When I think of mistakes in craft, there are so many that beginning writers make that come to mind. POV inconsistencies, excessive description and verbiage, and questions of stakes for the protagonist are all things I deal with on a daily basis in my work as a developmental editor, and would be obvious candidates.
But none of those relatively easy fixes are what truly hold many books back. The one quality that restrains a book’s potential more than anything is…prepare yourself…niceness. Niceness—of the author, of the characters, of how the reader is treated. There are a few reasons for this, and a few consequences, all of which I will address below.
Why Niceness Is a Killer
Foremost, novice writers frequently misunderstand what makes readers like characters. They don’t want to spend hours with characters because they reflect the reader’s values of goodness and virtue. Rather, they like characters who act. And usually, people act in their own interests. Characters—great characters—are almost always driven by self-interest, from Gatsby to June Osborne in The Handmaid’s Tale.
The novice writer, however, wants the reader to like their character, so they endow the character with “good” qualities, believing the reader’s affinity for or admiration of those characteristics will endear the character to the reader.
This can leave characters, particularly protagonists, flat. Why? Because the mind craves drama in fiction, and drama requires conflict. Little conflict arises from niceness, which by its nature is conflict-avoidant.
Why Writers Protect Their Characters—and Their Readers
In addition to treating the character with kid gloves, writers also extend the same protection to the reader, whom they do not want to repel with the wicked actions and appetites of their characters. This is another mistake. New writers tend to underestimate readers’ capacity for dark things. For violence, for badness, for meanness. The page is a safe place where such concepts can be explored.
I also see manuscripts where writers are—I am guessing, but pretty sure I am right—afraid to paint vulnerable populations as anything but angelic. This is understandable, as we live in the age of the great cancellation. Offend the wrong person, and they may use your language as a bludgeon later on. I’ve seen it happen. But the polar opposite of a stereotype still reinforces the stereotype. You honor populations that identify differently from you by writing fully imagined, compassionate, and human characters. People are more than their identities and should be written as such.
Finally, writers worry that their characters’ behavior will reflect on them. And guess what? It will. It also will if you pull punches or telegraph goodness (thereby inadvertently revealing the qualities you are trying to repress). Concealment is another form of revelation. Few readers of crime fiction expect goodness from the writers they read. Perhaps there is a schism between crime fiction that has a moral compass and crime fiction that is nihilistic. It’s another question: should crime fiction concern itself with moral correctness? Some of the best crime books have no real moral compass. American Psycho, Never Come Morning, and The Killer Inside Me all come to mind.
But I doubt Thomas Harris, creator of Hannibal Lecter, is morally bankrupt, and I also doubt any serious readers of his work view him as such.
Moral Complexity and the Nature of Crime Fiction
But back to niceness, and why it fails on the page. Ultimately, crime is a system of entropy, with characters and systems falling apart. It’s an undertow that slowly or suddenly pulls you beneath the surface, to a place you never thought you would be. It’s not a shining beacon in the dark; it’s a raw look at human nature, at goodness struggling not to be extinguished. The reader is in it for the struggle, not the instruction.
If you're writing crime fiction and would like an honest assessment of your manuscript, I offer developmental editing focused on character, structure, and the elements that make a crime novel compelling.