As I must assume you are already well aware, this story, or at least this draft, hardly qualifies as a mystery at all. Two things happen that might or might not have been the result of crimes, but the explanation for one materializes without any energy having been spent looking for it, and the other is rendered decisively moot at a point where there still seem to be several possibilities. Even curiosity is not invested in any single character for very long, so a reader with the hypothetical determination to try to interpolate a puzzle will do it without a consistent proxy within the story, which is usually even less satisfying than it sounds. I am often limited in the amount of procedural guidance I am able to offer within the field, anyway, and in this case my expertise is largely immaterial.
But this is not your characters' fault, admittedly, and so perhaps should neither be yours. If the internal and collective dynamics among a set of people are sufficiently compelling and perhaps occasionally shocking, it is possible for the reader to have a sense of purpose where the narrative itself does not. If you opt to develop this project further, I have a few stray thoughts that may or may not be helpful, and may well be partially contradictory, so take them as you may.
- Although it quickly becomes clear that your meticulous timeline is not a resolution device, it helps give the scene-structure something of an observant photographer's patient isolation of moments.
- By shifting your narrative origin backwards in time, you could straightforwardly bring most of the flashbacks into the present, which I'm inclined to recommend. Admittedly this forces much of the now-present into the future tense, a technical flourish of which you're more than capable but maybe less than wise.
- Combining your two major sets of characters might, in one time-consuming but ultimately tractable step, enrich their composite personality complexities. It would also eliminate the results of their deferred meeting, leaving your ending awkwardly unmotivated, but arguably it merely leaves the motivationlessness of the ending more directly exposed.
- Your imposition of a moral climate is well organized, but remember that entropy is not exactly the same thing as amorality.
- Serializing uncertainties sometimes allows them to unexplain and then complete each other, which can provide context for any number of dissatisfactions.
- Some of our conversations, which in general I think you have fairly rendered here, may to modern readers be less interesting than the implied exchanges before and/or after them. Remember that syntheses translate less readily than theses.
- I suggest that your own emotional loyalty undergoes two minor shifts and two major ones, and even if you disagree it might be a worthwhile exercise to identify the inflection points I mean.
- Anywhere you find yourself paraphrasing history, see if you can't think of a way in which the context can be embedded into the responses themselves. I don't mean to obtusely surface your background into dialog, I mean to calculate the projection of the history onto the individual, and then let the silhouette represent the occlusion.
- Ask your sister about method. Debating this between ourselves is only going to compound our ignorance. It may be more productive to pose the question in reverse.
That's all I want to say for now. I have my usual reluctance to navigate when I'm being asked to steer. If I recall correctly, this Tuesday is your turn to choose a water and a Line.
But this is not your characters' fault, admittedly, and so perhaps should neither be yours. If the internal and collective dynamics among a set of people are sufficiently compelling and perhaps occasionally shocking, it is possible for the reader to have a sense of purpose where the narrative itself does not. If you opt to develop this project further, I have a few stray thoughts that may or may not be helpful, and may well be partially contradictory, so take them as you may.
- Although it quickly becomes clear that your meticulous timeline is not a resolution device, it helps give the scene-structure something of an observant photographer's patient isolation of moments.
- By shifting your narrative origin backwards in time, you could straightforwardly bring most of the flashbacks into the present, which I'm inclined to recommend. Admittedly this forces much of the now-present into the future tense, a technical flourish of which you're more than capable but maybe less than wise.
- Combining your two major sets of characters might, in one time-consuming but ultimately tractable step, enrich their composite personality complexities. It would also eliminate the results of their deferred meeting, leaving your ending awkwardly unmotivated, but arguably it merely leaves the motivationlessness of the ending more directly exposed.
- Your imposition of a moral climate is well organized, but remember that entropy is not exactly the same thing as amorality.
- Serializing uncertainties sometimes allows them to unexplain and then complete each other, which can provide context for any number of dissatisfactions.
- Some of our conversations, which in general I think you have fairly rendered here, may to modern readers be less interesting than the implied exchanges before and/or after them. Remember that syntheses translate less readily than theses.
- I suggest that your own emotional loyalty undergoes two minor shifts and two major ones, and even if you disagree it might be a worthwhile exercise to identify the inflection points I mean.
- Anywhere you find yourself paraphrasing history, see if you can't think of a way in which the context can be embedded into the responses themselves. I don't mean to obtusely surface your background into dialog, I mean to calculate the projection of the history onto the individual, and then let the silhouette represent the occlusion.
- Ask your sister about method. Debating this between ourselves is only going to compound our ignorance. It may be more productive to pose the question in reverse.
That's all I want to say for now. I have my usual reluctance to navigate when I'm being asked to steer. If I recall correctly, this Tuesday is your turn to choose a water and a Line.