[Guest]

I didn't know exactly how to word that question. I am writing a novel that is turning out to be mostly in epistolary and otherwise non-standard forms. For example, one part of it is an arrest report. Another is a record of admission into a juvenile home. Another is a news article. And so on.

Well, I've never seen an arrest report or admission record! Does anybody out there know of a book or website that offers examples of different types of records, etc. that authors might want to use to tell their stories?

 

[gatehouseauthor]

Google is your friend! But honestly, thing like arrest reports and juvenile housing admissions, among other official documents, vary from state to state, county to county, and even institution to institution. It would be hard to nail down something that would be "official". I don't think you'd need it to be exact for the purposes of a book, as long as it had enough basic information to tell what it is.

http://www.crimescene.com/fine/evidence.arrest.reagle.html

There's an arrest report. I did a Google search for "arrest report examples", that was the third result.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/20488176/Sample-Policies-Procedures-and-Forms-for-JDF-in-MS

Did a search for "juvenile detention admission form example", that link was the second result. It's not an example of the actual form, but if you scroll down to intake, it lists all the information that such a form would ask for, so you would just need to piece that together into something quasi-official looking, I'd say.

Hope that helped!

 

[Valmore Daniels]

welcome

 

[jherrick]

Hi Shoshana. I've only flipped through these Howdunit books once or twice, but maybe you'll find an example in one of them. I've seen them on the shelves in bookstores so you might be able to flip through one entirely there. Here's an Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Police-Procedure-Investigation-Writers-Howdunit/dp/1582974551/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309268786&sr=1-1

One book I recently read with some of that info is John Grisham's The Confession, which contains a lengthy police report. So that might give you an idea. Hope those help...

 

[Daniel Leston]

Hi, Shoshana, and welcome aboard.  Best of luck to you.

Dan --