: Re: Consulting experts - why should they talk to someone who isn't a published writer yet? Whatever subject I am researching for my story, the common recommendation is "talk to the relevant professionals".

@LarsenBagley300

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You'd be surprised just how much access you can get by inserting the phrase "I'm writing a book and wanted to know..." and the sources that are really friendly may shock you. The police are all but too helpful to anyone requesting procedures or situational handling. So if you want to know what the procedure for handling a bank robbery is, they will likely tell you anyway (especially since, as depicted in the Order part of Law and Order, the police's job entails explaining in detail their procedures in such a way that 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of Jury Duty can understand it) and in the United States, Ride Alongs with cops are encouraged.

However, if you call the Bank or the Company that makes the alarms for the Banks, they may be a little hesitant to tell you these things. This is for two reasons: because they don't want competators to know their products mechanisms... and they don't want thieves to know either. Cops on the other hand have to explain as part of their job, and explaining the methods do help discourage the bad guys.

Even then, don't do one over the other, but rather both. A timid bank manager might not ask a question, a cop will likely tell you enough details to fill in the gaps. In organizations that deal with classified information, this is called Aggregate Classification. Essentially in a document, no one piece of information is classified... but all the information together can raise a document to the highest possible classification levels. Tom Clancy was suspected of talking to someone who leaked classified documents on Submarine Specs to him that he then published in "Hunt for the Red October" but never found any. What they did find is that Clancy had talked to a lot of submariners and gleaned information from them and did a little guess work on the small gaps that all together prompted an investigation into a possible leak in the Navy (You don't want a leak anywhere in the military, but especially not in the Navy... and defiantly not in the Navy's subs).

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