A Demotion

Now that the first draft of Dark Water is done, I've started looking at the story and the characters with a more critical eye. I want my eventual readers to believe that the story is plausible.

For the first draft, I did a lot of Googling and asked ChatGPT a lot of questions. In roundabout ways, without sharing excerpts of scenes, I would describe scenarios that reflected the content of the story and ask the AI tool if what I described was realistic.

More times than not, Chat GPT would chime in with a positive assessment of that scenario, to the extent that I thought it was a yes-bot. Its responses would be encouraging, starting with a "that's a great idea and really develops your (character/plot) well."

If there was something that didn't go well, the AI tool would still give me encouragement but would offer a suggestion that would "tweak" my scenario. Never once did it tell me that I was wrong or unrealistic.

Now that I'm trying a new search engine, Perplexity, I'm being given a dose of reality.

I've been told that I'm not being realistic on one important piece of my story and that my audience would have a rough time believing it, especially if the reader knows anything about the police.

As you might know from following my posts about Dark Water, the two main detectives in the story are Inspector Michael 'Mickey' Calloway and Inspector Erin Hayes. What you may not know is anything about the characters, themselves, as I have kept most of the story out of my blog posts (I've shared the first chapter and the story synopsis in other blog posts but want to keep the overall story quiet).

But I feel I can tell you about the main characters without spoiling anything.

Calloway is 50 years old and a seasoned veteran in the Ottawa Police Serious Crimes Unit. He's lived in Ottawa his whole life and is married, with a teenage daughter.

Hayes (image: Perplexity)

His partner, who is a hard-working officer, was steadily promoted up the ranks from the Niagara Regional Police. When a vacancy opened at the OPSCU, Hayes was recommended by the NRP top brass. Hayes is only 28 when she was promoted to the rank of Inspector.

When I developed Hayes, I did searches on the rank structure with the OPS, checking Wikipedia, Google, and ChatGPT. I learned that making Hayes an Inspector at 28 was a steep climb but possible.

Now that I'm going through my book with a more critical eye, I thought I would test out Perplexity by describing Hayes and giving her the rank I have written. And Perplexity was brutally honest.

It told me that there's no way that a 28-year-old, even joining a police force at 19, would reach the rank of Inspector in that timeframe. It worked out what would be needed to get to that rank, and the youngest that Hayes could be was in her early to mid 30s.

I then gave the search engine more to work with. I told it the age that Hayes finishes high school (18) and to map out what she would have to do to get hired at the Niagara Regional Police. I also asked it to figure out what rank she could be in order to be brought on to the OPS as a highly recommended candidate to join the Homicide Unit.

Perplexity showed me the sources that it accessed to glean the information and I was impressed. It accessed the OPS Web site as well as the NRP site. It looked at sites that support Ontario Police Officers Association. It referenced various news articles from across the province.

Hayes would have had to go to university or college to obtain a three-year degree or diploma, preferably in in criminology, psychology, sociology, or policing studies. While in university or college, she would volunteer with community organizations (such as police auxiliaries and victim services) and/or work in security and crime prevention to gain relevant experience.

I'm not going to list everything that Hayes would have to do, but she'd also have to attend Police College, get hired after graduation, be on probation for a year, and then go through the ranks. Assuming she's a hard-working, dedicated officer—and I've created her such that she becomes a rock star at NRP—by the time she reaches 27, she could plausibly earn the rank of Detective Constable (a rank I didn't see in my previous searches of OPS ranks, though I recognize the rank in many detective novels I've read), also sometimes working as an Acting Detective Sergeant.

By the time she hits 28, when she applies for the position at the OPS Homicide Unit and receives glowing endorsement from the brass at the NRP, Hayes could be promoted to Detective Sergeant.

That's where I'm going to put her in my re-writes. And while I made up the Serious Crimes Unit for the OPS and named other divisions by their real names (the Drug Unit, for example, comes up), I may use the real name of Homicide Unit in the book, to distinguish it from the Guns and Gangs Unit and other departments that handle other serious crimes; though, in doing so, I'm going to have to make other changes to Calloway's past cases (one, that haunts him through this story).

Yes, it's a demotion from the rank I gave her but Google and ChatGPT didn't give me the depth of ranks that Perplexity gave me. DS Hayes has a certain ring to it, anyway.

I have ideas for Calloway and Hayes, and I've written a post for Friday that will explain what I have in store. While Calloway is exactly where he needs to be, hoping to someday become the Superintendent of his department, giving Hayes the rank of Detective Sergeant allows for a lot of growth of her character.

Stay tuned.