10. Manuscript not tightly edited and polished
for grammar, spelling, and punctuation
Incorrect
grammar, spelling, and punctuation show you don’t care enough to learn the
mechanics of writing. Working with you
in the future will be a continual clean-up process, and editors want mss as
clean as possible to reduce cost of copy editing.
9. Poor pacing
The
book should rise through a series of plateaus of action or intrigue followed by
breathers. A breather happens when the
protagonist is not in danger or actively solving the case. Breathers become shorter and shorter as the
plot shifts into high gear. The interval
between breathers gets longer as the book goes on, so that by the last 50 pages
or so, there aren’t any.
8. Telling, not showing
Many
new writers take the shortcut of explaining a situation or backstory directly
to the reader, spoon-feeding character development and plot events. Instead, show the action as it happens,
letting the characters participate first hand in real time. A detective visiting a crime scene can be
told to the reader in a few hundred words, but if it was shown to the reader in
several thousand words, the reader could enter the scene and experience it with
all senses on high alert.
7. Ending not satisfying
Readers
look to mysteries for the kind of justice that sometimes eludes them in the
real world. Wrap up all subplots before
the resolution of the main plot, so that there is nothing to distract the
reader in that last dash to the ending. If you use a wrap-up or epilogue at the ending, don’t drag it out too
long. If you're using a twist ending, make sure it's plausible given the rest of the buildup in your book.
6. Violating MOM
Means,
Opportunity, and Motive form the basis of a crime puzzle for the reader. Make sure all your suspects satisfy MOM to
some degree, so they can seem plausible to the reader. Your killer has to have MOM pegged, something the protagonist will uncover gradually.
5. Location is overused and/or uninteresting
Some
locations (such as California, Florida, and Texas) are well-represented in the
mystery market already. Editors are
looking for new, highly original slants on old locations, or fresh locations
that have some intrinsic appeal.
Location should have a strong effect on the characters, the crime, and how
the crime is solved. Let the setting become a character in your book. If your book is set
in Chicago but it could just as easily have been San Diego, then your setting
is far too generic.
4.
Clues/solution of whodunit too obvious, or conversely, indecipherable
Play
fair. At the end of the book, the reader
should be able to backtrack and rediscover the clues laid out. Determine all the major clues needed to solve
the crime, then go back and sprinkle them into your book out of logical order
and concealed, using misdirection and false clues to keep the reader
guessing. But make sure that all the
clues are there that the reader needs to solve the puzzle.
3. No “hook” at the beginning of the book
The first 500 words of your book are golden. That is the amount a browser might read in a bookstore, pulling the book
off the shelf and examining it. In those
brief words, you have to anchor the reader in a character, a situation, and a
location. Don’t rely on overused
beginnings such as the dream, describing the weather, or having the character
wake up and go through routine morning activities in detail.
2. Dialogue stilted
Bad
dialogue is a constant irritant. Read
your dialogue aloud – better yet, have a group of friends read it while you
listen. If your characters are saying
things that would never come out of a real human’s mouth, you’ve got work to
do. On the other hand, dialogue is
usually not a word-for-word representation of the way real people talk. It is condensed, more like the way we wish we
could have said the things we did.
1. Voice not engaging
Voice
is a combination of your protagonist’s personality and your own writing
style. Style consists of your word
choice, sentence structure and length, tone (humorous, dark, etc.), paragraph
length, chapter structure, pacing, and point of view. Editors are looking for a “fresh voice,"
meaning something that is not a rehashing of other authors’ work, something
with genuine sizzle and a new way of looking at the human condition. But not so fresh that readers won't be able to understand it or settle into it comfortably.
