My work in progresses prologue

[DAgent]

Much better and a lot more compelling.

A little too much description and placement in places for me, which could have been used the up the character emotion, which is much better this time. I still think this section could be tighter, but I can see the work you've done here.

Use of sting and slam don't gel for me, slam is all that's needed here I think.
Suddenly - always feels like telling to me. Skip telling the reader it's sudden, just do it, and it will be suddenly for the reader.
I also felt you overworked the ending and lost impact. I like to have a build up, but have the actual violence presented quickly, don't hold back on the shock factor for the reader.

Much better, good emotion, but I could still edit out quite a bit of this text. We're a tough bunch to please, but keep going lad, and you're well on your way.

The amount of description is deliberate because the action will return to the scene of the crime about three times in the rest of the story, and I want people to realise for themselves when it's reintroduced just where the characters are, without me having to outright state it or hint at it in some way.

I still ideally want this text be to less then one page in total on a properly formatted word doc, right now it's got three lines on a second page, so I've still more tightening to do before even I'm happy with it.

 

[Toby Frost]

I was talking to a friend who writes crime, and is pretty knowledgeable about trends in the genre. In conversation it came up that the tactic of killing a random woman as a "pre-credits death" is somewhat frowned on these days, partly for reasons of feminism and partly because it's felt to be a bit old. However, I suspect that's more a thing in crime than SFF.

 

[DAgent]

I was talking to a friend who writes crime, and is pretty knowledgeable about trends in the genre. In conversation it came up that the tactic of killing a random woman as a "pre-credits death" is somewhat frowned on these days, partly for reasons of feminism and partly because it's felt to be a bit old. However, I suspect that's more a thing in crime than SFF.

The thing is, in a murder mystery, someone is going to die, otherwise there is no murder to investigate. And it's going to either be a man or a woman, either cisgender or trans. Or even a none binary person. And to be honest, any person from one of those groups would almost certainly get an outcry of anger if they were killed off. As for when they get killed, it really depends on what suits the story best. Why did the killer choose this person?

I've no idea what the actual comparison is in fiction, how many men are murdered compared to how many women. A quick look online and the closest I could get was the real life stats for England and Wales in 2010/11 in a BBC article and it turned out nearly twice the number of men were murdered compared to women: How unrealistic is murder on television?

Checking wikipedia it got worse again: Homicide statistics by gender - Wikipedia with very few exceptions where real life female murders were greater than the number of male murders. It doesn't help that the stats are not for the same year.

As I can't find a comparison for the breakdown of murders by gender in murder mystery stories in general, I've no way to make any assumptions about the validity of any complaints about the "tactic". It's a perception that could be right, but might be wrong. I'd need to see a breakdown like that to judge for myself.

I have found one for Columbo, but he is strictly a TV character, but his total of male murder victims massively outweigh his total of female murder victims.

The Columbo kill count: who died, how?

Over the course of its 69 outings, Columbo dished up an impressive 92 fatalities – that’s an average of 1.33 corpses per episode. But who died via which grisly methods? Read on and find…

columbophile.com

But the point is, anyone can be a murder victim, it's just in this case it's a young girl. I'm working on another sci and fantasy based murder mystery where the victim is a man whose murdered in the first chapter after he's spent a bit of time annoying people, including the detective.
I've an outline for another murder mystery that starts after the police find the body of the murdered man so we never get to know him at all.
And I'm putting together ideas for another murder mystery but have no idea who the victim will be, let alone their gender. That's something that I'll be deciding further down the line when I know what is needed for plot and character.

In any case, as it's a scifi/fantasy tale, there's twists coming you just can't get in a regular murder mystery.

 

[M.P. VandenBerg]

The second draft is a huge improvement. I have a much easier time picturing the setting and the actions. The first time around I was getting caught up by long sentences, but the second time I'm picturing a dancer on the state in a school gym, possibly in Russia.
I'm left thinking about whether this is a dystopia or some kind of human trafficking plot (speculation).

Shorter sentences are easier to follow and tend to get important information across better. Avoiding the repetition of 'she' and 'her' where possible is certainly something to keep striving for. I like how you get the setting across with the northern lights and being in a cold school at night, perhaps a dystopian element? Although I'm not a fan of how that sentence is structured "The effect of the school during its heat off at night time." I would normally suggest; "just say it's cold," but try to get the crappy school across without slapping it onto the end of a sentence. I like the imagery of a balloon, but the effect you're going for can be achieved with fewer words. Give your reader some credit, when you say a balloon is tied to a post, we already get the sense of it flying around in the wind without having to be told, leave some subtext for the reader to imagine.

 

[worldofmutes]

Looking back on this, I think it has very good word play. It’s mysterious and draws me in. Yeah, I’d say well done…