How to Write Killer Prose (19)

Bonus scene

            Here's a bonus scene, set after Resurrection, and before Bloodline. It's a week after the shooting on the bridge, and Oxana is recuperating at a London flat provided for her and Eve by Johnny Fernandes. It's late evening, not yet dark. Tomorrow they will be travelling to the countryside, and the shepherds hut.

            A few things to note:

            In an intimate scene like this, cut back the details. Go in close-up, and establish place and time of day as quickly and economically as possible (here I do that with the words 'bathroom mirror', 'night cream', and 'bed').

            Every line of dialogue should add, however infinitesimally, to your readers' knowledge of the characters. It's a stealthy layer-by-layer process, like the growth of a pearl, and your readers should be largely unaware of it. Familiarity has to dawn, it can't be imposed.

            The things that Villanelle says about herself - that part of her is always cold-bloodedly watching herself 'perform' emotion, and that everything she does is a gambit, a calculated play - should equally apply to you as a writer. The icy detachment that Villanelle can't escape (and that makes her the perfect assassin) is present in any really good fiction writer. If the author is to be born, some part of her, some lingering niceness, must die. That's the deal. Sorry.

            On which note...