It's for a Book: Difference between revisions
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Some questions raise eyebrows and suspicions when asked. Questions like "What's the best knife for slitting the throat of a 14-year old girl?", "What do you need to make a pipebomb?" or "How would you go about hacking into the FBI's database?".
Occasionally these are things that characters in fiction need to know how to do in order to do what they do. Which means the writers need to consult experts, otherwise [[Hypocritical Humor|overly picky]] [[
Luckily this works for characters in fiction too. Dave can ask for suggestion how someone could hide the bodies in his trunk, by telling Sue that he's writing a book about a murderer with several bodies in his trunk. Occasionally she will [[Pull the Thread]] on this, and Dave will either come up with some hastily cobbled-together story, or have the plot be what actually happened.
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** Later, Rika uses a better example of this trope; asking "What would a villain's motivations be and how should the heroine fight back?", claiming that she needs help with the manga she's writing.
*** [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|That explains so much...]]
* Schoolwork variant: In ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'', Johan {{spoiler|isolates, [[Mind Rape
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* In ''Hollywood Homicide'', we briefly see the acting equivalent; a plummy actor (played by Eric Idle) is marched through a police station vehemently insisting that he ''wasn't'' soliciting a prostitute, but was doing research for a role. He then briefly says hi to Tina, a lady of the night he presumably has some acquaintance with.
* Played straight in ''[[How To Murder Your Wife]]'', where Jack Lemon's character is accused of killing his missing wife after people who've sold him gadgets for the comic-strip murder go to the police, who then find the photographs he used to create the strip.
* ''[[On the Town]]'' <ref>
* Used by the main character in ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]'', who approaches an airline executive on the pretense of writing a report for school, and in the course of the conversation learns enough pilot jargon to bluff his way through a conversation with actual pilots when riding along in the jump seat.
* In ''[[Letters to Juliet]]'', Sophie asks if she can tag along to write an article.
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* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Johnny Maxwell Trilogy]]'', Johnny observes that it's amazing what grown-ups will let you do if you tell them that you're doing a project.
{{quote|If Saddam Hussein had said he was doing a project on Kuwait, the Gulf War would never have happened.}}
* This trope even shows up in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. When Frodo and his companions arrive at the inn in Bree, they realize they're going to need a plausible explanation for their wandering out of the
* In an ''[[Animorphs]]'' book (#6, ''The Capture''), the Animorphs are attempting to prevent the Yeerks from taking a politician when he has surgery at a hospital they control. To find out when he'll be there, Marco calls his office and gets his schedule by claiming to be from the press.
** This kind of thing happened in real life, when writing the books, too (mostly by ghostwriters). Laura Battyanyi-Weiss had to look up limited information on Giant Squids when writing #27 ''The Exposed''.
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* One careless murderer left all his murder plans on a floppy disk, which was confiscated by investigators. Given how closely the details he'd written matched the actual murder, the "it's for a book!" defense fell flat.
* According to legend, in the early 1950s Japanese police arrested two men who were in a restaurant discussing how to destroy Tokyo. They were the director and producer of what would become the original ''[[Godzilla]]'' movie. The commentary track on the ''Gojira'' DVD says that the police showed up when some of the production team were up on top of a building in downtown Tokyo, discussing which of the other buildings in sight they wanted to "destroy". No one actually got arrested.
* Crime author Ian Rankin once returned from an isolated cottage in the Scottish hills and requested to speak to a Police Officer about several 'plot points' for his story. Questions such as: police procedure in child abduction/murder cases, sentence lengths, etc. Unbeknownst to him a young girl had been kidnapped and murdered earlier that
* Author [[Animorphs|K.]] [[Everworld|A.]] [[Remnants|Applegate]] got very annoyed answers from the military because of questions she asked about the build of tanks, airplanes, and an aircraft carrier.
* There was a Nick game show at one point that required kids to go to various public places and (with the aid of a hidden camera) get people to do various ridiculous actions (eat bugs, wear silly hats, etc.) The usual explanation was something like "We're doing a school project".
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