How do you know if your book has too much dialogue and not enough description of the scenery, people etc. I was reassured recently by reading Kyle Perry’s The Deep. It’s a fast plot driven novel. There are some lovely epic descriptions, particularly of the weather, but the descriptions of people and places are short based on one or two lines and a lot of the character comes through dialogue not description. It was a relief to see that the background story of people was also uncovered through dialogue (sometimes with a fictional person but nonetheless dialogue). Being able to talk about memories and things that have happened in the past is also something that is confusing me when I’m writing in first person. So I’m now thinking that perhaps this is part of my style as a writer (right now at least) and not something that I need to ‘fix’. As long as Mum seemed to understand what was happening in the story and wanted to keep reading, maybe that lack of description is ok. I will have to see how people who don’t live in Tasmania, and know about the setting and people already, will be able to handle it. I think it will be worth checking back to see if I have adequately described places and objects and characters for people who aren’t familiar with Tasmania, but I think that is a more realistic thing to do once I know that there aren’t big holes that are letting me down for the more familiar Tasmanian reader.

I did find The Deep hard to put down. I wanted to keep reading and find out what would happen. The characters weren’t too deep, pun intended, but the twisting plot made up for it and the clever use of some people knowing some things and then gradually revealing them to others. It was different from reading some of the more emotional, literary, character based and historical fiction. I hope to bring more dialogue brings that faster pace to my novel. The key difference was that The Deep spanned about two to three months in real time for the characters whereas my book is covering about 30 years. So perhaps simply describing the changing time period will slow the reading of my book down quite a bit. I’ve been looking at how chapter headings can be used to help guide the reader around this time period jumping. Interestingly The Deep was written in multiple POV and chapter headings were the POV’s name. I am using the year and location at present as my chapter headings.

With Wilful Murder, I reviewed the plot to make it a bit more punchy so it would fit with the  low description style and introduced some active scenes for Ann, the lead character, where she takes control of the plot.