When a Reader Says Your Novel Is Too Complicated

One of the more difficult things about writing a novel is handing your manuscript to someone else and asking for an honest opinion. You've spent months, sometimes years, developing the characters, constructing the plot, and working through every detail of the story. By the time you're finished, you know these people almost as well as you know yourself.

Then someone reads it and tells you they're confused.

That happened to me during the final stages of editing Slip 47, my first Dean Mercet thriller. An early reader described parts of the manuscript as convoluted, with too many characters and not enough character development.

Those weren't particularly pleasant words to hear. After all, I'd spent an enormous amount of time trying to make the story work. But the more I thought about his comments, the more I realized there was something important buried in that criticism.

The problem wasn't necessarily that the story was too complicated. The problem might have been that I hadn't given the reader enough information to understand it.

As the author, I knew exactly who every character was, what motivated them, and how they fit into the larger conspiracy. I knew things about them that wouldn't be revealed until hundreds of pages later. Those connections were perfectly clear to me because I'd created them.

But the reader didn't have that advantage.

That realization sent me back to Chapter 1.

The opening takes place in Savannah, where a mysterious man named Greyson Thorne is secretly monitoring a federal criminal trial unfolding ninety miles away in Dublin, Georgia. A defense attorney named Dean Mercet is preparing to cross-examine the government's principal witness, and an unexpected photograph has surfaced that may have significance far beyond the criminal case itself.

In my mind, the situation was perfectly understandable. But I began to see how someone encountering these characters for the first time might struggle to determine who was defending whom, who was prosecuting the case, and why the photograph mattered.

So I reworked the chapter substantially.

I didn't eliminate the conspiracy or reveal the secrets behind the photograph. I didn't remove important characters simply to make the story easier to follow. Instead, I concentrated on introducing the essential participants and making their relationships clear.

Who is the defendant? Who is his lawyer? Who is the prosecutor? Who is the government's principal witness? And why is someone secretly listening to conversations about the trial?

The reader doesn't need to know every answer. But the reader needs to understand the questions.

That distinction became one of the most valuable lessons I learned while writing this book.

Mystery and confusion are not the same thing.

Mystery keeps readers turning pages because they understand what is happening and want to discover why. Confusion can have the opposite effect. If readers are spending their energy trying to remember who the characters are or how they relate to one another, they may never become fully engaged in the story itself.

I also learned something about criticism.

A reader may correctly identify a problem without necessarily knowing its cause or how to fix it. My early reader thought the story was too convoluted. Perhaps the solution wasn't to simplify the story at all. Perhaps it was to tell the story more clearly.

And without his criticism, I might never have recognized the difference.

Looking back, I'm grateful he said what he did, even though it was difficult to hear at the time. His observations prompted a revision that I believe made the opening considerably stronger.

Writing a novel requires imagination, patience, and persistence. But it also requires a willingness to recognize that the words on the page may not communicate everything the author believes they do.

Sometimes the most useful question a writer can ask isn't whether the story makes sense to the person who wrote it.

It's whether the story makes sense to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it.

That's a lesson I'll carry into every novel I write.

I've come to believe that the first chapter of a novel isn't simply the beginning of the story. It's the author's first opportunity to earn the reader's trust. If you can introduce the characters clearly, establish what's at stake, and create a mystery compelling enough to make the reader turn the page, you've accomplished something important. You haven't necessarily sold the reader on the entire novel. But you've persuaded them to give you Chapter 2. And sometimes that's all a writer can ask for.

— Dow Bonds

Author of Slip 47, a Dean Mercet Thriller