Filler; Novel Edition
First of all: you have six more days to buy my first Wolfsburg Adventure in ebook form for $1.99. If you received the Fussy Librarian newsletter, you would see the ad there. https://books2read.com/u/bpvJNz
Second of all: I finished reading 'Crook d' Lune' by ECR Lorac right after 'Ghosts, Witches, and Voodoo with All That Jazz' by Louise Hathaway, and I had to ask myself why I liked 'Crook' better than 'Ghosts.'
Some Caveats and Acknowledgements:
ECR Lorac is a Golden Era detective fiction writer and 'Crook' came out in 1953. Do I just enjoy this style of writing better? Do I just like the classic 'whodunnit' structure that Lorac uses? 'Ghosts,' from chapter 19 on, is just a matter of catching the murderer, which makes me think 'story's done, why are we still here?' for several chapters.
'Ghosts' irritates two of my personal bonnet-bees. It's another story where the investigator claims to be agnostic about ghosts and then experiences them, and, because the serial killer's motive is bringing back an aborted fetus to apologize to, can be read as 'pro-life' in just the most ham-fisted way humanly possible.
Do I just like 'Crook's' world better? Rural England in the early 'fifties resembles my beloved Augston; farmland and lords, and more sheep than people. Well, cows, in Augston. Augstonians are big on dairy products as you can see in 'Toward a Hybrid Joy.'
On the same note, did I enjoy DCI Macdonald calling the irritating pastor 'profoundly stupid' way too much?
Yeah, if I'm honest, all of these things are factors. How big a factor? Hmmm...
But I also sense a pattern with media that I find deletrious.
In Defense of 'Filler'
'Ghosts' starts out in a Marriot Hotel room where the Chief of police praises our detective and explains how cool she is. The chief's praise goes on for a full paragraph. Does the banquet room get any description? We only know that it is small, and that our heroine is wearing her hair in a glamorous updo.
'Crook' opens with: "Gilbert Woolfall was always conscious of a sense of exhilaration when he got out of the train at Kirkholm." The second paragraph is several sentences describing Kirkholm and Lune Valley.
There are a lot of instances of this sort of thing: 'Ghost' is long on telling and short on description. Even the Voodoo shop is given barely a sentence whereas loving descriptions of the sheep on the downs and abandoned stone school houses weave in and out of 'Crook's' narrative, a weft holding up the warp of the plot.
The sheep are not necessary to the story. I mean that their presence is part of the motives but describing their special gray wool has nothing to do with who lit Aikengill on fire. It's just nice to know that these are different sheep from those other types, and the non-plot details are constant.
'Ghost's' on the other hand only has a bare handful of non-plot related details thrown in. The most random characterization she gets is that doing jigsaw puzzles once, and the masauleum details are pretty much the only unneccessary details. The medical b-plot seems to stand in for characterization while the a-plot gets handed to our heroine.
The result is an empty, shallow New Orleans versus a deep, brimming-over Kirkholm.
What I fear is that modern writers read a description of the sheep on the Pennine mountains and scratch it out as 'filler and fluff.' It's unnecessary, especially for the James Patterson school of crime and thriller books. But these details are showing something- who is DCI Macdonald, why we like Woolfall, and what Teg is up to- that makes you care about what happens when Aikengill catches fire and housekeeper dies inside. In the rush to erase these things to improve the pace, they eliminate emotional connection, and they make a paltry effort to recreate that connection by blurting out a sob backstory for their main protagonist in the most 'tell'-y way possible.
Correct Filler
I think there are good ways and bad ways to plump up your story.
Using a few choice sensory details, like what the drinks at the banquet tastes like, is the first step. Double points for using details that is something only your character notices or is interested in. You're killing two birds (characterization and setting description) with one stone in an immersive way.
Describing a door panel for two pages is a bit much, however. (Cough, 'Name of the Rose.') Maybe keep it to a paragraph or two.
Timing is also important. I understand why 'Ghosts' opens with the speech: they need to get right to the action and that means situating the reader immediately. But they forget where the reader needs to be situated. You can reveal your character overtime, but a cemetary at night is where the real action starts. Why am I not being situated there? Why am I in a 'small banquet hall' (no description of the lighting or tables or anything. What, there's no blue bunting on the podium?) and not in a spooky graveyard, complete with wisps of mist tearing on the pointed mausaleum roofs? You want to frontload your story with the sensory details, especially the character-revealing ones.
No, don't open with your character's sob story. I know that in our therapyspeak-laden world, you are considered your past, but you are really your daily interactions. A character's tragic backstory doesn't interest me unless I see them doing something like petting the kitty and noting how soft the fur is in the present, you know? A flat character is not fuller for a sob story. They are fuller for expressing their joy on their walk through the woods.
While we are discussing timing, a meandering conversation about how much a character loves gadgets right before he dies is manipulative and you know it. Also, is this chat in the middle of the book instead of when this character was first introduced? Bugger off. You've brought the plot to a stop to do a little make-up homework when you could have done it on time.
Lazy. Edit better.
You can ditch the description of the singing birds later in the book when your hero is dueling the evil villian. That's sense, though the sentence or two of interior feelings strategically placed can stretch out a reader's sense of time for tension's sake.
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