The Word Cloud

An extract from a review of my crime novel Darkness:

P.133: There’s a problem with Jackie’s encounter with Councillor Winterbotham because the reader already knows that he is not a murderer. The same applies later on page 177. Jackie is gearing up to nail Marty about his dealings with Candice. However, the reader already knows this because Marty’s thoughts have already been revealed. I’d advise you to look at structure again.

Please advise - and tell me what you would do in similar circumstances, without re-writing the whole damn thing...

Thanks stephen

It depends whether Jackie is our pair-of-eyes for the novel, and we experience it all through her (him?) or whether you're working with a wider perspective and an omniscient narrator. If the latter then, yes, in principle there's no reason why we can't know more than a particular character does, but if the reader already knows what Marty thinks, then there's less narrative tension built into the lead-up to the showdown with Jackie. We're not trying to work out Marty, only wanting to know what Jackie will do when Jackie finds out about Marty's thinking. And again - where's the tension in an encouter with a murder suspect if we, the readers, already know he isn't? We will be wondering a bit what Jackie will do when he/she discovers, and mildly whether it'll change things now Winterbottom knows that he's not suspected by Jackie. But in a plot-driven novel that's unlikely to be enough.

Fundamentally, I guess, the problem is that in both these scenes there isn't enough at stake: for Jackie there may be, but not for us: we know the outcome can't be all that dramatic.

You may not need to re-write the whole novel - but you may. It sounds as if you do need to set to and map out what Jackie knows, what the reader knows, what any other VP character knows, in each chapter, and make sure that it all works.

I was afraid you were going to say that...

The story is told through several POV characters, mainly JACKIE, but also Marty and the (now) unnamed killer. So I can clarify the Winterbotham scenario to make him a suspect.

With Marty V Jackie it's different. He doesn't know Jackie is on to him. But I'll take your advice and map it out.

thanks Emma, you've helped a lot.

You're welcome. I suspect you'll find it's curable with only a bit of shifting of scenes around...

Another thought: "he doesn't know Jackie is on to him" can work IF we know/believe that the consequences of him discovering Jackie is on to him would be - will be huge.

Then there's narrative tension, because there's instability built into the scenario.