And The Great Hiatus Problem
The first time you hand over a manuscript for someone else to judge, you brace yourself. You tell yourself it’s just feedback, it’s part of the process, it’s how the book gets better.
And then the comments arrive.
Recently, I submitted my first full-length Sherlock Holmes pastiche for consideration. I’ve written Holmes before, a long short story that found its way to Kindle and audio, but this was different. This time, I set out on my first true solo Holmes venture; a novel-length story set during the Great Hiatus.
The verdict?
“Sherlock Holmes comes across as a serial liar.”
Ouch.
The Great Hiatus Problem
The Great Hiatus has always been both a gift and a trap for pastiche writers. Conan Doyle left three missing years between Holmes’s presumed death at Reichenbach and his return to Baker Street. Where was he? Tibet? Persia? France? The Canon leaves only tantalising hints, which means we are free, or doomed, to speculate.
My manuscript filled in a period of those missing years. The problem, as my editor pointed out, was that the way I chose to explain Holmes’s movements made him look less like a master strategist and more like a compulsive fabricator of stories. In other words; not the Holmes people recognise, but a Holmes who couldn’t stop lying about his whereabouts.
Why This Matters in Editing
When you write a solo Holmes story, without Watson as narrator or moral anchor, you walk a thinner line. There’s no buffer of Watson’s loyalty or perspective; the reader meets Holmes directly, in his own words and actions. And every choice, where he goes, what he reveals, how he describes it carries more weight.
That’s why the editor’s comment felt brutal but also important. Was I really reshaping Holmes into something unrecognisable? Or had I just leaned too heavily into the gaps Doyle left behind?
What I Learned
The sting of the feedback has already started to fade, but the scale of the revision remains. This isn’t just a matter of smoothing dialogue or trimming scenes. That one comment has meant I need to rethink the entire manuscript. In effect, a complete rewrite.
And that’s the hard truth of writing Holmes in the Great Hiatus. The playground is wide open, but if you push too far in one direction, you risk breaking the very character you set out to honour.
Can I pull it off in the time available in the Great Hiatus? Honestly, I don’t know. But that’s part of the editing process: confronting the possibility that your “finished” book isn’t finished at all.
Why I’m Sharing This
Because Holmes fans don’t just want new stories, they want to know how those stories are made, and sometimes unmade. The Great Hiatus is a tempting canvas, but it’s also a test of restraint. How much freedom do we have to invent, without losing Holmes himself in the process?
So let me put the questions to you:
- How much invention do you enjoy in Hiatus stories, do you prefer Holmes the wanderer, Holmes the spy, Holmes the scholar?
- And if you’re a writer: have you ever faced feedback that forced you to start again from the ground up? Did you push through, or set it aside?