Here's a short detective story. Just want a critique over it.
Detective Daniel Sutton looked out over the crime scene with impassive eyes, the blood not bothering him, his expert eye cataloging any useful information. Head wound, he thought, gun shot, head wounds bleed allot, no struggle, victim knew his attacker, no sign of B&E, dead about an hour, found by sister, need to interview the sister, get somebody else to do it, no. I should, damn it. As these thoughts went through his head, he looked at his watch, noting that it was past midnight, most people would be asleep, but then, he wasn't most people.
"What's the corpse's name? He asked one of the uniformed officers cordoning off the apartment building. Average building, non-descript place, not high scale, not a dive either.
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
You've tried to disguise an info dump as internal dialog. It's not working for me. There is no tension in this fragment, which is a shame, given the scene you are portraying. You are also telling, not showing, so it reads sort of flat and boring, like a police report.
Saying the detective is looking with impassive eyes is a contradiction to his active expert eye that is busy cataloging the information.
I suggest you SHOW us how the detective comes to these conclusions, or if the scene doesn't warrant that much detail, you can perhaps summarize it as he has a conversation with someone else. Work some action in amongst your laundry list of details.
Head wounds bleed a lot, not allot. Don't abbreviate B&E, spell it out for your reader. I presume you mean "breaking and entering."
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
I like the form and clarity of this. To me the only thing it's really missing is a hook. "Yet another murder mystery" isn't a good hook for me, and that's all we have here. What makes yours special? Tell us in the first line, I think.
The details might be more interesting if they were a little more concrete. "...his expert eye cataloging what he saw. A pool of blood under the man's head -- head wounds did bleed a lot [if this is true? not sure]. Other than that, the body seemed almost at peace: there was no sign of a struggle." Etc. Etc.
I'll read.
Posted by djh (Member # 3826) on :
Everything feels routine and average about this set-up. Your main character is bored and even the apartment building is ho-hum. Maybe that's the point. If you mean to highlight the nothing-out-of-the-ordinary nature of this crime scene, then you succeeded, but I need at least a hint of something more intriguing to keep reading. Maybe some detail piques the MC's interest a little later, but we need it sooner. Like wbriggs said, you need a hook here, at least in the first paragraph, preferably in the first sentence.
I agree with Elan that perhaps dialogue with another person and a little action would make this better...and I didn't know what B&E meant.
Impassive means unemotional so that usage doesn't bother me, but there are too many "eyes" in the first sentence.
Posted by Hendrik Boom (Member # 1991) on :
Detective Daniel Sutton seems bored. He even checks his watch as if he wants to see if the night shift is about to be over and he can hand the case over to another detective. If he doesn't care about the case, why should I?
Posted by Omakase (Member # 2915) on :
Aside from what's already been mentioned I had a difficult time reading this because it seems to be one giant run-on sentence. This needs a serious grammar review.
Also, I found it unbelievable that the cop would say "What's the corpse's name" instead of victim or some other identifier.