Letters to Nightwing #44

So happy to have Im back writing this title after so long. She's got a great grasp of the character and there's so much promise in her writing that it's good to see her actually acting on it again. I foresee great things for this girl. The story was tightly plotted, and whilst I don't like my heroes being one step behind the villain, it was good that there were the little victories so Dick wasn't entirely running around in the dark. A great start to an arc, and I'm hoping to see some threads (and characters!) from previous arcs make some appearances. I know that you set up some interesting potential allies and enemies in your Scarecrow arc--!

Alright. I'm going to pick this thing apart. Please take this as constructive criticism and I'm only going to be this picky because you're writing a mystery and this is a genre that I've been deconstructing lately for my own fiction.

1. Who says "omigosh" after walking in on a dead body and being in the room next to a brutal murder as it happens?

2. Gibson was the first named victim but then there is a second murder and we don't even find out the man's name was "Kings" until later. You might want to actually detail the radio call to the police rather than glossing it over. This was the first point of confusing names and victims.

3. The "who murdered who" dialogue after the discovery of the body in the car is confusing. It flows well as dialogue but is a mess trying to get a sense of what they're meaning. I had to re-read it three times to make sense of it.

4. "Robert Murray" is the copycat but Nightwing just names him. He obviously gets the information from Jackson after he gets off the radio but it's just thrown out there without any transition into how Nightwing knows the name.

On the positive, the story seems to be thought out and I'm happy to see the return of some of the older cast of characters even though they'll be going away soon. You got across the sense of Dick being harried and tired well. I just think the story got disjointed once you started the mystery by making jumps of logic that the reader didn't or can't make. It happens when you're too close to the story because you've already got it worked out in your head. I've found the best thing for me is just put the story away for a week and then go back and read it or get someone who is a good analytical reader to read it and give you feedback.

So don't get discouraged! Despite how negative I'm sounding, you're doing a good job with this. Writing mysteries is not easy because you've got to keep tabs on who's doing what where and how that affects everything else going on. It can be a mess (you should see the flowchart that I have on the whiteboard in my writing room for mine!)