It’s a … novel!
As I put the finishing touches on a manuscript I will enter in the Genesis contest with American Christian Fiction Writers I am deluged with advice from the blogs of other writers, critique comments, bullet points from books on the craft of writing and of course, my own gut feelings.
When you have a baby, you want the best for it. You want to be the best parent, give great counsel, love unconditionally, and have moments when you can sit back and beam proudly at your accomplishment. It’s no different with the birth of a manuscript.
The problem with parenting is that often love is blind and you find yourself overlooking things that should be corrected, behaviors that should be stopped, disciplinary action that should be taken and a few other mistakes. The problem with writing – ditto.
My first big struggle came when input from a contest judge stated my story was good and publishable but she questioned whether first person was the right point of view for the story. Two other judges in the contest gave feedback that my voice was light and funny and really lent enjoyment to the story.
So what to do? I decided to take chapter one and try a different point of view. I worked diligently, but in the end I couldn’t do it. It just didn’t feel right. The story didn’t flow and it didn’t make me smile when I read it back. I made an executive decision to leave the point of view alone.
My second struggle came with the advice every writer gets from every critique, every article and every bit of advice from seasoned authors – too much back story. My first reaction, “But you have to get to know my MC before you will really understand the story. She is her history. You want me to cut all that good stuff out? I’m going to need a lot of anesthesia for that kind of surgery. And a supply of pain killers afterward.”
I began cutting, bleeding and moaning at each step. What I discovered in the long run was all that history is what led me to know my character intimately. And because I knew her so well, I could tell her story in the present letting her personality and her actions suggest the history that made her the way she is. Brilliant!
The third big struggle was with the story being “overwritten”. I had to study that comment because I wasn’t sure what it meant. Reading back through the manuscript I found it was all action. Action is good. Action is key. Action is what moves the story forward. However, as I observed from some of my favorite reads, now and then the reader needs a chance to catch a breath, experience a golden moment, bask in a lazy description of the scene, the prophetic moment, the romance, the MC’s dreams, even a crazy conversation between two characters that seems to have no relevance to the main theme.
When I went back and broke up the action a little with some of this frosting on the cake stuff, I loved it. It began to read like a novel you can’t put down.
I’m excited about one or two more edits before submitting it for the contest. And I’m excited that once again I learned a couple of valuable lessons in the process.
- You can love your work too much and it will cause you to ignore valuable guidance. Just like parenting, once in a while you have to look past the “my perfect child” part and address the little flaws that if not corrected can result in a big problem.
- You can love your work too little and let the miles and miles of advice take you away from your core idea. Editing and correcting, cutting and revising are good until you find you’ve lost the “you” in your writing. Each writer is unique in some way. Don’t lose sight of your special something that exists in everything you compose.
- You can never know too much about your character, but you can certainly reveal too much about your character. Back story is like Elmer’s glue – a little goes a long way. Don’t put so much in that your reader gets stuck . But include just enough to get the reader attached.
- As in all things, seek guidance, pray, trust your instincts and be willing to take a risk. Every parent knows there is a lot of “seat of your pants” parenting that goes into a well raised child.
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” Kurt Vonnegut
Psalms 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
