I’ve read several novels lately that I would consider ‘overwritten.’ Typically, they are modern thrillers in which the author tries to do too much: too much research, too many locations, too many descriptions, too much internal dialogue, too many characters. Characters end up being under or over developed and the narrative flow slows to a crawl; do we really need to know why the villain is villainous? As I say in my Research in Fiction workshop, it is at least as important to know what to leave out as what to put in. If you’ve ever found yourself flipping pages looking for when the action resumes, you know what I mean.
Then there are authors who love their own writing to the extent that they find it impossible to cut detailed descriptions or clever turns of phrase, even when these slow the narrative. It’s important to remember to kill your darlings before they kill your story.
I mentioned that I’ve seen this in some modern thrillers, but I guess it isn’t really new. I just finished Fallen Angel by Howard Fast, a 1950s thriller that was turned into the movie Mirage with Gregory Peck (a must see if you haven’t). Fast is guilty of sparing some darlings and over-indulging in internal dialogue that caused me to skip ahead on more than one occasion. While I appreciate that it was intended as a psychological thriller, the psychology was a bit excessive and heavy handed. Things tended to speed up with dialogue, and he should have used more of this to reveal some of that internal struggle.
As with most 1950s pulp fiction, the novel is short—only 126 paperback pages. Judicious cutting would have made it even shorter, leaving considerable room to add plot lines and action that would have heightened the pace. That being said, the novel was enjoyable if a bit tedious, but the movie is much better.