This Year You Write Your Novel (7 page)
What you have to remember is that a novel is the one and the many. There is an overarching story, and then there are all the smaller narratives that come together to make up that larger tale.
So in the case of Bob, Ramona, and Lyle, we have many bases to cover before we can come to a satisfying conclusion. Ramona must come into sync (through conflict) with Bob and Lyle; the same is true for Lyle and his father. We also have the police, the criminals, the judicial system, and Bob’s in-laws to understand. Each character and element involved in the circumstances of this tragedy must be plumbed for us to understand and feel the evolution of that character—especially Bob’s.
Keeping these notions in mind, you will find that the novel in some important way writes itself. You know the characters; you know the circumstances—now you must make sure that the reader is aware of every factor that makes up the tale.
You will find yourself in the cell with more than one murderer. You will find yourself in Bob’s and Lyle’s memories of their lost family members. You will experience the police officers’ exasperation with Bob’s apparent cowardice. You will come to understand Bob’s loveless life, and then you will see how, in a very different way, Ramona has always sought after love.
And with each one of these substories, more of the larger tale will be revealed. Is it a story of forgiveness or retribution, a slow death or a rebirth?
The midlands of your novel can be treacherous, but the map is in the beginning of your story, where the characters are introduced and the conflict occurs. How this conflict is resolved is the content of your tale. There are many strands that must come together into a whole cloth—this is your novel.
research
There will be moments when you will want to dally over details. Do Georgia geese fly south in April or June? Is it physically possible for Bob Millar to hear the cult leader yelling from a mile away—even in a desert? Would the police arrest Trip if the women were allowed into the bar and were served by the owner?
All of these questions are valid. Before the book gets into print, you should have the answers. But many writers allow questions like these to help them procrastinate. They tell themselves that they can’t go on until these questions are answered.
Nonsense. Put a red question mark next to the place where you have questions and get back to it later.
I almost always do the research for my books toward the end of the last draft. By that time I know the book is written and that my creative energies will not be sapped by needless fretting.
I have to admit that I’m not the best source when it comes to research. It’s not one of my strong suits. I write books about places I’ve been and people I like to think I understand.
I’ve known writers who have spent years in libraries and foreign lands researching the topics of their novels. There’s nothing I can say about that. If you need to go to South Africa for a month (or five years) to get the feeling for your book, then do it. When you come back and you’re ready to write, my little how-to book will be waiting for you. Then you can take the year necessary to write the novel.
Rewriting, or Editing
the first draft
This section marks the borderline between the potential novel and the actual work of art. You have spent three months or more getting down the words. Every day you have planted your backside in a chair for an hour and a half or more and written this novel of yours. Now that you have come to the end of the book, you are ready to write it.
The pages you have stacked neatly in front of you represent what is commonly known as a first draft. It’s probably not very good, but that’s to be expected. Without a first draft, there would be no novel, so this is without a doubt the most important accomplishment of the writer.
the second draft
Now read your book from first page to last. If you find that you must make pencil markings, correct spelling, add missing words, retool sentences. . . be my guest. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you read the entire novel.
This exercise is a very important moment for the novelist. It is a time of discovery. You think you know what you’ve written, but you find—all through the text—phrasings, words, metaphors, notions, and even evolving themes that lead you to wonder about developing these ideas further. You find mistakes that seem to make sense. You see ideas you once thought profound that now seem petty or trite.
The reason you find so many new things in the draft you have just written is that two people were at work on your book. The first one was you—the person who sat down every morning with coffee on the table and birds chattering outside the window.
You
wrote this novel, every word of it, but still you find surprises and glimmers of things partially forgotten or maybe even ideas that are wholly foreign to you, as if someone else were suggesting them.
That someone else is the you who lives inside, a shadow being that has been brought partially to consciousness by that daily exercise of writing—an exercise, when done in an unrestrained manner, that exhorts unconscious materials. This other side of your awareness may have left vestiges of thoughts, ideas, and feelings long forgotten. These treasures will be scattered among the pages of the draft you have only just completed.
When you have finished reading, you have finished the second draft of your book. Yes, the mere act of reading makes a second draft. Now you have seen what it is that you created. The book has become something more than you ever expected and something less than you intended. You are aware of problems in structure, language, and character development. Good. You are beginning to see other ideas that might be exploited. Even better.
How long should this reading take? I don’t know exactly. You will read your own draft faster than you would something wholly new to you, but it will still take time. Let’s give it a week. Your work schedule will remain the same, the same amount of time at the same hour—every day.
This is a good time to reiterate the importance of the writer’s schedule. You should write
every day,
Monday through Sunday. If you finish the first draft on a Tuesday, then you should begin the second draft (which is reading the first draft) on Wednesday. And, while we’re at it, there are no vacations from writing. If you find yourself on holiday in Bermuda, work on your novel every morning instead of reading someone else’s book. If you have a toothache, put your protagonist in the dentist’s chair. If you fall in love, make that love an aspect of a character in your book. Don’t stop writing for any reason. Don’t stop writing. Don’t stop.. . . Don’t.
You have spent around twelve weeks writing the first draft and now another week acquainting yourself with the work, and its writer, as a whole. Thirteen weeks—one-quarter of a year exactly.
The time is getting short.
the many drafts that follow
Now begins the hard work. Now you have to go through your book idea by idea, character by character, chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, and finally even word by word, submitting it to many, many levels of analysis and critique.
In the early rewriting drafts, you will make notes about the problems you perceived in the novel in that first all-important reading. Does the story engage you? Does the story make sense? Have you set up a pattern of revelation (the plot) that moves the story along? Is there any discernible change in the main character(s)? And how do the ideas that manifested themselves in the second draft affect how you see the story now?
The first draft of the novel may have been written in many different ways (e.g., typewritten, entered on a computer, scribbled in pencil), but now you need a printed version of the book (preferably double-spaced) and a pencil with a fresh eraser. You need a stack of blank paper that you will use to make notes, lists, internal schedules, and longer insertions. You will need that time each day and absolute silence because now is when you become Sisyphus rolling that impossible weight up the hill. Any distraction might well cause a misstep, and you will lose control.
What should be your plan? How should you go about reworking the manuscript in front of you until it is a finished book?
There are different ways to approach this job, but there is one that all writers have in common: you must decide whether or not this document is worth the next nine months of your life.
I’m not asking you if the book is pretty, well tooled, sensible, or even mostly comprehensible. What you have to decide here is whether the novel has a soul or not. Is there a story in all that mangled-up language that is worth the telling?
This may take another reading, and one after that. Each of these can be considered a draft. Roll past the inelegant phrasings and contradictory timing. Ignore the plot flaws and hackneyed notions. Love isn’t articulate at first blush. Neither are most important ideas.
Look closely at your book and make sure that you want to see the novel it implies.
Once you have made this decision, there are different paths you can take. These paths are many, but all can be reached through either the intuitive or the structured approach.
You may wish to start on page one, retooling sentences and setting up the theme at the same time. You might decide to go through the novel making only certain kinds of changes (e.g., dialogue tooling, spelling, word repetition) and making notes for future drafts when other issues arise.
Whatever choice you make, tomorrow is when you begin the next nine months of draft making.
the elements of rewriting
In this section I will give you an idea of what is possible to attain in the process of rewriting, along with a few suggestions about what you should be looking for when you’re trying to make a better story.
the nexus of character, story, theme, and plot
When the writer began telling the story about Marissa and Love, she was under the impression that Love was just an overbearing force standing in the path of her daughter’s personal development. Maybe this writer was thinking about her own mother, or other older women she’d known who had been impediments while professing to have concern for her.
When going over the story, the writer realizes that Love has a static character. She makes no transition in the telling of the tale, but she is obviously an important player therein.
This is a problem that the novelist jots down. “What to do about Love’s character development?” she scribbles at the bottom of page 180.
Later, on the ninth rereading, a line pops out at the rewriter. Let’s say that Trip has been released from jail, and even though he has been having an affair with Marissa’s best friend, Marissa takes him back.
Enraged at her daughter, Love says, “Man’s just a wild dog without a leash.”
This declaration doesn’t make sense; of course a wild dog doesn’t have a leash. The first consideration is to delete this bit of dialogue. But then again. . .
maybe Marissa will see that the phrase makes no sense and learn something about her mother.
This idea seems good. The author adds the thought into Marissa’s internal dialogue. But later the writer comes across the note about Love’s character. This brings her back to wild dogs with no leashes—what could she have meant? The statement is not really in character for Love; she’d more likely say, “That Trip’s a wild dog that should be put down.” But instead she wants him on a leash.. . .
When no answer comes, the rewriter leaves this problem and goes on retooling sentences and looking for overused words. Then, a week or so later, she comes back to the wild-dog declaration. Love seems to be worried about Trip; she’s thinking that Marissa doesn’t know how to deal with a man like him. Maybe she believes that Trip will be harmed by a woman who doesn’t know how to grab hold of her man and make him see that he’s not some damned cowboy on TV.
If this is so, maybe Love has a backstory—a time when she loved someone too much—and maybe she believes that this uncontrolled love killed her man. Love killed her man. This sentence takes on a double meaning. Love’s relationship to her daughter now makes sense, her hatred of Trip is somewhat clearer, and a possibility for her to learn something (or at least to recognize that thing) opens the potential for her character to change as the story unfolds.
Love’s story might be the underlying theme of the novel. Maybe the characters are seeing themselves in their loved ones and not loving them for who they are.
The story started out as a tale about a young woman who was hindered by those who professed love but did not deliver. But now, after this wild-dog notion, we see Marissa in a new way. Rather than being the personification of innocence, she begins to represent danger. Love and Trip become her victims. So instead of the original trite ending—the one in which Marissa moves to Phoenix and falls in love with her rich and handsome boss—we see Marissa at the cemetery, where, on that same day, funerals are being held for both her lover and her mother.
The novel changes course from romance to black comedy, and we begin to tease out moments in Marissa’s life that seem innocent but when added up equal an unconscious force of nature that overwhelms everyone and everything around her.
This, I believe, is a good example of what can come from rewriting. Our questioning of every phrase and every element of the novel will blend together and bond into a story that will do us well.
the devil and the details
The above example illustrates the most important overarching concerns in any successful rewrite: What is the novel about? How do the characters come together and change? What does it all mean?
These large notions are important, but if you don’t write a reader-friendly book, no one is ever going to get that far.
The following are the minutiae of rewriting any piece of prose.
repetition
First, you must cut out all extraneous repetition of words and phrases. Punctilious, pinewood table, amber eyed, flatulent, moribund. . . these words, and most others, should hardly ever be repeated within a few pages of one another. To go even further, they shouldn’t be used more than two or three times in the whole book.