This past weekend I received some feedback on The Corpse in the Courtyard from one of my first readers.

I found the prolog hard, she said. There were time when you used a comma and I expected the word and after it. Did you do that deliberately?

As an example, I wrote A part of Jacob wanted to relax, walk across the courtyard The expectation was relax, and walk.

Writing that way was a deliberate choice. I came across the technique while studying the Eve Dallas novels by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts). I liked what she did and how she did it, and decided to experiment with the technique about the time I started writing The Corpse in the Courtyard.

Dean Wesley Smith describes using many craft techniques – tags, power words, etc., as sprinkling a spice in your writing. It adds depth and flavor when done right. If you do it wrong, it can pull the reader right out of the story – just like that mouthful of cayenne pepper when you used a tablespoon instead of a pinch.

So I went back to the Eve Dallas books, and then my manuscript.

Essentially that’s what I did in the prolog. Instead of sprinkling the technique through the pages as J.D Robb did, I spooned it on thickly in just about every other paragraph. Because I was now reading the story from a different perspective, I saw what I’d done and felt how clunky the story flowed. Not good as I could lose a reader in the first four or five pages, and they would never know why they didn’t feel at home with the story.

It didn’t take long to make some changes that improved the flow of the opening. Now I have to read through my current work-in-progress and make sure I used sprinkles and not spoonfuls.