UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Your writing critiqued
James McCreet applies his forensic criticism to the beginning of a reader’s manuscript
Ready to have the first 300 words of your manuscript critiqued? Contact tjackson@warnersgroup.co.uk for details
May
Rinaldi recently retired as a health and safety consultant. Previous jobs included as a lab technician and a taxidermist; all of which have proved extremely useful when writing crime. She lives in Dumfries with her Norwegian husband, two cats and several hens, but spends a lot of time on Gozo, Malta’s sister island, and decided to set her novel there due to the many characters and settings invoked by the island.
1
I understand why you didn’t begin with the much easier-to-process ‘DCI’ – the reader may not know the abbreviation. On the other hand, this is a crime genre book; we might be relatively safe to assume the reader would know it. The problem is that the first sentence begins with a threeword job title: not the most gripping start. I’d suggest sticking with ‘DCI’ and fleshing out the title when less is at stake.
2
Another minor point: introducing characters with their full names is standard practice, but we need to think if this is useful for the reader. Do we need to remember both names, or will she be DCI Hayden for most of the book? Maybe she does need both names. It’s always a valid question.