The First Novel

By Sharon May

A friend suggested I read Beth Hill’s The Magic of Fiction: Crafting Word into Story, a comprehensive guide to writing and editing. Hill is an editor, and she dives deeply into the editing necessary to produce a good novel. The book includes numerous checklists for every stage of writing and editing, and serves as a good guide to writing fiction.

However, I have to question one piece of Hill’s advice: “I am suggesting that project number three or four or five should become your first published book. As a first draft isn’t ready to be published, a first novel isn’t ready to be published. Unfortunately for the first novel, it’s likely never going to be ready, not unless you scrap most of what you’ve done and rewrite with only the basics in common with the first version” (569).

I’m sure Hill, as an editor of the best-selling as well as of the novice writer, has seen a number of bad first novels. Since the advent of self-publishing and internet publishing, I’m sure that number has grown astronomically. The world might be better with more revision and less publishing.

Does Hill’s admonishment against publishing the first novel squash the drive of the novice writer? Maybe the novice should just give up on revising the first, even second novel, and devote one’s time to the third, which can be published, according to Hill. I’m joking about skipping to the third since the learning experience that comes out of writing the first novel should be relished at every step of the journey.  I do realize that the writer of the third novel is probably a much better writer, but that writer could then revise the first novel and publish it.  

And, what about those successful first novels? I googled famous first novels, and was reminded of many literary masterpieces, including Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Well’s The Time Machine, and Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. And, the list goes on and on.

I will take much of Hill’s advice seriously. But I do plan to finish a first novel and try to get it published. After years of writing my core idea, the current form is nothing like the first draft, and even as you read this, the current draft is morphing into something new. In the years to come, I expect it to grow into something worthy of publication. Otherwise, what’s the purpose of writing? I know it ultimately is to feed what calls us to write. However, at some level, most of us want to publish our creations, even the first one.

Sham Words

By Bonnie Stanard

Some words are tricky. They delude you into thinking you’re making a concept stronger, but their “help” is unneeded and unwanted. Really is one of those. Very, to name another. Completely. If I’m describing a character as thin, and I want to stress the image, how does really thin compare to gaunt? Or really ugly with hideous. The website Proofreading Services provides alternatives for very.

“Then her lovely voice suddenly became even more beautiful.” Four words in that sentence make me cringe. They’re die-hard duds. Then and suddenly only pretend to have meaning. Who needs the categorical then? Given a linear past tense, everything that happens, happens then. As for suddenly, if a man falls off a bridge, we know it is sudden. Or if a bat flies out of the rafters. If we have to write suddenly, the rest of the sentence isn’t working. Lovely and beautiful are mundane floozies, and if you use them, you’ll fall into the same category.

It was a revelation when I discovered how many times I wrote the word begin (began). I’ve come to realize it is dead weight to the development of either plot or character. George begins to think about leaving his wife? Or a snake begins to traverse the road? Get to the point: George thinks...a snake traverses. There are few times when begin earns a right to be. Start is in the same category.

I’m not the only writer to be taken for a ride by would. Many a published novel has paragraphs muddied by this word—he would train his hound, I would pack a lunch, we would go hunting. Would is a lazy half-breed that supplants a pure breed—past tense. Next time you’re tempted to write would, try simple past tense.

Have you ever reached the point you want to scream, “OMG, not another said!”? When writing dialogue, some writers resort to even worse alternatives, such as asked, confessed, added, insisted, etc. Instead of he said-she said, denote a speaker with action tags. What are the characters doing as they talk? See examples on Diane Urban’s blog .

When a person says forever, much less writes it, I suspect there’s a small brain in his head. It bewilders me to see on our postage stamps the caption “USA Forever.” If you want to read a poem that puts forever in perspective, take a look at “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelly.

The following are words I personally dislike. Nothing wrong with them and they’re commonly used by pundits. However, I suggest they cast aspersions on the person using them. Here’s my take: the person using empower is dealing from a weak position; if he uses suffuse he wants you to know he reads poetry; if he says “I bonded with my coworkers,” he avoids emotion and doesn’t know it.

Obviously there are times when these words earn the right to be used. But I put them through the third degree first. 

Books About Writing

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.thearthousemovie.webs.com

laurapv.wordpress.com

                                     

It seems that every successful writer has written a short book about writing. Two of the most useful ones I’ve read are How to Write a Movie in 21 Days, by Viki King, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami. These books are different from the others because they entertain as well as instruct. Murakami’s book also reveals his philosophy on living life well.

How to Write a Movie in 21 Days is written in short, choppy, ungrammatical sentences, like a movie script. King sets down a method for writing a screenplay that is neither the formula for a plot nor the necessary elements of a hit film, but, rather, how the writer can extract the movie’s story from within herself. She never proposes that a writer quit her day job. A screenplay, she says, will never pay the rent. She talks about honing a message and telling the difference between a play, a film, and a song lyric. (I would call that last one a poem).

The back of the book reveals that King writes for television and works as a script consultant.

Murakami’s book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, has a head-oscillating title but a simple premise: physical exercise helps him to write. The locale shifts from Tokyo to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Hawaii. He talks about American pop music and jazz. He used to own a jazz club. He runs marathons and triathlons. He eats a special diet. Sometimes we hear about his wife. But What I Talk About is essentially a book about writing and how exercise fuels the brain. It’s a book about happiness. I want to be Murakami.

Murakami’s short stories are existential masterpieces. My favorite, “Where I’m Likely to Find It,” is part of the excellent collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. A guy gets lost on his way down a staircase from his mother’s apartment to his own, where he lives with his wife, in Tokyo. Phenomenal. I think the story is about arranging your sock drawer and losing 15 pounds by giving up pancakes. It’s about the meaning of life. I want to know the person who wrote this story. I want to invade his mind. What I Talk About allows me to do that. It’s an homage to clean living. It’s a story about loving life.

Revision as Archaeology

By Kasie Whitener

Wouldn’t it be awesome if everything we created was perfect and polished and important in its first draft? Then we could avoid the drudgery of revision. No matter how many quick tips or proven strategies you employ, in the end you simply have to do the work.

Last week, on a field trip to Colonial Dorchester, SC, with my daughter’s class we had the chance to excavate a long-buried home. We found brick, broken pottery, curved glass, animal teeth, and burned wood all of which were clues to identifying the kitchen.

The excavation got me thinking about my current work in progress, the one I’ve revised eight times and still can’t manage to get quite right. I’ve gone chapter by chapter and line by line. I’ve gone scene by scene and character by character. I’ve reorganized the order of events and re-written pages and pages of dialogue.

It’s a slow and arduous process, getting my main character to reveal his true intentions. Once, while revising my first novel, I sat down in a quiet place and asked the main character to tell me the truth.

“What happened?” I said aloud and waited for him to explain himself.

When I recounted this story to my husband he thought I ought to have known what happened. I invented the character, after all; the voice in my head is still mine. Yet, unlike creation, when I just type recklessly everything the voice is saying, revision requires precision. The voice must stop its mindless chattering. It must be honest and succinct so I can identify what really matters to the story.

My vampire narrator is anxious; he is pushing his hands through his hair and hissing under his breath at me to get on with it.

“Let’s just tell the damn story,” he says.

“You have to be honest with me,” I reply. “You’ve been saying you want a family. Is that really what you want?”

And he stares at me, glaring, unwilling to admit it’s not true. Unwilling to say that because it’s not true, the entire premise of the novel is at risk. All those things I thought I was doing must come undone because of this new revelation.

In revision, we’re excavating the real value of the story and excavations take time. Like archaeologists, we brush away the dirt to reveal the structure buried beneath.

I think the hardest part of revision is waiting for my characters to come clean. Experience has taught me that my main character will be honest when he’s ready. Until then, my revision efforts will all be cosmetic. As much as I hate the way this excavation process takes so much time and effort, I have to believe the real story is worth the dig.

I don’t plan my novels and I’m not sure that, even if I did, the real story wouldn’t emerge through excavation and force me to accept it. Patience with the process is the real work of revision.