The Word Cloud - Writing Community - Help and advice for writers

This is a question all published writers face and it's not an easy one to answer while keeping one's dignity intact. So, I offer you this post from novelist and reviewer, Amanda Craig. In my view, it's essential reading for both writers and readers.For aspiring writers as a preparation; for published writers as sympathy; and for readers as an insight into what it means to write for readers.

http://www.amandacraig.com/pages/blog_01/blog_item.asp?Blog_01ID=244

To the published writers amongst you, what are the questions that make your heart plummet?

I have been meaning to tackle Jo Nesbo for some time, his publisher has sent me his more recent novels over the past couple of years, but I am a stickler for reading order. I have to read books in the sequence they were written. Not all books, obviously, that would be crazy, just those with recurring characters or that are intended as a series.

Nesbo's crime novels featuring detective Harry Hole (am I the only person who finds that name really very funny?) have been receiving acclaim for a while now and the latest instalment, The Snowman, is being advertised all over the place as 'the new Steig Larsson'.

So I was pleased when I came across his first novel, The Redbreast, in my local charity shop. But 100 pages in I was struggling with it. Something felt wrong. There was lots of unexplained backstory, previous events being alluded to that didn't seem relevant to the case in hand. I had a nagging sense that I was missing something.

A quick google later and I had discovered three things:

1. that the Jo Nesbo novels had been translated in to English out of sequence.

2. that The Redbreast was actually the third Harry Hole book.

3. the first two have never been translated in to English.

My immediate reactions were:

1. well, that's fucking stupid, isn't it?

2. that explains why all this backstory doesn't seem relevant.

3. they must either be very bad (which seems unlikely) or there is some logical reason as to why they have been left untranslated.

Hardly an ideal situation for someone with a mild case of fiction OCD like me but at least now I had some explanations and could carry on reading the book without worrying too much about how much I had missed.

And I did just that. And I was hooked.

Harry Hole ticks off a lot of the cliched crime fiction boxes. Alcoholic past? Check. Unorthodox copper? Check. Annoys his superiors? Check. Crappy love life? Check. There is nothing too original here.

Neither is the plot going to seem all that new to anyone who was read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Serial killer. Nazi past. Neo-fascists in Scandinavia. And so on.

So why did I like it so much?

Good question. And it is one I am still trying to work out.

There are sections of fantastic writing. The scenes set during WWII are wonderful and take up much of the opening part of the book. They kept me going while I was managing to confuse myself with the present day stuff.

Nesbo is also great at relationships. Hole's interractions with his younger female assistant and their clearly unspoken love (possibly purely platonic) is charming. The blossoming romances, both past and present, are realistic and entirely believable. The way characters speak to one another or react to each other manages to drag you in to the scene and keep you there.

And Harry Hole himself is a delightful curmudgeon. Grumpy, sarcastic and clever, despite his obvious faults.

But the thing that really won me over, I think, is an event that crops up about half way through. Nesbo takes the story in an unexpected direction. He allows something to happen that is a bit of a risk and is a major shock to the reader. It is a brave thing to do and he follows it with a short sequence that is almost painfully moving. I actually had to put the book down to compose myself.

From that point on I was completely given over to the story. I loved it.

But that doesn't mean it is perfect, by any means, and I still have some issues with the plot. My concerns about the opening section have already been outlined; on top of that there are some dubious connections between the past and present day storylines involving characters changing their names that I didn't completely buy. Although none of this was enough to ruin my enjoyment or stop me from adding Jo Nesbo to my pile of crime writers who deserve serious reading attention. Shelf space he shares with Steig Larsson, John Connolly and Arnald Indridason.

I shall have to work out which of his novels is the right one to read next.

It is a brave move for an author of literary fiction to spread characters and stories across a series of books. The assumption from most readers will be that you have to start at book one and work your way through. Fine for fantasy or crime fiction perhaps but a bit more of an ask with literary fiction. I don't know quite why that should be - different levels of collector's mentality, the usual snobbery - but it does seem to be broadly true.

Patrick Neate proves himself both brave and able to buck the trend with his sequence of novels set in and around the fictional nation of Zambawi.

Brave, because 10 years in to his career as a published novelist he has returned for the third time to the characters first introduced in his debut Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko. Not many authors are doing that sort of thing.

Bucking the trend because it is the second book in the series, Twelve Bar Blues, that has been the most successful to date, winning a coveted Whitbread Prize and selling umpteen thousands of copies. Who says correct reading order is vital?

Jerusalem is my first venture into Neate's imagined country. I read it as he was appearing at our first London Book Swap and, you know, it's the done thing the authors' books before interviewing them. Only polite.

There are a bunch of story strands at work here. A junior government minister is sent to Zambawi to secure the release of a British businessman imprisoned for reasons of national security. The minister's son is a high-flying tastemaker about to launch the career of a mysterious rapper whose debut single is a hip-hop version of William Blake's hymn Jerusalem. These two strands end up being linked in a number of less obvious ways via Zambawi.

In Zambawi itself we come across some characters from Neate's earlier books. In some cases he takes their stories to a final conclusion, others are left tantalisingly open, perhaps with the promise of more novels to come.

Jerusalem is a book about many things but is primarily and most obviously a tale of nationality and identity. What it means to be English, or British, or Zambawian and how that changes over the generations. It is also about politics, music and the media.

It took a little while for me to get in to this. I was enjoying it but felt a bit distanced to begin with but then, about halfway through, it all opened up - the stories started to gel, the threads started to be pulled together and I really started to care. I raced though the final section and was left feeling thoroughly entertained. My thoughts were provoked. My callous heart was moved.

It made me want to read the other two books. Something I am sure I will do soon.

 

The difference between a first draft and the final draft should be vast. It is the difference between ignoring your readers and listening to them. It's the difference between being a loudmouth and being a writer. It's the difference between being an arrogant bastard who loves the sound of her own voice, and a dedicated, tuned-in communicator with a passion for words and a burning need to make those words matter.

It's the difference between not being published and being published.

I remember when I was trying - and failing - to be published. (God, I remember it.) Anyway. I went to a thing. I'd like to call it an event but it was seriously uneventful. It was a gathering of people who wanted to listen to someone - not me - who'd had a book published. Or, as I now realise, self-published. (Which is fine, because actually it was the right sort of book to be s-pubbed, being a genuinely niche book.) Anyway, I got chatting to the author. And I made the big mistake of telling her about my lengthy editing Process. God, what a process, I said. I edit and edit and hone and hone and slice and splice and generally try to make it as perfect as I can.

"Oh," she said. "Don't bother with that. I can always tell an over-edited piece of work. One should never edit too much."

CRAP. One should edit and edit and edit and edit until there is nothing more one can possibly do. As Oscar W famously said. "I spent all morning editing a poem and I removed one comma. In the afternoon, I put it back again."

I have never edited "too much". Sure, sometimes I have to stop because I have reached The Deadline and people are about to shout at me, which I hate, but I would rather carry on. And on. And...

By the way, that woman's book really really really needed editing.

So do my blog-posts but that's different because if you don't like my stream of consciousness you don't have to read it. You  haven't paid me, after all. More's the pity, you mean buggers.

So. Editing. I have talked about it before. But I want to take a different tack on it today. There are, it seems, three things to do.

1. You must cut.
2. You must add.
3. And you must check for hidden nastiness.

The first and the last are the ones most often covered in how-to-write thingummies. I've said them myself. It goes like this:

Apply the machete. Be ruthless. If it's not necessary, get rid of it. If it wriggles and pleads, kill it. If you love it especially, it must die. Every word must count.

Know what could be wrong. Get genned up on voice slippages, POV switches, structural crappiness, pace issues. Slash dialogue tags, burn redundant adverbs. Make your beginning zing, tighten up your saggy middle, make sure your ending satisfies. Smarten up your grammar, kill clichés, disentagle metaphors, make sure that all disbelief is suspended from a very high tower. Do not let yourself get away with anything. Masochism is compulsory.

We don't talk about this, do we? We talk about getting rid of things because for most writers that's the big necessity. But someone emailed me recently and asked what happens when, after cutting out your redundant words, you are left with the nightmare scenario of a book that's too short...

Well, one thing's for sure: you shouldn't just bulk it up with some more description or character analysis or whatever. Because, for crying out loud, that's what you just took out.

So, what we might need is a whole new angle. A new sub-plot. And that's not easy. And might look added on. So, ask yourself this: what if... well, what if anything. What if a new character suddenly forced his or her way in? Yay! Right at the start. What if someone was watching your first chapter and muscled in? Seriously. Just forced his way in. Bastard! Deal with him. He could cause serious damage. Ooh, damage - that would be GOOD, no? Could so disrupt your other characters. See, they were sitting there all complacent when suddenly someone from Carrie's past, or Joel's past, or someone from the future, or just someone with a new agenda arrives. Ooh, what shenanigans. Could be someone that Sarah would hate or Esma would fall in love with.

Or, maybe not a whole new angle. Maybe a diversion. Maybe you had been so focused on the imminent ending that you hurtled your characters too quickly towards it. So, how about if, instead of having three things that get in the way of your MC's aim, you have FOUR? Ooh, just as the reader thought it was going SO well, you introduce a huge new spanner, and it throws everything into disarray.

Crikey, it could take another 20,000 to get out of that.

So, new character or spanner. Go on, you know you want to.

Thing is, there'll be a load more editing to do because then you'll need to do the cutting and checking again. And you'll find bits that need re-threading and tweaking. But it will be worth it. Because eventually you will have your beautiful final draft.


Well, of course, a bit more editing. Mmmm. And eventually it's not a draft any more. No, it's not perfect - it never will be. But it will be as perfect as you can make it.

And that's enough.

Go edit. Cut. Add. Check.

I appeared on BBC Radio 4's Open Book show at the weekend talking about the Firestation Book Swap.

You can listen again on the iPlayer.

My dulcet tones appear about 17 minutes in.

Enjoy.