I was discussing my mystery novel Gossip Kills with a friend the other day, and they told me that their one criticism was that it didn’t seem to have enough detail. I’d heard another intimation of this too, when someone told me it was “like a screenplay.” I took this as a comment on the sparseness of detail and the emphasis on dialogue (which was influenced by my love of golden age and noir mysteries), though maybe I read it wrong (and it’s true that I wrote three screenplays before I completed a novel). Of course I welcome criticism at this stage in my career (trying to finish my second mystery novel). I didn’t have a professional editor to help me with Gossip Kills; I didn’t even have a professional proofreader. I did the best I could, obviously, but any critiques are priceless.
This “lack of detail” rings true and I’m glad it’s been brought to my attention, but it’s not even the only part of Gossip Kills that has room to improve. The setting itself, the boring office of a bureaucratic health insurance company, carries some dullness with it – though I think I captured what I wanted to about this monotony and expressed it with humor. Another arguable flaw is that the first murder doesn’t happen soon enough, that there is too much initial setup. I’ve been aware of these “flaws” or weaknesses with Gossip Kills and I’m not repeating them in Split Screen (the one I’m working on now).
This new insight about the amount of detail comes at a good time, because I was already working on that with Split Screen , trying to add that more detailed layer of writing (is it serendipity that I find myself briefly in Hollywood again, which is where the story takes place?). I sensed that this was an area where I could improve. It’s good that it was brought to the fore of my consciousness and can hopefully help point me in the right direction.
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