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.

Rob 4 Now in the Neighborhood

My husband and I have lived in this house over thirty years, during which time I’ve watched the neighborhood change in the usual ways—older folks moving on and younger families moving in, new houses on once-empty lots, repaved streets and new sidewalks, and more trees. I knew my immediate neighbors and knew about others farther out. But since our beloved dog died in May 2018, I’ve expanded my view of this community.

My husband prefers the name Rob for every dog, so we’re now on Rob 4. But before that he bonded so completely with Rob 2 that we were both devastated when he died. He was a rescue dog who was four or five years old when we got him, from a foster parent who thought we were too old for him. He was sweet, good-natured, and rarely ate my shoes. But he was a handful. When he died, we tried replacing him but Rob 3 bit someone, and needed massive amounts of training, which we helped arrange. The crisis included a broken arm for my husband, followed by PT. It also meant waiting quite a while for his arm to heal before getting another dog.

For the last twelve months people have stopped him every day, sometimes three or four times a day, asking about Rob 2 and Rob 3 and his arm. These people are sometimes neighbors down the street, at the other end of the neighborhood, from across town, or out of town. But all saw him walking the dog day and night (and that means sometimes at three in the morning). Where was the dog, what happened to Rob 2, and when will there be a new one? (My favorite was a young woman who turned her car around and came back to say, My mother wants to know about your dog.)

Well, we’ve had Rob 4 less than two weeks, and now I know what Michael was going through. I walk the dog occasionally, and almost every time someone asks, Is this Rob 4? Young men in their twenties stop mowing the lawn to take a look, women wave from across the street, and men and women slow down while driving past so they can ask, Is this Rob 4? Smiles and waves follow.

Who are these people? I’ve never seen most of them before, and I had no idea so many people were following the ongoing saga of my husband and his dog. They all seem to know who I am, but even so, I’m thinking of getting a t-shirt suggested by a friend, which would read: 

Susan 1

Mother of Rob 4

What does this have to do with crime fiction and writing? Well, if you insist . . . 

Consider how hard criminals try to conceal what they’re up to, and consider the number of people (probably in the hundreds by now) who kept track of a man whose last name they didn’t know while he recovered from a broken arm and searched for a new rescue dog. It’s enough to make an honest person out of anyone considering a life of crime.