Wednesday 1 February 2012

Does the Plot Make a Good Read?








You could give birth to an amazing plot, out of the most vivid imagination and describe it verbally to anyone. For example, 'A girl was murdered in the park, her body's like all over the snow, right?' But, does that plot make for a good read? I was posed this question last night and felt a need to share my thoughts with you.

If you were to read, 'A girl was murdered in the park....' would the line have honestly gripped you, pulled at your heartstrings to a point where you want to read further? Sure! Maybe...if it's in a straight-forward, to-the-point news article.

But, would that same line have gripped you if it was written in novel-format?

Let's say that you read this one line, then you picked up another crime fiction novel and it read something along the lines of, "The pristine white snow was not the same as it once was, etched by the stains of Sabrina's blood."

I made that line up and I'm hoping that it gripped you a lot better than the original one. There's colour mentioned, the victim has a name, and words like 'pristine' and 'etched' sound a lot better to me than 'clean' and 'marked.' I could have also used the terms, 'pure' and 'smeared.'

I always say that every story is worth telling, but when posed the question of whether or not a 'good plot' makes for a 'good read,' I'd say that the challenge is how to write it. Description is key.

When it comes to crime fiction masterpieces, there's Agatha Christie, Henning Mankell, or Stieg Larsson, experts on transforming their fantasies into written format and describing the plot as picturesquely as a movie clip.

Being a fan of the Swedish TV series, 'Wallander,' which was introduced to me by my husband, who was born and raised in Sweden, we've been reading one of the greatest crime fiction novelists of our time, Henning Mankell. And if you like Mankell, you'll love Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.


Practice will never make perfect as every writer, like any artist, is a perfectionist, knowing fully well that achieving perfection is impossible. BUT, practice can certainly make for excellent writing potential.

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