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There are
a host of how-to books out there and I’m sure most of us have
found them an invaluable source of help and inspiration.
However, don’t underestimate the value of the novels you read
every day as a guide to applying writing techniques.
At the
tender age of eighteen, I commenced writing my first novel. I
had never read a how-to book, although when I started looking
for a publisher, I did some research on the submission process.
After receiving numerous rejections, including a tantalising ‘we
almost bought it’, I went ahead with the confidence of youth and
self-published the manuscript.
Of course
these days when I re-read the book, there are many things I
cringe at. But I received plenty of praise from readers, and
experienced that warm fuzzy feeling recently when a lady
purchased a second copy because she’d lent hers years before to
someone who hadn’t returned it.
To what do I attribute this book – written by someone with no
knowledge of technique and who’d left school after 10th Grade –
being essentially enjoyable, even if far from perfect? I’m
certain it was because I’d subconsciously and consciously
absorbed a fair amount of technique from the many books I’d
read. I do remember looking at books I’d enjoyed to see how
they’d written dialogue, for instance, and the dialogue really
doesn’t read too badly.
Every now
and again I will read something from an inexperienced writer who
has obviously read a how-to book on dialogue. We’re frequently
advised to use ‘he said/she said’ instead of more obtrusive
speech tags, such as ‘he intoned’ or ‘she expostulated’, to use
a couple of the more amusing examples! J New writers sometimes
take this too literally and accompany every piece of dialogue
with ‘he said/she said’. Now, this may be fine if you are
Jennifer Crusie, but for the rest of us there is of course
another solution – occasional use of ‘he said/she said’
interspersed with action tags. Some pieces of dialogue don’t
need a tag at all.
If the
budding writer had looked at how her favourite authors did it,
instead of taking this advice to its literal extreme, she may
have realised where she was going wrong. The same applies to any
technical advice. So much can be learned by studying how
successful writers have dealt with the usual pitfalls – point of
view, transitions, pacing, to name a few.
Another
problem area is critiquing. Sometimes we receive suggestions for
significant change that really don’t fit with our own
expectations or concept of the story. Often such advice can be
analysed and disregarded, but what if more than one person
suggests the same thing and these people are both published
authors?
My
solution when faced with this dilemma was to save my manuscript
under a new name and make the suggested revisions to it. If I
still didn’t like it, I could always delete it later! I let it
rest for a month or so, and then came back and compared the two
manuscripts. Was it just my natural resistance to changing my
beloved story that was getting in the way? With perspective, did
the new version read better?
I have
done this with two manuscripts. In the first instance, after a
bit of time and distance I could see that the change, which cut
the ending considerably, really did improve the story. I’d
always been worried the ending was too drawn-out, but at first
the suggested cut seemed too drastic to me. Actually, it wasn’t.
In the
second instance, the change was adding a wedding scene at the
end of the story. I wrote a brief, fairly understated scene and
submitted it to a publisher with the change in place. It was
accepted as such, but now, when I go back and look at it, I
still like my original conclusion. Personally, I’m not a fan of
endings where every ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ is crossed. If
there’s a tiny little question left in the reader’s mind, (and
I’m not referring to an anti-climactic finish here) it can leave
them wanting more. When I do the edits, I intend to ask my
editor if I can restore the original ending. If she doesn’t
agree, I can live with it!
It is your
story, and you know your own style. Another writer may suggest
something that is more in keeping with her own style or the
market she is writing for. If you have some idea of your market,
that is a big help, but I have found this technique a good tool
to help me determine what fits with my writing.
Heather's
first novel, The Cornstalk, set in Australia and England in the
1870s, is due out with Wings ePress this month. It's sequel, A
Hidden Legacy, set in Australia and England in the 1890s,
follows in November. For more information visit
www.heathergarside.com
or www.wings-press.com
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