Stories Are Like Monsters
They Need A Spark To Make Them Live
What do you do when the novel you’ve been writing, the one you’ve planned so very carefully — I’m talking spreadsheets, mind maps and endless lists — suddenly appears to be all wrong?
How can it be ‘wrong’? It hangs together okay; the word count is alright and there are no obvious, gaping holes on the plot. Sounds like it’s done, but it’s not! It’s wrong and you know it.
It’s because you’ve realised that you’ve missed out a very important special ingredient, something that you had previously not even considered, and that means your novel now has to be rewritten to insert that very important special ingredient, without which it cannot truly live. In short, you’ve killed it.
I do not mean to sound so violent! But despite you trying to breathe life into your novel, like Frankenstein’s monster, it still lacks that vital spark to animate it successfully. And for the reader that truly is horrific.
I mention this because my own novel, which I had proudly told people was very nearly finished, has now moved itself into the monster phase, of not being nearly finished at all. Ouch.
It’s my own fault as quite late in the day I added a whole new strand to my novel. Not because I’m a masochist, but because it became clear to me, after speaking with my writing group, that my novel needed an extra element to make the whole story work better.
Trust in your readers, whether they are a writing group, friends, editors or beta readers reading your work prior to publishing, is necessary if you need to radically change your manuscript. Obviously, blind trust or faith, is not recommended. But a considered reaction to any criticism that is meant as constructive is important.
You don’t have to agree to everything. As the creator of your work, you have the final say. However, being self-indulgent is dangerous. If you want a market for your work, listening to your first readers is an important part of the process.
With my own novel, I now know what I have to do to make it better. It requires me to go through everything I’ve already written and tweak, rewrite or dump whole chapters, whilst adding new ones. Alongside this, always attempting to keep on track with the narrative and secure its drive and focus. Yes, it does mean more work. But remembering why I wanted to write the book does help.
If you’ve found yourself in a similar situation, your book doesn’t ‘sing’ to you and you feel it’s not working as you hoped or have to make so many changes it makes your head swim, here’s a method I used recently.
I made a list of next steps with my book:
Do I still like the story?
Could I make it better?
When would it be finished?
What would I do with the finished first draft?
Which agents/publishers would I sent it to when it was ready?
Would I consider self-publishing?
Of course, none of this got the book written! But it did help focus my mind on the challenges and next steps that would follow when the book was finished. I also had to consider the painful option of abandoning the book altogether and not falling into the ‘I better keep going as I’ve written so much fallacy’. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve written if I’m not happy with the results!
For this I’ve given myself two options:
1. Put the book aside and start another
2. Keep going, work on it to make it better, but give myself time to plot the next book.
It is painful all this writing stuff — revising your work, loving your work, hating your work, wanting to throw your work into the bin! — but it’s also part of the writing life.
As Paul Abbot, English television screenwriter and producer, famously said, ‘Writing is rewriting’ and I say hallelujah to that! Don’t assume your work is done until you give it some editing and rewriting time.
Anyway, talking of hallelujah, how about a bit of Happy Mondays to get you buzzing for that rewriting?
