Some characters leap off the page with their first thought, action or words. We know exactly what type of person they are because few people would do that, say that or think that. Often authors will play against their audiences prejudices and develop their character enough to allow complexity. Those are major characters. Most characters, especially main characters, need development.

I recently read Only the Pretty Ones by Nikki Keith. It has a great cover and an interesting title. I’ll append the review below. The main problem I had with the novel was that the main character builds into a stereotypical teenage girl. This was an unfair comment. Most teens aren’t quite that petulant and show more logical thinking. They also have interests and hobbies. The main character, Everly, works as a waitress in a diner. She is also trying to get a boyfriend. Besides that, she really doesn’t do much. I think her old boyfriend dumped her because she was just that boring.

As I mentioned in my review, Everly has no hobbies, interests, or activities other than waitressing. She has no favorite class at school, song, or movie. See why her ex-boyfriend dumped her. In the novel, Everly’s ordinary looks, as compared to her half-sisters half Filipina and physically attractive characteristics. Everly uses her sister Lani’s photo to catfish a guy she’s interested in. This highlights the ordinary versus attractive girl proposition. Nonetheless, this is offset by her having a desirable boyfriend and attracting a sexually aggressive boy at Lani’s party. An interesting point: Lani throws Everly a party, but none of Everly’s friends are there. The implication is that Everly has no friends of her own. She’s just that dull.

Many author’s, myself included, follow a minimalist approach. There are details we give readers full license to fill in themselves. If a room’s wall color (or colors) is not important to the story, let readers imagine the room any way they want. Readers are free to envision the room in any way they like. I usually imagine them as white. If a character falls out of his lover’s bedroom window, it probably does not matter what type of lawn is beneath. It could be bluegrass, fescue, or Saint Augustine. Unnecessary detail, more often than not, detract from the story rather than add to it.

Perhaps the author intended Everly to be a tablua rasa character. The idea is that readers will project themselves into the character and form a bond, an identity with them. Readers often do not get to know every detail of a character’s past, so we substitute our own. Our first grade teacher, becomes theirs. Our first triumph on the kickball field, sometimes even our first romantic kiss becomes the characters firsts as well. The tabula rasa character becomes, in most ways, the reader except in the ways the author specifies.

Using tabula rasa/reader identification is, at best, risky. It can, and often does, fall apart quickly. In this case, I had friends in my teenage years. I found it difficult to relate to a main character who didn’t. Everly’s only close friend was Lani while I hated my older brother. The main difference between Everly and me is that I would employ logic and knowledge to determine the identity of the serial killer. Everly uses only raw emotion and senseless action.

This brings up another risk of tabula rasa characters. They come off as underdeveloped, and in this case, severely underdeveloped. Readers want to understand character’s actions. Random people doing random things won’t do. It is better than characters acting out of character, but not by much. Authors need to develop characters so readers know who they are, and more importantly, who they are not. Main actors should have motives, skills, knowledge, and resources. These elements give readers a sense of what characters can do and what they can’t. Most importantly, they show what is difficult for them.

While reading Only the Pretty Ones, a friend asked me to review one of his screen plays. His story was based on the South Korean film Lady Vengeance. Nonetheless, his adaptation highlighted a critical issue. American law enforcement has a disproportionately low investigation and conviction rate for murders of women of color (any color).

In Lady Vengeance (I haven’t seen the movie so I’m using the plot synopsis in Wikipedia), Lee Geum-ja knows Mr. Baek is the killer because she was his unwitting accomplice/fall guy for his murder of a five year old child. She serves thirteen years in prison for the crime. My friend did not incorporate those plot elements into his story. Instead, his heroine gets her information from a character known only as Mystery Man.

Side note: In Only the Pretty Ones, Everly gets her relevant information from the serial killer himself. So, in both my friends story and Keith’s novel, neither heroine actually uncovers anything themselves, or through their efforts. I think stories that point out the injustice of inattention to the disappearance of minority women (many of which are presumed murdered), deserve more serious treatment than these two efforts. They should also include the common police response: Your (daughter/sister/friend) is either a runaway or a prostitute or both.

One of my first recommendations was to drop the Mystery Man (MM) and source information leading to the killer’s identity by actually having the lead character do some actual investigation. He responded by saying that MM is actually a frustrated FBI agent. A ridiculous proposition that would, at best, need it’s own backstory scenes, but I think the audience would still reject it.

My friend tends towards cheap story telling. To him, making the informant “mysterious” adds details to the story while saving screen time (note: in film, time really is money). For my friend, mysterious characters are better than tabula rasa characters, or, maybe, the ulrimate tabula rasa characters. Reading the script, however, keeping the informant unknown makes the information unreliable. I needed to know MM’s motivations in order to evaluate his actions. Unlike Everly (in Only the Pretty Ones), we are not meant to relate to MM. We are asked to trust him. Why? There is no good reason except that the heroine trusts him and, conveniently, his information turns out to be correct or helpful. From my reading, it was all too easy and felt like cheap plot devices.

Readers and audiences deserve better than these two works,

Here is my review of Only the Pretty Ones:

Inside the mind of a bland teenager is a boring place to be.

This novel addresses racial bias in America’s judicial system. From dismissive law enforcement to disproportionate conviction rates, minorities are under served and over prosecuted. SCOTUS may not be convinced by the statistics, but I am. In this novel, the deaths of five minority women/girls by a trophy taking serial murderer goes almost unnoticed until a sixth victim’s body is discovered. Even then, real action does not start until the district attorney’s daughter (half Filipino) dies. This is a serious topic and I applaud writers who broach the topic. Well written stories, both fictional and real, can help raise the issue and spark meaningful discourse. Unfortunately, I doubt this novel will have much impact.

Readers want to be told a story. They give authors suspension of disbelief to allow story tellers to present their story. It’s up to writers to create compelling stories that keep readers engaged. This story found several ways to allow disbelief so seep back.

Told in the first person through Everly, a sixteen year old daughter of Graybury’s attorney (assumed District Attorney). Everly had recently been dumped by her boyfriend and seeks to start a new relationship to keep pace with her ex. The problem is that Everly is an under developed character. She has no interests, no hobbies, no specific or defining traits, and she doesn’t have any close friends. All she has is self centered raw emotion and far too much of the narration delves into this. She does not mention her favorite class in school, nor a favorite TV show or podcast, or anything really. No wonder why her ex dumped her. She’s dull, Dull, DULL.

Perhaps the author, like me, has had enough of cheerleaders turned detective, or valedictorians turned detective, or computer nerds turned detective, or Dungeons and Dragons players turned detective or the most (fill in the blank) kid in school turned detective. Maybe the author intended Everly to be a tabula rasa allowing readers to fill in details from their own teenage experiences. It could work, but in this novel, Everly comes off as simply underdeveloped. This becomes problematic when she sets off to solve the murders of minority women and girls. She simply does not have much to draw on to solve the mystery, just raw emotion, persistence and a bicycle. Of course, her instincts are wrong and her actions are thoughtless.

She could have tapped her public attorney mother and Sheriff (in another town) father, but she has strained relationships with her parents and, as teenagers oft do, decides she can do this herself. I found reading her misguided attempts tedious. Things picked up around the sixty percent mark in the novel. Basically, the killer does all the hard work for Everly. What she takes, at first, as taunts turns out to be the killer’s attempts to inform and educate her.

Inattention to details also leads to readers revoking their suspension of disbelief. The author often refers to Graybury as a town policed by a sheriff and having a single public attorney. In most states, sheriffs are the top law enforcement officer in a county. There are three known exceptions: Connecticut (where state marshals perform these duties), Hawaii and Alaska. I didn’t get either a Hawaiian or Alaskan vibe from the story, and there were no mentions of state marshals, so Graybury doesn’t fit. For the most part, sheriffs are elected officials. The exceptions are Hawaii and Connecticut where they are appointed. When the author tells us that her father went to another town to be sheriff, I wonder how that happened. It seems unlikely that a campaign from someone outside the county would be successful.

The same lack of detail applies to her mother as some sort of public attorney. Somehow, she is the only public attorney. Again, most District Attorneys (also known as state attorneys, prosecuting attorneys or county attorneys) are elected. They rarely try cases themselves because they can lose an election while in the middle of case. They supervise assistant or deputy district attorneys who handle cases.

After Everly’s sister’s body had been discovered, the sheriff removed Everly’s mother from the investigation/case. If she really was the only attorney for the town, who would prosecute the alleged killer when he was caught? No matter, Everly’s mother reasserts herself into the investigation after Everly receives her second taunt.

Perhaps the author based her town on The Andy Griffith Show where Sheriff Andy Taylor rarely enforced the law outside of the town of Mayberry (note the county in TAGS is also called Mayberry). In the show, Sheriff Taylor also acted as prosecutor and judge; very little crime in Mayberry.

Another possibility is that the author, writing from the perspective of a self centered sixteen year old and masked the real situation because she didn’t want the character to seem too knowledgeable. If so, I understand the sentiment, too often teenage narrators seem to know much more than real life teenagers unless they are Teen Jeopardy contestants. Setting up an unreliable narrator introduces even more problems, and in this case, reintroduces disbelief.

Awhile ago, I read an article where publishers encouraged first time novelists using DeepPOV to stick to the he/she (third person) version because publishers are wary of the “I” overuse. This novel doesn’t employ DeepPOV, but any first person narration should be wary of I/me/mine overuse. This novel is guilty of this, and it added both annoyance and tedium to reading the narration. Better narration and a quicker pace might have kept me in the story and earned some leeway in logical gaps.

Most murder mysteries involve a twist where a formerly introduced character turns out to be the killer. I rooted for the rookie sheriff’s deputy. Without resorting to a spoiler, I will only say that when the twist (technically the first twist since there are two) was revealed my reaction was “Nah.” After a moments reflection, “No way.” Upon deeper reflection, “Absolutely not.” The more I thought about it, the more the story fell apart. Better writing might have produced a more positive experience.

Perhaps the author believes that the explanation for the serial murders enhances the spotlight on murders of minorities, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a detraction, making the murders of those women more of an afterthought, a side activity. It refocuses the prior ninety percent of the novel. It’s that big of a twist. The second twist reinforces the first.