Finding the CrimeCop voice

The useful breakthrough in revisiting CrimeCop was not a new character or cleaner continuity. It was finding the voice.

CrimeCop should sound like a huge action universe explained by a kid who believes every word completely.

The language is plain. The stakes are enormous. Nobody is trying to be funny, which is why it can be funny.

A few rules:

• Say the whole thing, even when it sounds obvious.
• Repeat important words instead of searching for elegant alternatives.
• Explain impossible machinery as though it were completely practical.
• Let authority figures sound like bosses, teachers, parents, and government officials at the same time.
• Do not wink at the reader.

The voice sounds like this:

The President called CrimeCop on the CrimeCop phone because regular phone was not serious enough.

You got an F at stopping Ultra Boss, but an A at shooting and kicking.

Those lines contain the rule I want to return to as the universe gets larger: the world may become cosmic, but its vocabulary should remain simple.