I was raised on the fast-paced television drama, where crimes were committed and solved — with justice swiftly dispatched — in under an hour.

So, when I sit down to write, the words that spring forward from my fingertips do not mimic the long, languid prose of Dickens, Poe or Twain. Rather, they take the shape of an episode of The Rockford Files.

In my youth, detective shows like The Rockford Files whet my appetite for fast-paced storytelling. They moved quickly and didn’t bog down the hour with fleshing out characters in prolonged story arcs that took years to resolve. Instead, they gave viewers the essentials and assumed we were smart enough to follow along.

I take a similar approach to writing. In a first draft, I’m mostly interested in the action. Characterization comes when I am inspired to add something (maybe a bit of backstory or a mannerism my main character has). Description is minmal. I don’t have time for description, beyond what is necessary to pull the reader into my scene.

In that initial stab at the story, I’m interested in blocking out the elements of the story. What happens? When? Can the illusion of the story be performed without the reader seeing the wires? To this, I think back to my favorite crime dramas on TV and break down my story into five easy parts.

1. The Hook

The hook is the scene that comes before the opening credits. Old shows didn’t always do this, but newer shows like Castle do. In a crime drama, this might involve seeing someone get murdered or (in the case of a television series like Bones) someone stumbling oer a maggot-infested body.

2. The Setup

The first act. I need to give the reader enough information so the rest of the story makes sense. Here’s where we investigate what happened in the hook. Think of this as the bulk of your story. The hero has to be very proactive or very lucky for things to progress to any kind of revelation.

3. The Revelation

I have watched a lot of crime drama over the years, everything from Quincy M.E. to CSI. From Hawaii Five-0 to… well, Hawaii Five-0. And every week there comes a point when you think the mystery is solved. The police discover that the victim was sleeping with the boss’ daughter and so it clearly must be the boss who killed him. Inevitably, the revelation is a red herring.

So too, your character needs some kind of setback before everything works out. You have to do it carefully and deliberately or the audience won’t believe it. If you hit the revelation too soon, or not fast enough, it won’t work.

4. The Twist

The key is to never confuse the revelation with the twist. No matter how well you set it up that the boss must have killed the victim because he discovered his precious daughter was being used, have a better card hidden up your sleeve. Maybe it was the girl’s mother who killed the victim, but everyone overlooked her because she lied about being the boss’ alibi.

The twist can’t come out of thin air. Your reader will feel cheated if you have the boss’ daughter’s ex-boyfriend show up in the final minutes and confess. Give your readers a surprise, but leave them saying “Of course! It had to be!”

5. The Tag

Once a staple in television, the tag is something of a relic these days. (Now even the end credits of a show are sacrificed to make room for more commercials. But I digress.) The tag was a final bit of parting wisdom that came after the last commercial break, but before the credits. In a sitcom, it was usually a final joke (often from the secondary story of the episode).

The tag is important because it sums up the lesson learned or speaks to the overall story arc. Don’t just drop the ending of your story. Tell your readers how things are different now. Give them a taste of what will happen next. Give everyone a sense of closure.

Some writers sit down to pen their stories with nothing but a vague notion of who their characters are and what they want their characters to do. Not me. I need to see the whole picture before I begin, even if it’s just an outline of these five points.

When I need a little inspiration, I think back to the gritty streets of ’70s television and ask myself how Jim Rockford would get out of this mess. He’s always broke and working on a deadline. If anyone would understand being a writer, it’s him.