More important than writing what you know, is knowing what you write.

Critique by John Ramsey Miller


STORM RISING
Author Unknown

Tuesday December 14th 7:53 A.M.

West 164th and Broadway – Alleyway

Detective Kelli Storm ducked under the yellow crime scene tape as her partner, Bob Jenkins, held it up for her. She spotted the M.E., Jack Hastings, kneeling next to the body of a nun.

“So what do we have, Jack?”

The portly grey haired man spun his head and looked up at her. “Caucasian female, mid-forties. I noted ligature marks around her neck and petechial hemorrhaging. My preliminary COD is asphyxiation. She’s also missing her right hand.”

Kelli leaned in for a closer look. “Son of a bitch. What kind of sick shit would do that to a nun?” She stood back up, feeling a chill run down her spine.

Jack shook his head. “You got me, you’re the detective. From the looks of it, whoever did this is a pro,” he said, examining the arm. “No jagged edges, a clean cut.”

Kelli could swear she caught a hint of admiration in his voice. “Got a time of death?”

“Hard to say. It’s pretty cold, but judging by lividity, I’d put it somewhere around midnight. I’ll know more when I get her back to the morgue.” He motioned for two assistants who had been standing a few feet away.

Kelli watched as the two swooped in like vultures, a body bag unfolding as they closed on the corpse. She stepped back and bumped into Bob.

“Sorry,” she said, sidestepping.

“What’s wrong, Kelli? This isn’t your first crime scene.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the way she died. The way this monster mutilated her. I mean a nun for Christ sake.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty sick. Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded. “Who found the body?”

Bob tilted his head toward the street. “The elderly woman over there. Name is Mrs. Kilpatrick.”

Kelli turned and spotted the woman standing next to a uniformed officer. “Let’s go and talk to her,” she said, and headed for the street.


Okay, let’s begin at the beginning.

1- I would make this opening chapter the second chapter. The two-line time and place slug that opens the book is no substitute for description that sets time, place and mood. Movie scripts open like this. Draw the reader in. Where is the texture? I want to be there. What does it smell like? What does it sound like? How many people are there? If you aren’t going to start off with action to pull in the reader, then put us at the place. It’s a flat opening and doesn’t say anything interesting, show any compelling action, set a mood, describe or or introduce characters effectively.

2- M.E.’s head spins and he looks up? What is this, The Exorcist?

3- Too much too soon. The nun is the punchline. I would withhold the fact that the victim is a nun until later in the scene. If she is wearing a habit nobody has to say that she is a nun. Until the word is used, she’s just another corpse, who becomes a strangled woman and her right hand missing.

4- The detective likely wouldn’t say, “What kind of sick shit would do this to a nun?” Obviously the same kind of sick shit who would do this to any other human being. Unless you are Catholic, nuns are just religious women wearing a monochromatic outfit. This makes Kelli look like a rookie, (or perhaps she is a failed nun who became a detective due to priest friskiness or something). A missing hand is nothing. New York City homicide detectives see hollowed out heads, tortured children, limbs torn off, people with crowbars sticking out of their chests.

5- How about some black humor in introducing the fact of the victim being a nun. Kelli might say, “Who would do this to a nun?” Her partner, Bob, might reply, “Looks like she wouldn’t give up the ruler.” Kelli might frown at the retort, since vic is a nun. I think this would be more upsetting to Kelli if the victim were a child, a pregnant woman, or a young mother.

6- Lividity would be one indicator of time of death, but that is only accurate (color and intensity wise) for the first six hours or so. It tells if a body has been moved. An M.E. would use a liver temp (The organ that holds heat the longest) weighed against outside temperature and rate of cooling to get an approximate time of death. He would also rigor and the stage of blood coagulation.

7- A body bag doesn’t unfold itself and I wouldn’t use “vultures” to describe their motion. Vultures circle and land carefully, alert to danger. These guys are professionals and move fluidly because they do this all the time.

8- What about a cleanly severed hand points to ta professional? Would that be a professional killer, butcher, biologist, doctor, or an upholsterer? With a sharp instrument, anybody can remove a hand cleanly. If organs have been removed surgically, or the corpse skinned, or tattooed, that might indicate involvement of a person with medical knowledge.

9- Confusing use of tense. “Kelly could swear” right after “Kelly leaned in”

10- How does Bob know the woman’s name who found the body? Reading this, I assumed Kelli and Bob got there around the same time since they are partners. He’s been behind her since they arrived, I thought.

It feels more like a quickly written, rough first draft. The author’s notes in the margins might say:

*check out an alley in NYC for dimensions, lighting, etc…

*what would a female NYC detective wear? What is her rank? What precinct is she with? How does she carry her weapon? Does she wear sneakers or flat sole leather shoes?

*Check out steps M.E. would take and in what order. Would M.E. check lividity on the scene by undressing a nun? How would he figure time of death. Would the M.E. be there ahead of the detectives? Who rolls the body? What would the M.E. need to know in situ, and what would he do back at the morgue?

I think a large problem here is that there is nothing fresh, different or compelling here. It feels stale, and not well visualized or thought out.

Reading this, I didn’t get the feeling that the author knew as much as they should about what makes up this scene. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that their knowledge of police procedure comes in large part from watching TV. You can tell when an author knows a subject whether it’s from doing their research or first hand knowledge. This chapter just doesn’t feel real to me. I think you can tell when an author knows more than he or she puts on the page.

I think the author should take a deep breath and start over.




15 thoughts on “More important than writing what you know, is knowing what you write.

  1. John, with the exception of your comments about lividity, I almost universally disagree with you about this page.

    Black humor is all well and good once you’ve established your characters, but on a first page it’s just trite and corny. Lines like that remind me of the fictional CSI show in the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

    “Oh, you want dark and ominous.”

    But I digress. I was also always taught that you never ever ever ever ever ever open a story with weather, time, or mood. It’s one of the famous “10 Writing Rules of Elmore Leonard,” actually. And I think the most successful crime novelist of a generation knows what he’s talking about. The slug works. It gives you the frame of reference you need, and really gives the feel of a police procedural.

    I liked it. The dialogue was crisp, felt authentic. Though, I do agree there are a few things that need to be addressed, like where Bob was at the start of the scene. But, all in all, a fine piece of writing. I’d keep reading.

  2. I second Miller’s critique. I felt this read like the police report that Detective Storm would have turned in back at the office. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

  3. “A dark and stormy morning in an alley” would be a huge improvement over what’s here.” You want to be encouraging, and a fresh start is the best advice anyone can give here. The detective’s utterance of the word “shit” on the opening page is the highlight of the dialog and “portly, grey haired” is the only character description.

    You have to set the scene with more than a slug and then go straight to bending over to go under the tape. Kelli spends her time stooping, bumping into her partner, standing back up, sidestepping, being generally flummoxed. Hardly a detective I’d want to follow over to the witness.

    You can disagree with his take if you like but any editor on the planet would break the sound barrier getting this off their desk and back into the mail.

  4. Fletch,
    I didn’t mean the author should open with a description of the weather. Just off the top of my head, how about opening with something in the direction of: “As Detective Kelli Storm raised the crime scene tape with her left hand, she used her right to close her coat to protect herself from the early morning chill. The row of dumpsters against one wall filled the narrow alley with the odor of food gone wrong.”

  5. I appreciate the side notes you added John… as an author those are the things that I would want to add or check on, if I missed them, or didn’t layer that info in there.

    The dialog work was not exceptional, but it was clean. It didn’t really help me to know the characters, but it did relay facts. I would agree that this would be a 2nd or 3rd chapter and it would work better if I already knew or had a feel for the characters and why the detective would have been more uncomfortable with this murder than another.

    There was a distinct lack of character, setting, and “feel”. This could have been any character in any location, at at time, it is too generic to care. Without more feel, it’s hard to be drawn in.

  6. Okay, before I take my turn with criticism, let me open with some positives: I like this author’s ear for dialogue. I like the crispness of the exchanges, and I like the pacing of it. I’m not entirely sure how the medical examiner got to the crime scene before the detective (where I live, the medical examiner waits for the bodies to be delivered to him in the morgue, but that’s probably a jurisdictional thing), but taking the structure of the dialogue at face value, I think the author did a good job.

    The problem with this opening for me is that there’s nothing to love and nothing to hate. It serves as an example of why, contrarian that I often am, I believe it’s usually a mistake to open on dialogue. Unless the POV character is in a deep crisis that expresses universal emotion with which everyone can emulate, the talkers are just talkers. We don’t care about them, and because we don’t care, the potential for drama is squandered.

    Kelli comes off to me as weak and ill-qualified for her chosen profession. Back when I was in the blood and guts business, a scene like this involving a nun would have evoked anger as the strongest emotion–and I do believe that it would be of a greater magnitude because the victim was a nun. And everyone on the scene would be anxious for the body bag to be zipped up. No one wants to keep looking at stuff like that. In fact a grizzled fire captain shared with me his number one rule for emergency responders: “If it’s ugly, cover it up.” People work more efficiently when they’re not being stared at by dead people.

    As for the crime scene, there’s nothing exceptionally awful about it. Strangled and missing a hand is the homicide equivalent of a burger with fries–if not in real life, then certainly in the realm of mystery/thriller readers. To me, this scene feels like the second scene of every Law & Order episode ever shot. (Note to file: I stopped watching Law & Order years ago because every second scene started looking like every second scene ever shot.)

    My vote is not to trash the scene, but rather to move it a little deeper into the story. I also recommend that the author contact the PIO at his or her local police department and arrange some ride alongs. The cops love to do that stuff, and the writer will better off for the experience.

    John Gilstrap
    http://www.johngilstrap.com

  7. I’m glad you brought up the comment about researching via TV. I see a lot of writers do that, and they don’t have an understanding that TV often gets facts wrong. Sometimes intentionally because it keeps the time moving. Sometimes because it’s more interesting than showing the reality. Sometimes they just don’t have time check facts.

    Using TV isn’t research. It isn’t even a shortcut.

  8. i read this in the az republic, just after reading the critique of another manuscript. it’s by frank clark, a screenwriter….ok, i’ve never heard of him either. but he said “criticism, like rain, should be gentle enuf to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots”. i thought that was cool, as i’d just been thinking of how all of tkz comments are geared for helping the newbie….a welcome respite from how harsh the publishing world seems to be.

  9. I guess I tend to be a bit harder on critiquing than I used to be because I know from experience that it takes a dedication, relentlessness, talent, and a steel-thick skin to make it as a commercial author. Even literary fast food takes more than typing skills to work. Getting into Fort Knox is easier than placing your work with a real editor and a publisher. Maybe that isn’t important any more, but I think quality is something to strive for, and I didn’t see it here. I thought I saw laziness and that the writer could have done better and will have to do better if they intend to keep going. I see a lot of would-be authors without one iota of talent who have been encouraged by their friends and family and are coddled by other authors. Some people are what I call literary hobbyists and they tippy type stories with no more idea of what they are doing than a the comic relief acts that make it onto an initial episode of American Idol.

    I have read work by sophomores in high school that impressed me, and I am gentler with young would-be writers because they don’t know any better. If this was written by a student, I’d say bravo. I’m just an author with eight published books, and I can be wrong because my opinion is subjective. I just think if this is a mature adult at work, they had best be serious enough to work their asses off.

    Elmore Leonard can say there’s rules you don’t break, but every author has their own rules. Elmore Leonard writes the best low-rent dialog on earth, but setting (any setting outdoors includes some weather) needs to be communicated so the reader is THERE with the characters. Setting is critical to being in the book rather than outside it.

    I never learned anything from praise, but I learned a lot from brutal critics who told me what was wrong and I never wanted to be a weed in the flower bed. If you need praise in order to keep on, you are wasting your time.

    There isn’t any author on this board that is as impatient or as hard to please as I am. I appreciate talent, but I’m too long in the tooth to encourage any but those who have a gift for this thing of ours. This is a hot kitchen we’re working in. If you want praise, you have to earn it.

  10. Nothing makes an author happier than spotting real talent in another, especially budding talent. Nobody appreciates good writing more than an author. All authors are first, good readers. I truly want to love everything I read.

  11. Let me offer the author of this piece a bit of encouragement. You can write sentences. Believe me, I’ve seen first efforts where the sentences were choppy and virtually unrelated to each other. There is nothing a writing teacher can do with such a person. They are a lost cause.

    You are not a lost cause. You know what a sentence looks like and sounds like. And you have rendered a scene here, an actual scene.

    So…take the criticisms a pointing you to areas you can improve.

    I will add my own here: look for freshness inside your Lead character. As John G. mentioned, there should be emotion in there, and it should be unique to your character. The scene as written seems like one we’ve seen hundreds of times before, at the beginning of every Law & Order.

    What can you pull out that is fresh? The nun corpse is a good idea. You can do what Miller suggests, and leave it for a punchline; or you could put it right at the very top. Then give us some reason this would disturb Kelli. Maybe a Catholic background. Maybe her mother was a nun (what? How can a nun be a mother? Find out, because it’s fresh).

    What I’m saying to you is that you CAN write, but now it’s time to kick it up a few notches. Really work on Kelli. Get in there deep. If I may recommend a book by my agent, Donald Maass? The Fire in Fiction. He goes into this whole concept nicely.

  12. Personally I think it works, though I have to agree with some of the harsher critiques. The author definitely needs to do more research on police procedures and the role of the M.E. And starting off with the murder scene is very Law & Order like. (Yes, I’m guilty of watching it.)

  13. Just curious, how many of the authors of this blog read each others work? Do you think you could recognize it if you had to?

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