. The old rules about what you may and may not include have gone. You can identify the villain in the first chapter if you want; you can have lots of blood or no blood; you can have any number of identical twins or secret passages; you don’t even have to have a killer. But you must keep your reader interested.

As you plan your novel, you may find the following ten points helpful.

1. Know your characters

You will find it easier to write engaging fiction if your characters feel real to you. Get to know them before you start writing. Who are they? What do they like? What do they fear? What do they want? Who do they piss off? What do they look like? What do they eat? What music do they listen to? What films do they watch? Are they snowflakes? Are they bullies? What are their weaknesses? What are their private tragedies? For what would they kill?

You don’t need to tell the reader everything, but you need to know it all. Some writers find that it helps to chat to their characters as they potter about, and no one looks weirdly at anyone talking in the street now because they assume everyone’s on the phone.

2. Write in scenes

To keep your novel vivid, you need to set the scene for each piece of action or dialogue or introspection. So think, before you write a word, about where your character is, who else is there, what can they see, what can they hear and smell and taste and feel. Once again, you don’t have to tell the reader everything, but you need to know it all so that you can select the most telling details to share with the reader.

3. Don’t waste time

It is all too easy when writing a novel to prattle on without much point, especially if you’ve given yourself a daily word-count target. Don’t. Think about why you are including the scene you’re writing. Is it to establish a character? Is it to advance the plot? Is it to heighten the tension? Is it to give the reader necessary information?

If your scene does not do at least two of these things, consider binning it.

Giving information is one of the hardest aspects of crime writing. Some readers love innumerable details about weapons, or the stripping of bones by pathologists, or the operation of complex financial frauds. Others don’t. They can, of course, skip anything that bores them, but you need to be judicious about the amount of information you give and the way in which you give it. Explanatory dialogue can be dangerous, and it often sounds impossibly artificial to the reader’s internal ear. If you need your reader to know about the speed at which a Kalashnikov pumps out bullets, it is probably best to announce it straightforwardly rather than to have characters sitting over a beer in a pub, with one saying, ‘I’ve always wondered how many bullets a Kalashnikov fires every second’, the second replying, ‘Well, it rather depends on the year it was made; some Kalashnikovs fire at …’

4. Realistic dialogue

If your characters sound like cyborgs, or DIY manuals, or pompous sermonizers, you will lose the reader. It is well worth speaking each piece of your dialogue aloud and possibly even recording some of it so that you can hear how it sounds.

Make sure that each character’s idiom is distinct from the others. Ideally the reader should be able to work out who is speaking without your adding ‘John joked jaggedly’ or ‘Maggie muttered murderously’.

Consider confining the relevant verbs to ‘said’ or possibly ‘shouted’ or ‘whispered’. Synonyms for ‘said’ can seem absurd. One historical novel published in the 1950s included, ‘“Honeycakes,” Jenny ejaculated as she sat among the gillyflowers.’ A more modern infelicity is: ‘“I don’t care,” she deadpanned.’ ‘I don’t care’ is quite enough on its own.

Every group, whether social or professional, has its own private language, and using the relevant ones will add authenticity to your novel. If you have the time and resources to hang around your target group and listen, you will pick up the right words and phrases; but you may not have time and so it’s worth finding a single individual – police officer, firefighter, lawyer, gang member – and asking how he or she would describe something specific. You don’t have to write your whole scene in the relevant language, but adding a few unexpected but accurate words and phrases will always help to convince your readers that they are reading something real. If your novel is historical, it’s well worth looking up letters and diaries of the period so that you can add an accurate sound to the dialogue.

5. Research

Don’t do too much research too soon. The risk is that you will include much too much detail in your novel. Read around your subject and then write, leaving space within square brackets labelled something like [add scientific detail here]. Experts are remarkably helpful and will give just enough information in reply to a specific question to add authenticity to a novel without overloading it. You are more likely to be able to ask the right question once you have finished your first draft.

6. Tension

All novels need tension to persuade the reader to turn the pages, but crime needs a lot of it. The most straightforward way of generating tension in your fiction is by setting up a question and delaying the answer for as long as possible. Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet provides a wonderful masterclass in how to do it. The Chorus tells the audience at the beginning that the play concerns ‘a pair of star-crossed lovers’, who ‘with their death bury their parents’ strife’. We know from the beginning that Romeo and Juliet will die but not how or when. Throughout the play there are scenes in which one or other is likely to be killed, but again and again death is postponed. By the last scene the audience is in the state most of us know when waiting in for the plumber all day, leaping up at the sound of a van in the street or a knock at the door, perpetually thwarted and twitchy beyond belief. You need to generate that kind of edginess in your reader.

7. Emotional intensity

No one can live in a state of unremitting drama, and any novel that makes its characters do that will lose credibility. You need to vary the emotional intensity, interspersing action scenes with reflective ones. Never forget that one emotion intensifies its opposite. If you are about to plunge your readers into tragedy, think about softening them up with humour first.

8. Adverbs

Many writers are tempted to add colour to their narratives with adverbs, but it’s a mistake. Adverbs diminish intensity. Don’t write ‘he ran breathlessly, hurriedly and clumsily to rescue the child from the fire’. Instead describe his headlong rush, perhaps showing how he trips and rips his skin on a piece of broken glass in the grass. Blood will drip unnoticed from the cuts as he forces himself on, panting and trying to control his banging heart. He can feel the heat of the flames on his face now and has to brush sparks off his clothes as he surges forward. The child’s screams drill into his brain as he trips again, spraining his ankle. Limping, he makes it to the burning building just as the child falls from the open window, missing his outstretched hands by inches.

9. Naming characters

When you are considering what to call your characters, do think about the reader. Similar-looking – or similar-sounding – names can make it hard to keep each person distinct. You will know who they are, but for the reader Dave, Dan and Dick will merge into each other, as will Maeve, Steve and Niamh.

10. Moving characters around

Don’t worry about getting your characters from room to room or even city to city. Use what filmmakers call the jump cut. In a novel this can be achieved by ending one scene in the attic bedroom of a flat in Rome and then beginning the next with a short comment about the new venue; for example, ‘The Whispering Gallery of St Paul’s Cathedral in London gave Jim an excellent view of his target.’

Above all, enjoy planning your novel and like your characters. Even the wicked ones.

Opening sentences matter. They don’t come easily, and Frances Fyfield notes: ‘You may have to relinquish the beginning. The best idea might be at the bottom of the page. Bring it up. And, if it is three a.m. in the morning, it’s time for you and your characters to go to bed. To sleep and yet to dream.’

As John Harvey explains, good openings come in many different forms: