What I learned from A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
Taking what I studied in my last post and using it in my own work
It’s all very well looking all clever and literary, dissecting these books and working out what I think they’re doing well with them, but it doesn’t really mean anything unless I actually DO something with my own work off the back of it, does it.
It’s a bit like all the books on my bookshelf I OWN but haven’t actually read (yet). I can’t actually say I’ve read them if I don’t actually…read…them.
I learned that:
Peppering genre-specific words into my first pages was a really good way to signal to the reader both the tone, the mood and the vibe of the book.
It’s important to start with the most important character in the novel.
Everything should move towards the inciting incident.
You should overview the scene and then focus in on the details.
The main character needs to be introduced quickly.
So, how did I use that information? Well, here is what the first section of my novel looked like before I introduced what I learned…
….and here is what it looked like after. I’ve coloured the words I’ve added in to highlight what I’ve done.
Let’s look in more detail:
Peppering genre-specific words into my first pages was a really good way to signal to the reader both the tone, the mood and the vibe of the book.
I purposefully reworded, added, amended and reshaped sentences to build in words around death and murder to curb my novel towards the theme and genre of the book. While the overall vibe of this scene should be excitement at the start of a Hen Do, I wanted to introduce a sense of foreboding.
It’s important to start with the most important character in the novel.
I thought a lot about this one, and due to the nature of the relationship between the characters, Zara is the most important character in this novel. However, she is not the protagonist; she is the antagonist. Sally, the narrator, is the protagonist, yet she has always been second fiddle to Zara, and that includes in her own story.
Everything should move towards the inciting incident.
Ok, so I didn’t manage to do this one in the section you see here, per se. But I DO bring Cleo in a lot sooner. And Cleo is Sally’s inciting incident; her interference will be pivotal to what happens in the novel, so Sally being sensitive to Cleo’s reactions is starting us down that path.
You should overview the scene and then focus in on the details.
I had some of this already - the description of the apartment overall - but I pushed it further to look inward to Sally’s feelings around having to interact with the group, so that we got an experience of how she feels about it all as well as what the place looks like.
The main character needs to be introduced quickly,
Again, some of this was here already, but I really wanted to highlight how Sally’s entire experience so far has been to make sure Zara’s experience is the best it can be. Making her focused on Zara’s reactions means that Sally’s introduction is less about what she is, and more about what she cares about. And that will place us nicely in point A to see where she is by point Z.
So there we have it. Do you think what I’ve done makes sense? Did this help you see how you can analyse your own favourite books and use it to make your own work better? Let me know!
