Advice, the Long and the Short of It

By the time one of us publishes a novel, we’ve been fortunate enough to receive a fair amount of feedback from other readers and writers. Sometimes this advice takes the form of extensive, detailed notes, and at other times it’s a general reaction of liking or disliking the story or how it’s told. An early reader of my first mystery, Murder in Mellingham, said simply, “Could we get to the dirty deed sooner?” As an editor, she knew that merely moving up the murder would require a lot of other changes, all of which would improve the story.

Another of my first critiquers, Jim Huang, gave me several pages of single-spaced, typed comments. Yes, I was intimidated, but it was an enormous help. He gave me a lot to read and ponder, specific passages to rework or excise, and questions to answer. But one comment that I’ll never forget was ultra simple. “What’s this scene doing here?” Apparently, nothing useful.

Over the years I’ve learned to expect certain reactions from certain readers, and I look forward to those because I know they’ll put me on the right path and save me a lot of embarrassment. One friend can deliver the most important message in the shortest sentence. She once said, “It isn’t finished.” This stopped me in my tracks because, of course, I thought it was, as did several other readers. But I trusted her, so I thought about her comment at length, and she was right.

In Below the Tree Line, I was dealing with a new setting and new characters. Several Beta readers talked about the plot, when certain scenes should be beefed up or a character fleshed out. All of this was useful, but the best comment, at least for me, came from one reader in particular. The story revolves around Felicity O’Brien, who has recently taken over the family farm now that her father is too frail to do the work himself. She knows this land, has grown up here and worked the farm, all of which rests in the background. Then a friend said, “What is her life really like?” Out of that question grew an understanding of the role of the farming background. This had to be more than window dressing, a pretty landscape. I thought I knew this, but the reader’s comment indicated that I had failed to convey it well. Out of her comment came a change in how Felicity spent her days with an intent of showing the obvious to those who might know nothing about farms.

The more short stories or novels I write, the better I become as a writer, but also the more I understand that the length of the critique doesn’t matter. Sometimes the shortest critique contains the single idea that I need most. The fault in a story can usually be distilled into a few words, and understanding this can open up a raft of possibilities. As I choose one, I eliminate one problem but I may encounter others. Thinking about this reminds me of something Walter Mosley said during a talk at Crime Bake 2018. He said he knew a manuscript was finished when he identified a problem he couldn’t fix. But it was something he could get right in the next book.

Like many other writers, I usually want to make one more pass through the manuscript, but that isn’t always necessary. Sometimes the story really is complete. Being told when to stop is also an important comment from a reader.