Write What You See

Writing a novel is all about revision and that means re-vision, re-seeing your characters at every moment in the story.  This takes time and many drafts. 

So, you have a good first draft: your character has travelled the journey you’d imagined, and more. The end is satisfying, and yet … beware that occupational hazard ‘first draft exhaustion’ –  Isn’t it enough that I got the damn story down? It’ll do won’t it?   

Well, not quite.  There are bound to be moments you haven’t dared fully imagine. You’ll find lumps of exposition, a few minor characters that aren’t doing enough etc etc. We’re talking more than Spellcheck can handle. 

Start by going into those moments where the text feels ‘thin’ as Virginia Woolf used to say, or ‘exploratory’, as I say to myself on a good day - these could be gold dust moments. Dramatically speaking, have you got the most out of them?  

On that first draft you only had enough energy to report that as X had a shower she recalled the strange man in the leather coat she met on the beach. Now you realise that for the story to live the meeting with the man in the leather coat has to be ‘on stage’ – a whole new scene. Back to the rehearsal room. You are both director and actor. Where are they? What are they doing? Why?  How do they feel? What do they think? How do they behave? With what consequences? 

Let the characters talk back. Talk to the page. 

Exhausted and satisfied at the end of that long-haul first draft it’s easy to get sucked into ‘word-doctoring.’   Beware - you might polish the life out of your book. The manuscript will look pristine but is the reader drawn in beyond the neat sentences in front of them? Are those black squiggles setting in motion the ‘film’ in the reader’s head? 

Forget Times Roman 12pt dancing on the screen/page, instead see your character. 

Re-visioning [several times if you have to] those ‘thin’ or ‘exploratory’ moments could be the making of the book. Don’t just delete or manicure. Comb through the novel until you’ve seen and heard [smelled, touched and tasted] each moment. 

Re-vision until the film in your head is running. No camera shake.

 

Comments

[writeherewritenow]

The problem with first draft exhaustion (or indeed second draft depletion!) is that you can no longer see your own work and it's hard to even know which bits are thin. Leaving it for a while and coming back with fresh eyes is one possible solution. And I absolutely agree that word-doctoring too early is a bad idea. Indeed that's one of the few downsides of working on a novel at MA level, you keep polishing bits to hand in and then it becomes hard to later cut them (a.k.a. murder your darlings)

When Ishiguro came to talk to us on the Goldsmiths MA he advised that we should be prepared to make BIG changes when we edit- lose a sister; change the viewpoint character etc; completely rethink the setting. I find I can happily spend days moving punctuation around, but what's the point in that when your narrator's journey ends in a cul-de-sac?

I remember you telling us that writing is like doing a mosaic and you don't know at the beginning where all the pieces go. I've found that really helpful, because I want to approach it in a linear, methodical way but am beginning to suspect that writing isn't like that.

[Pamela Johnson]

Quite! It's so easy to tinker with the punctuation and think - there, that looks better. But is the reader seeing anything different? Excellent advice from Ishiguro - I've just pressed delete on a minor character - she was holding up a scene and had no further use later in the narrative. Yet, on earlier drafts I was convinced this person was vital to keep the tension at that moment.

[Pamela Johnson]

Oh yes and 'first draft' exhaustion is just an approximation... best to stop counting the drafts, or saying to yourself 'Just one more draft'... it's however many it takes until each scene lives...until the characters not only talk back, they live and breath and engage... onward...

[Bronia Kita]

For me it wasn't exhaustion that set in at the end of the first draft, but boredom - I was on a tremendous high while inhabiting those other lives, visiting those other places, and once I'd reached 'the end' I wanted to start another journey, get another hit, straight away. I didn't understand that I needed to go back to the beginning and start the real work - until I began the MA.

I came to Goldsmiths with what I thought was a completed novel manuscript, having won a couple of prizes (including one for the beginning of the novel), but unable to attract an agent. By the time I left I had an agent, I applied for and was awarded an Arts Council grant and now that novel, much altered, is to be published in June. So what happened in between? Pam, mostly, with all those wonderful mantras about 'leaning on the given', and particularly 'kill your darlings'. Once I'd allowed other people to read my manuscript (another thing I only managed to do after I began the course)it was pointed out to me that killing off the narrator at the beginning of the book was perhaps not such a good idea. Consequently the entire second half had to go. I managed to salvage some scenes, but a whole host of episodes and characters fell by the wayside. Then my editor pointed out that the pace slackened in the newly written section, so much of that was rewritten in the vivid present. Several more chapters went, and others were tightened, the problematic ending was worked and reworked, until the finished product bore little resemblance to the first unwieldy draft.

I discovered along the way that I usually know when a character or a scene is 'thin' and doesn't quite work, but often I still need someone else to point this out. Developing confidence in my writing has been an important factor for me - being able to press the delete key and feel satisfied rather than nervous - and understanding that craft is just as important as art.

[Sara Grant]

Strange that it takes others to point out what you already know in your gut is true. I've kept scenes, phrases and characters even for several revisions because I couldn't face losing them.

I also find it very difficult after writing and revising my novel to really see the novel anymore. There are times I don't know what is in which draft.

I found a great workbook called Novel Metamorphosis: Uncommon Ways to Revise Your Novels. There's nothing earth shattering in it, but it did make me step back and look at my book in a differet way. It made me 'play' with the novel instead of reading and re-reading it, expecting for the bits that weren't working to raise their hands and asked to be revised.

It has you look at the novel chapter by chapter and then character by character. It makes you document what's at the heart of the novel and make sure that you haven't lost your way in the writing of it.

By disecting my novel,I was able to identify what wasn't working and try to fix it. Revision is a weird and wonderful thing. I love those 'ah-ha' moments when you realize whats not working and -- even better -- how you can change it.

[Pamela Johnson]

Thanks Sara for alerting me to the Novel Metamorphosis book. We really need some distance before that final revision. A trick I've learned is to leave the work for as long as you dare, or deadline will allow and start something else or work in another form. When you come back to the novel you are more likely to have the emotional distance that you need in order to be a good editor of your work.