Upon learning that the people the MC worked with for some years are going to kill him/her as they believe him/her to be a threat/no longer safe to work with, the MC makes a run for it. Can you shine any light on what it may be like to be on the run for several weeks and, on the flip side, what it may be like to be the ones trying to find this MC?
This is a variable question, based on the organization. Obviously, being on the run from a slightly unhinged HOA would look very different from someone who was working for a Bond villain.
When youāre getting into world building, you really need to know how extensive your organizations will be. Everything about this question will hang on the organization and the characterās training.
For your purposes, you need to decide three things about the organization. How much capacity does it have, how much intelligence can it gather, and what is its reach?
Letās start with the influence. Any organization will have limits to how far it can reach. If youāre dealing with a small organized crime outfit, itās going to have difficulty applying itās influence a couple states over. It may still be able to send people out, but their ability to operate will be limited in unfamiliar territory.
If the organization has an extreme reach, then your character canāt slip their perimeter and disappear. Again, the Bond villain example above isnāt that far off the mark. Shadowy conspiracies, or global criminal empires arenāt going to be thrown off (much) by running. Your character may still be able to escape by leaving the planet, but may not be a viable option.
A quick warning here, before we continue: If you are going with a massive global conspiracy that your character worked for, you really want to nail down who these people are. You, probably, want to share some of that information with the audience. Thereās a lot of potential for a thriller about a character running from a massive conspiracy they donāt understand, but, at the very least, you do want to keep your audience at least up to speed with your PoV characters.
The amount of intelligence an organization can collect is critical for evaluating how effectively they can track someone. In the modern day, itās remarkably easy to collect significant information about someone from publicly available information. Last month I watched someone parlay a Twitter bio into the individualās full name, address, and current place of employment in under twenty minutes, using only public data. Do not underestimate how much information you put out there.
At the same time, thereās a huge difference between being able to run someone to ground using public information, and getting access to confidential databases. If your organization has money, they can buy plate reader data, and track your characterās location in real-time if theyāre taking their car. If they have access to law enforcement databases, they can track your character through far more means, (potentially) including facial recognition technology, real-time tracking of their credit/debit card usage, and immediate flags if your characterās ID pops up.
This means, āhiding,ā may be as simple as crashing on an old friendās couch, or it could require significant tradecraft to drop off the radar.
The final thing you need to lock down is the organizationās capacity. Can they send one guy with a handgun? Can they send a kill team? Can they flag your character in federal databases as a terrorist, and send in SWAT teams to kill them.
Thereās two parts here, the organizationās own manpower, and their ability to co-opt other authorities. This will factor into their ability to gather intelligence, if they can piggyback on someone elseās surveillance work, they donāt need to do that themselves. It keeps the organization safe. This could be a data tap, or by having people in the other organizations. Itās the signals vs human intelligence balance, either possibility will work. Either option could blow back on the organization, or they could have legitimate authority. If they have the ability to co-opt other authorities, you can assume they have access to the manpower and intelligence gathering capacities from those organizations.
Depending on how you structured the organization, their operations could be virtually anywhere. Youād need to lock down how they operate. However, weāre only half done here.
Your characterās experience will alter radically based on their own background and approach, so letās split this up into pieces as well. You need to establish your characterās resources, their skills, and their paranoia.
Being on the run is expensive. Both, before and after you start hiding. You need to pay for your safe house, that means renting or buying another place. Because itās a fixed location, if itās compromised itās gone. If youāre staying on the move, you need transportation, that costs money. You need food, that costs considerably more if youāre out in the open collecting it. You need someplace to lay low while you sleep and prepare (if youāre going on the offensive.)
The end result is, your character is going to need considerable resources to go into hiding. For our purposes, resources is collective, it refers to contacts they can use, vehicles, weapons, other equipment, false identities, safe houses. Even their ability to collect intelligence against their former employers would be a form of resources. Anything on this list has the potential to be useful when trying to stay out of sight, or if theyāre trying to shut down their former associates.
The important thing to remember here is: This isnāt a bank balance.ā However, your character will burn through the resources they have as they try to stay out of sight. Any resource they use is another potential piece of evidence their foes could use to track them down.
For example: if your character used their old sidearm to fight off an enemy, and the cops run the ballistics, thereās a real chance the conspiracy could get that info and immediately know your character was there.
One of the major dangers when facing off against an organization with extensive intelligence operations is that all of your bank accounts are now being monitored. If your character had money hidden under a false identity, they still have that money, but thereās a real potential that pulling out their credit card will bring the metro PD running.
Your characterās skillset will heavy affect how well they approach this. Someone with a more covert background will probably have an easier time blending in. Theyāll have a much better grasp over what actions they can take safely, and which ones will light them up for their foes. They may also be in a much better situation for evaluating when to, āmisstep,ā in order to provoke a response. Thereās an entire skill to knowing when you should appear to make a mistake in order to draw your foes out.
Now, Iām talking about this with the assumption that your character is an assassin or spy, but the truth is that a lot of people will cultivate those skills. If your character was a cop, private investigator, bounty hunter, or career criminal, theyād probably know most of this, even if they eschewed violence.
Remember, ājust because youāre paranoid doesnāt mean they arenāt after you.ā How much prep your character did before this situation hit the fan will affect their ability to walk away and disappear. Some of this bundles in with the idea of resources above, but if your character expected, or at least prepared for the potential that theyād need to go into hiding (potentially permanently), they may have set up multiple exit plans to get out and disappear. If they have a plan, and backups, to simply drop off the face of the earth, theyāre probably going to be able to execute those. They would have been in a situation where they could accurately assess the organizationās intelligence, and probably had a good idea how to leave no trace. An especially paranoid character may even have set up some dead man switches in the organization to make tracking them even more difficult when they disappeared.
Of course, itās possible something would cause the character to abandon their exit and switch over to hunting or dismantling the organization. This kind of a decision is very contextual, based on your character and the people in their life, so itās a bit difficult to chart and say, āitād be like this.ā However, it would be an excellent mid-story turning point for the character, where they go from being the hunted to being the hunter.
Beyond this, everythingās character. The relationships between the characters will determine how this, āfeels.ā Once you have an idea for the kind of characters and organizations you have, you can start to research the details and lock this down.
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Q&A: Hunter/Hunted was originally published on How to Fight Write.
