Your opening scene can be long or short. Make sure you are giving the reader rewards along the way. Too much information up front. Get your facts right. This is not the same thing as an info dump. It can be action packed or moody, rich in description, or skeletal and spare. Hopefully you’ve already scoped out a dramatic scene to open your novel. Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel. Tip 3. Too little payoff.
In an info dump, you give the reader a block of information all at once. You know who’s in the scene and what’s going to happen to propel the novel forward. Or it forms part of the back-story to help the reader understand the motives of the characters but, they must never become more important than the crime. If you set your crime novel in the past, you’ll only have the wits of the investigator to rely on to solve the crime … How to pace a crime novel The info dump.