Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Buckingham and I'm really pleased to see you here for today's lesson.

Now we're going to be looking in detail today at detective stories and thinking about what makes them special.

So we're gonna be doing some investigating of our own.

I think you're going to really enjoy it, and I'll be here to help you the whole way through.

Let's get to work.

Today's lesson is called Exploring Conventions of Detective Fiction, and it comes from a unit called Sherlock Holmes, Descriptive and Letter Writing.

By the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to identify character and plot conventions used in the genre of detective fiction.

Now, in this lesson, we're going to be looking at the detective fiction genre in general, but we're going to be referring back to the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" throughout.

If you need to read that story or you'd like a copy of it to refer to, you can find it in the additional materials for this lesson.

Here are the keywords for today's lesson.

My turn, your turn.

Genre.

Conventions.

Character conventions.

And plot conventions.

Well done.

So the genre of a text is its literary style that has particular characteristics or features.

Different genres have different conventions, those are features that tell us what genre we're reading.

So they might have character conventions.

So these are types of character that are commonly seen in a particular genre.

And plot conventions are plot points or narrative features that are commonly seen in a particular genre as well.

So let's look at our lesson outline for today.

We're going to start off by looking at the character conventions we often find in detective fiction, and then we'll move on to looking at the plot conventions.

And throughout we will be referring back to "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle." So you've read the Sherlock Holmes short story, "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

If you haven't read it yet, do go and have a look in the additional materials for this lesson and read it before you continue.

So that narrative is from the genre of detective fiction.

That's the literary style of that narrative.

And different genres, like detective fiction, have different conventions.

Those are common characters or themes or plot structures which authors can choose to follow if they're writing in that genre or they can choose to twist and play with in some way.

So they're kind of like features that are common to a particular genre.

So if we think about fairytales, what might be some of the conventions of fairytales that commonly features? Well, we might say good versus evil, like a battle between good and evil with evil.

With good, not evil, winning in the end.

And then there might be magic and enchantment going on.

There might be a moral, a lesson at the end of the story, and there might be some conventional phrases turning up again and again in different fairytales like "Once upon a time." So if you saw all those features in something you're reading, you'd be getting lots of clues that you're reading a fairytale.

And if you're a person, an author was writing a fairytale, then they might use some of these conventions or they might play with them and they might twist them and not use them or use them in the opposite way in order to make it interesting for us as a reader.

And I'm sure you've read some fairytales which are kind of twisted versions where the ending is not a the good person winning, but the evil person winning and other different ways of playing with those conventions, which make it exciting for us as a reader.

So let's think about the conventions of some different genres.

We've got three genres here: Adventure, horror, and science fiction.

And here I've got three lists of conventions.

Can you match up the list of conventions to the genre? Pause the video and have a try.

Well done.

Good job.

I bet you spotted the first one.

We've got fear and suspense, supernatural action and isolation or being alone.

Those are linked to the horror genre, don't they? For the second list, I've got a hero as a main character, a quest or a journey, action and peril, that means a threat to their life, and some companions, some people working as a team towards a goal.

Of course that is.

Well done.

Adventure.

And then for the last one, we've got advanced technology, a setting that might not be realistic for us right now in history, and there may be some alien life.

So those are clues we've got science fiction.

Now obviously not all horror stories have all those elements, not all adventure stories have all those elements because remember, these are not rules.

They are kind of common features we often see in these genres, but they're not always all present every time you read a story or a narrative in one of these genres.

Really well done for identifying those conventions.

So true or false, writers always follow all of the conventions of the genre they're writing in.

Pause the video and have a think.

Well done.

You're right, that is false.

Now, can you explain why? Which is the best justification here for why that's false? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done.

You're right, the answer is A.

So conventions are not rules, they're common patterns or features in a genre and writers can choose to break with conventions on purpose.

And I'm sure you can think of examples of that happening in things you've read as well.

Really well done for spotting that.

So detective fiction is one of the most popular genres of literature, and perhaps you've read some of these books.

These are some of my favourite detective fiction children's books.

You might have read "Anisha Accidental Detective," which is all about a missing uncle.

And Anisha and Milo, her best friend, have to solve that mystery in time for a wedding.

You might have read the "London Eye Mystery," where someone mysteriously disappears while they're on the London Eye, which is a locked container, which you'd think no one could get out of, but somehow someone's cousin goes missing during that journey.

And finally, one of my favourites, "Emil and the Detectives," which is set in Germany a long time ago.

And you can see Emil on the front cover there, he loses some money on the way to visit his grandma, and then he gets a huge group of children together to try and solve that mystery.

These are fantastic stories.

I'd recommend any of them.

So what books have you read that feature detectives? Chat to the person next to you or have a think on your own.

Pause the video and have a go.

Well done.

There are loads of examples aren't there? And that shows us that we really must like detective fiction, maybe we really enjoy seeing how someone to solve these mysteries.

So let's think now about the different types of people who might be involved in a detective story.

We know the detectives are the people who try and find out who committed a crime based on the evidence.

But if a crime's committed, several other people might be involved as well.

So the perpetrator, or the criminal, is the person who committed the crime.

Then we've got the victim, that's the person the crime happened to.

We've got the suspect those are the people who it's thought may have committed the crime, but if they're suspects, we're not yet sure.

And then the perpetrator might have accomplices who help them to commit the crime as well.

And finally, people who see the crime happen are witnesses.

Notice the difference between a perpetrator and a suspect.

A perpetrator is someone we know has done the crime.

Suspects are people who we think may have committed the crime.

So there's a really important difference there.

So use the information to decide what label best describes each person.

I want you to choose from suspect, victim, accomplice, and witness.

So I've got Mrs. B, Mr. P, Ms. F, and Mr. J.

Who is who? Pause the video and see if you can match them up.

Well done.

Good job.

So A says, "Mrs. B, whose shop was robbed last night." Well, the crime has happened to Mrs. B.

So she's the.

Well done.

Victim.

B says, "Mr. P, who saw a woman leaving the shop with a bulging bag." Hmm.

So Mr. P has seen the crime happen.

So he is the.

Well done.

Witness.

C says, "Ms. F, who has thought to have committed the crime but has not yet been proven to be responsible." So she can't be a perpetrator, can she just yet? So she's a suspect, isn't she? We are not yet sure that she's done it.

But D says, "Mr. J who drove Ms. F far away from the shop." So Mr. J would be an accomplice.

He's helped out the person committing the crime who in this case, who is suspected to have committed the crime.

So really we could say he's a suspected accomplice maybe.

So really well done if you've matched those up.

We've got a good idea now of the kind of characters we might see in any detective fiction.

Lots of these different types of character will come up.

But beyond just these basic roles in the story, books and stories in the detective fiction genre often use certain character conventions.

And this means they might have characters that play certain roles or you have certain character traits.

So I'm going to show you now a few character conventions for detective fiction, and you'll see how this is different to just the idea of a victim and a perpetrator because those happen in any crime, don't they? These are slightly different.

Let me show you.

So we might have this character convention, the brilliant detective, and this is a very intelligent and observant detective who makes connections other people miss or who can make amazing deductions, work things out from the evidence.

So that's a common character convention we see in detective fiction.

We might also see the faithful sidekick, so that's a loyal assistant to the main detective, often maybe a more down-to-earth person who the reader can relate to more easily.

So we've got the brilliant detective who's incredibly intelligent and then we've got the faithful sidekick who's a bit more like the rest of us, who's a bit more down-to-earth.

So we've got a bit of a difference there.

So let's see if we can match the personality traits to the character conventions we've got here.

We have our two conventions, the brilliant detective and the faithful sidekick.

What personality traits, that means characteristics, match up with each of them? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done.

Good job.

So A says, "A more normal person." Now "normal" is a silly word to describe a person, isn't it? But we'd probably say that is the faithful sidekick.

B says, "Able to see things others can't." That's the brilliant detective.

Loyal and dependable, that's the sidekick.

And "an unusual mind" is the brilliant detective.

So they're able to make connections that normally other people wouldn't be able to make.

So that's what helps them to solve the crimes and solve the mysteries.

Really well done.

So here are some more character conventions that are common in the detective fiction genre.

We might see the bumbling official.

By an "official" we usually mean someone who's employed by a government department, which might be the police or maybe another organisation which is supposed to be solving the mystery.

So the bumbling official is a senior person maybe whose poor detective skills are shown up by that main character's brilliant detective skills.

And if the main character, like Sherlock Holmes, is a private detective, then the bumbling official could be an official police detective.

And we do sometimes see that in the Sherlock Holmes stories if you read some more of them.

So then we've got the criminal mastermind, and this is a very clever perpetrator who's very difficult for the main character to find and catch.

And the reason they're difficult to find a catch is because they're almost equal to the detective in intelligence.

So that's what makes them a mastermind.

They are very good at being a criminal.

So I wonder if you can think of any criminal masterminds from books or films. Pause the video and have a think or a chat to the person next to you.

Well done.

Good job.

I bet you thought of loads.

And actually Sherlock Holmes does go on to have a criminal mastermind nemesis, almost an enemy in lots of the Sherlock Holmes stories, which you might want to read at a later date.

So there's one final character convention that's very common to the detective fiction genre, which is the client or the innocent victim.

So this is a person who's wrongly accused of committing a crime or who's the victim of the crime and they seek out the detective's help.

So this is particularly true with a private detective.

Maybe the standard official police have failed to solve something, and so that victim goes to the private detective looking for help in this story.

Or it could be someone who's been wrongly accused of having done the crime and needs the detective to solve it for them in order to let them be free.

So we've now established five character conventions in this genre, common characters we see with common characteristics or personalities.

And each of these character conventions serves a purpose for the author and the reader.

But remember, authors often put a twist on these conventions to make their stories interesting.

If every single detective fiction story had these same five characters, then it wouldn't be exciting to read, would it? So characters are often twisted or changed or played within some way in order to make them more exciting for us as the reader.

So can you match the character conventions to how the reader is supposed to see the character? Pause the video and have a think about what the author wants us to feel about each of these character conventions.

Have a go.

Well done.

Good job.

So for A, we've got a worthy opponent for the detective.

So that would be the criminal mastermind, wouldn't it? For B, we've got the character who's most like us as the reader.

That would be the faithful sidekick.

For C, we've got a foolish character who shows how brilliant the detective is.

Well done.

That's going to be the bumbling official.

And then for D, we've got a character to start off the story and provide the information to get us going.

And that's going to be the client or the innocent victim.

Imagine them coming to the detective and telling their story.

And that might set the whole story going.

Really well done for getting those ones correct.

So let's do our first task for this lesson.

I want you to think about how these character conventions are followed or not followed in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle." And if you would like to have the story next to you, you can do that as you work.

So I'd like to complete the table to say who the character is that follows this convention and how they follow it.

And if the convention is broken, explain how.

So you've got your five character conventions there.

Choose the character who matches up to the convention and say how they did it or say how that convention is not met in this story.

Pause the video and see what you can come up with.

Well done.

Great job.

So here's an example of how you could have completed your table.

For the brilliant detective of course that would be.

Well done.

Sherlock Holmes.

So we've got one of those and we know he's the brilliant detective, that he's taking on that convention because he can deduce information about the hat and see things that others can't in the story.

He sees before Watson, that it must be James Ryder who's come to the market about that goose.

We've got a faithful sidekick that is Dr.

Watson.

Now, he doesn't really contribute a lot to the thinking or the reasoning of how they solve the crime, but he helps us, the reader, to understand the story because he tells it to us in a way that's easy for us to understand.

So he helps us out as the reader.

Do we have a criminal mastermind? No.

So that convention is broken in this story.

Ryder, who's the criminal, is a bad criminal, isn't he? He foolishly loses the carbuncle inside a goose.

So he is almost a bumbling criminal instead of a criminal mastermind.

Do we have a bumbling official? Well, we kind of do.

We don't see them in this story because we don't see any official police detectives in this story.

We know that at the start of the story, they have arrested the wrong man.

They arrested John Horner instead of James Ryder.

So in the background, not seen in this story, we do have some bumbling officials making mistakes which Sherlock Holmes then has to fix as the brilliant detective.

Do we have a client, an innocent victim? Yes we do.

We have John Horner.

He's been arrested for a crime he didn't commit.

Now because he's in jail, he doesn't contact Holmes himself, but he is a big part of the story because it's freeing him.

That's kind of the motivator for the whole story.

Finding the solution, which proves him innocent, is really key to the story.

Really well done if you've managed to the spot those different character conventions or where they're twisted in our story.

Good work.

So we've talked about character conventions.

Now let's think about the plot conventions of detective fiction.

So as well as character conventions, different genres have different plot conventions, and these are parts of the narrative, plot points that commonly appear in particular genres.

So let's just pause a second and have a think.

What is the reader doing during a detective fiction story as they're reading that makes this genre slightly unique, slightly different from other genres? Pause the video and have a chat to the person next to you or think on your own.

Well done.

Good job, you're right.

So they're trying to solve the crime just like the detective is.

Often when people read a detective story, they are trying to think, "Oh, who is doing this? Who is the criminal?" At the same time as the author is revealing information to them.

So because of that, because of that unique thing about detective fiction, that means the author has to plan the plot really carefully so that the reader has the chance to do the solving to solve the crime before they're told the answer.

It would be really frustrating for the reader if suddenly at the end of the story, the solution was kind of pulled out of nowhere with no clues coming beforehand because they'd have had no chance to solve it.

So the authors kind of carefully dropping in information as they write.

So the plot is really important.

So here are some of the most common plot conventions in detective fiction that are used to give information to the reader and to keep them thinking.

So first of all is the call to action.

So this is a person that arrives, posing an interesting or an unusual problem for the detective.

So someone comes along and says, "Here's the problem." Maybe they've been wrongly arrested, maybe they've got a problem they need solving.

So they are calling the detective into action.

We also might have the plot convention, the suspects, and this is where the author tells us the names of several characters so that we can start to think about who might be responsible for the crime.

Now there might be more people introduced as the story goes on, but we'd like to know the suspects early on, wouldn't we? So that we've got a chance of thinking which one of these people might be responsible.

And then a really big part of the story will be this plot convention, the investigation.

And that's where the detective asks questions and follows clues to get closer to the truth, helped by their faithful sidekick.

And that could take a huge part of a book, couldn't it? Go through all the bits of an investigation, gathering more and more evidence as they go.

So we've got three plot conventions there which are really common in detective fiction.

So which plot convention is being described in each of these statements? Pause the video and match the examples to the labels.

Well done.

Good job.

So A says, "A man visits the detective and explains that the police have failed to solve his case." That must be the call to action.

It's getting the detective going on the story.

B says, "He tells the story explaining who each person involved is." So they're letting us know the suspects.

And C says, "The detective and the sidekick go to question different people about the crime." That is the investigation.

So those three elements are really key, aren't they? To any detective's story, because we need to know what's the problem, who might be involved and how are we going to solve this? How are we going to reach a conclusion? Really well done.

So different plot conventions might appear at different points in a story.

So have a think, why is it important to the reader that the author introduces the suspect early on in the story? Pause the video and see if you can explain why.

Well done, you're right.

So the reader wants the chance to solve the problem along with the detective, don't they? So it'll be very frustrating for the reader if suddenly at the end of the story, a new character, who'd not been mentioned before, turned out to be the perpetrator in the last few pages, that would be incredibly frustrating and annoying for the reader.

So it's important that we're told those suspects well in advance so that we can start to think and form impressions of them and gather evidence about each of them as we read more information in the story.

So you'll find that's a very common plot convention is to introduce the suspects fairly early in the story.

But of course like all conventions, it can be twisted as well.

So here are some more plot conventions we often see in detective fiction.

And there's a really important one here, the red herring.

And you might have heard that expression before.

Now a herring is a type of fish, but when we say "the red herring," we mean a clue or pieces of information that are misleading or perhaps just irrelevant and they point to the wrong solution.

So they point in the wrong direction when the real answer is over here.

So a red herring is like a distraction.

It pulls us away, pulls focus away from the real criminal.

We also might have an "aha" moment.

So you've had these, I'm sure, when you're at school and at different of times in your life, but that's that lightbulb moment when something suddenly clicks into place.

So it's that moment when a particular clue makes the detective realise the solution to the case.

Now the author might not tell us what the detective has realised, they might hold that back from us, but the detective has had a moment where they've realised something really important and maybe the reader has the same feeling when they read that part of the story as well.

And finally, we might finish the story with the big reveal.

And this is a really common convention in detective fiction.

So here is where the detective reveals who the perpetrator is, explaining how they reach their conclusion.

So they might be standing up and making a big speech with all the suspects in front of them, talking about how they've reached their conclusion, and finally announcing who it is, who they believe is this perpetrator of the crime.

So that's a very common, again, plot convention of detective fiction.

And I'm sure you can think of examples of seeing that in action.

Okay, now let's think carefully about these plot conventions.

What is the purpose of each of them? What does it do for the reader or perhaps to the reader? Pause the video and think carefully about this one.

Well done.

Good job.

So what's the purpose of the red herring? Well, the red herring distracts the reader from the real solution and keeps them guessing.

So it's adding some interest, isn't it? It'd be quite tedious, wouldn't it? Or boring if we were given the answer very quickly or there was no twists and turns in the story.

Red herrings provide us with lots of those twists and turns that make reading detective fiction exciting.

What about the "aha" moment? Well, that shows the reader how brilliant the detective is, doesn't it? Because they're able to find a solution to deduce something important maybe when we aren't able to, or maybe when others in the story unable to.

And finally, what's the purpose of the big reveal? Well, that's vital, isn't it? It allows the author to explain exactly how the crime happened, showing the detective's thinking in a dramatic manner.

So it's again, showing off how brilliant the detective is, but really tying all the threads of the story together to reveal how exactly did this all work.

And that's crucial to our understanding of the story and to us being satisfied at the end of the story that all these loose threads are being tied up and the explanation is a really, really good one.

Really well done if you managed to explain those.

So let's try another one.

Where are we most likely to find each of these plot conventions? At the beginning of the story, in the middle, or at the end? Pause the video and have a careful think about this.

Well done.

Good effort.

So the red herring I think might come in the middle.

We want lots of twists and turns in the middle.

The call to action usually would be at the beginning because we need to know what's setting off this whole chain of events.

The big reveal would usually be.

Yeah, at the end because we don't wanna be revealed in the middle of the story.

That would make things very confusing.

And then the suspects, as we said before, probably coming towards the beginning, but we might have different people added in as we go through.

That "aha" moment is probably gonna come towards the end, isn't it? Because if that big piece of information slotted into place really early on, then again it might be a bit dissatisfying for us as a reader.

And then the investigation is going to be probably a very big chunk in the middle of the story.

But remember, these are not rules.

Writers play with and break conventions all the time to keep us guessing.

So they can have a really big "aha" moment right at the beginning.

They can have a really big red herring towards the end of the story to make a really big final twist.

And that's what writers do to keep us interested and engaged in their writing.

So let's do our final task for this lesson.

In this table, I'd like you to say which event in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" matches each plot convention.

And if the convention has been broken, again, explain how.

So we've got our six conventions there.

Which plot point in the story matches up to that convention? Or is that convention broken in that story? And if so, how? Pause the video and have a try.

Well done.

Great work.

So here's an example of what you might have written.

First convention is the call to action.

Do we have that in our story? Yes, we do.

We have when Peterson rushed in with that blue carbuncle, and because they had the hat already there was no mystery before he arrived, was there? The hat wasn't mysterious at all.

They knew it belonged to Mr. Baker.

It's Peterson rushing in that is the call to action for the whole story because now we've got this blue carbuncle which was thought to have been stolen by John Horner.

Clearly it was in the goose.

Something is a mystery, something needs solving.

That's a call to action.

Now, do we have suspects? Yes we do.

So we are told first of all that the goose belongs to Mr. Baker.

So it seems like he may be a suspect.

And then we are told the story of how John Horner was arrested for stealing the carbuncle and Ryder's evidence.

So we now have the names of three people, don't we? Baker, Horner, and Ryder, all of whom seem involved in this somehow.

So you've got an idea as a reader that these three people could be the suspects.

Now Mr. Baker is removed very fast, isn't he? From the list of suspects.

But then we're left with the idea, "Hmm, well if Horner was responsible, how has the carbuncle ended up in the goose or how has the carbuncle ended up in someone else's hands?" So then the list of suspects is kind of narrowing, isn't it? And then we have the investigation.

We do have an investigation.

Now in this story actually, there isn't a huge amount of investigating going on, but what Holmes and Watson do is they question Baker.

So they're investigating, is he responsible for this? And then it goes to the market, the second step in their investigation to find out more about the goose.

Now our version of the story was quite abridge, that means shortened.

In the full version of the story, the original, there is a bit more investigation going on, but we definitely have some investigation going on here where they're questioning people about this crime.

What about the red herring? Yeah, I think we do have red herring.

I think Mr. Baker is the red herring at the start of the story there.

'Cause he's the obvious suspect, he owned the goose.

But it turned out that that was just a distraction.

He had no idea that the carbuncle was inside it.

And we know that because when they told him that the goose was gone, he didn't care did he? He just was happy to take the new goose from them.

So he was not really a real suspect from quite early on in the story.

So he was a red herring who was then discarded.

What about an "aha" moment? Yeah, I think we have one of those.

I think it's in the market, isn't it? Because Holmes and Watson overhear Ryder arguing with a goose vendor and then Holmes in particular realises who he is.

So they're realising, "Oh wait, there's no reason anyone would be arguing about a particular goose if they didn't have some vested interest or some real belief that this goose was somehow precious." So that makes Holmes think, "Hmm, this must be Ryder because he's the only one who would be so invested in getting this particular goose." Then I was thinking about the last convention, the big reveal.

I think that this one is twisted in this story because we don't have Holmes explaining what happened, do we? Instead of Holmes revealing what happened, we have a confession from Ryder where Ryder explains in detail exactly what he did.

So it's a slight twist on what we often see in detective fiction where Holmes doesn't really get to stand up and get all the praise, does he? Instead, Ryder is giving us all the information himself.

So again, that's a way of the author giving us a little bit of a different idea of what the story should be like and breaking with one of those conventions a little bit.

But we still do get the whole story revealed because Ryder's confession is so detailed.

Really well done if you managed to spot all those plot conventions.

Hopefully that's helping you to see how this story fits with and breaks with all these conventions of detective fiction.

Great work.

So let's summarise our learning in this lesson.

We said that different texts have different genres, and each genre has a set of conventions which are commonly seen features.

We said that the story, "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," comes from the genre of detective fiction.

And in detective fiction, common character conventions include the brilliant detective and the bumbling official.

And common plot conventions include the red herring and the call to action.

But we said these conventions are not rules and authors break them to keep the reader guessing.

So I'd love for you to try, next time you read a detective fiction book and maybe you'd like to read one of those three I recommended earlier, see if you think these character conventions and plot conventions are kept with or broken or twisted somehow in those stories.

I think it'd be really interesting to see how the author's done that, how they've changed up the idea of detective fiction to keep us excited and interested in their stories.

Really well done this session.

I hope to see you again in a future one.

Goodbye.