The Novelwriter's Toolkit Read online

  A book is said to have a ‘sagging middle’ if the main bulk of the text fails to grip. Somewhere between the margins of 50,000 and 75,000 words there exists a no-man’s land that no writer wants to visit, the place where it is too soon to end but where the story has lost the glory of the beginning. It’s as if the writer has got bored or can’t figure out what to do next, so he kills time by not doing anything important with the characters or plot.

  A ‘sagging middle’ will kill your novel stone dead. A good middle is like a series of surprise birthday parties. Readers shouldn’t know what’s coming next – but they can’t wait to get there.

  The End

  Not every book has to have a surprise ending. An ending can be subtle, like a good wine, lingering with the reader for a while. But either way, everything must come together. All the loose strings should be tied up neatly. Don’t end too abruptly, so that readers are sent scampering back through the book trying to figure out what happened. Remember that you and your readers are on a journey of discovery together: don’t leave them out in the cold when it comes to understanding what happened and why.

  Every novelist wants to write a novel that ends with the reader sighing, wiping away a tear or turning on all the lights in the house. The words that end a book should always come from the reader and they should be, ‘That is the best book I have ever read.’ They should want to rush out and buy every other book the author has written. That is ultimately what everyone writes for. That is the true power behind every story.

  Writing a Rough Draft

  Some writers think of a rough draft as another version of an outline; others see it as the first phase of writing proper. It may be nothing like the final version, but knowing that what they’re writing down is more like an outline than the final text makes it easier for some writers to just start writing. And the resulting draft becomes the master plan for their novel. If you can get down the basic idea and aren’t put off by the prospect of a lengthy rewrite process, this approach may work for you.

  All you have to do is take the thread of your story and start writing. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar or paragraphs. Just run through until you’ve told the whole story from beginning to end. Doing this gives you an opportunity to find weak spots and loopholes in your characters and plot before you begin to write the manuscript proper. If you’re one of those writers who must create the perfect draft first time out, repress your urge for perfection. Think of this as an exercise in writing what’s on your mind.

  If you simply can’t bear to write anything ‘rough’, skip this stage and go straight to the discovery draft, overleaf – but first read Turn Off Your Inner Editor and particularly the warning about perfection being a form of procrastination.

  What If You Get Into Trouble?

  Oh no! Your plot has unravelled. Your main characters have flaws that can’t be mended. Your setting is all wrong. Your dialogue sounds phoney. The whole thing is a disaster. The only solution is to throw it out and start again with a new idea.

  There should be a word for this event. Every writer goes through it at some point, particularly beginners who don’t yet have much confidence in their work. But giving up at this stage is like trading in your car because its tyres are worn out. Nine times out of ten, all you need to do is invest in new tyres.

  OK, there are times – that one in ten left over from the nine times out of ten – when you do have to give up. But not – not ever – when you are working on a rough draft. This is still fine-tuning. No matter how many errors or flaws there are in your plot, you should at least try to mend them. Hopping from one manuscript to another without ever getting one to the stage where you are prepared to send it out into the world won’t make you a better writer. The only way to become a better writer is to stick with what you have and fix what’s wrong with it.

  Your characters are weak? Go back to everything you know about creating characters and work out what makes them weak. Look through your notes about them. What can you change to make them stronger and more vibrant?

  Your plot has bad spots? Where are they? What makes them bad? Why don’t they work? Take each plot point and follow it through. You should be able to see where your brilliant ideas got muddled along the way.

  Your setting is wrong? Change it. Change it to one that works for the characters and plot and one that you can write about with confidence. And next time, be sure to take extra time (or do extra research) before you decide where and when your novel is going to be set.

  Your dialogue sounds like a B movie? Read each piece out loud. What’s wrong with what’s being said? Correct it by making it sound more natural and right for the character who is speaking.

  If when you have done all this, you still hate it, that may be the time to give up. But I doubt it. It’s a much better idea to carry on, to give your novel – and yourself – a chance to be brilliant.

  The Discovery Draft

  Whether or not you choose to write a deliberately rough draft as outlined on the previous page, you are going to have to write a first draft at some point. This is sometimes called the discovery draft. Think of it as a dress rehearsal for the finished product. Some writers like to write each paragraph as if it were the final draft, revising and refining as they go along. Many others feel that this is too much pressure and prefer to get the entire story down and then go back to make it perfect.

  One thing you should be aware of, though, if you fall into the first category, is that first draft is not going to be perfect – you are going to have to reread, rethink, revise, rewrite. Frankly, you have a better chance of finishing a novel if you get the whole thing down first, then worry about making it perfect. Too many first-time writers are so concerned about crafting each sentence and phrase that they never get around to completing their story.

  Getting Started

  It’s the big moment. You’re going to sit down and write all your heaped-up ideas, the pictures in your mind, as short scenes, whether or not they come in order. Play with words the way a child plays in a playground, trying out various things any way you feel like it. Let all the research you’ve done come together. It doesn’t have to be coherent. Shift it around like a jigsaw puzzle until you know exactly where everything goes.

  This is your chance to let your writing be really creative. Throw wild colours at your canvas. Don’t be shy. No one else has to see this version of your story. Writers talk about ‘writer’s trance’, the moment when the story seems to take over and the words flow without their thinking about them. For most, this is the best writing they will ever do and it usually occurs during the rough or discovery draft.

  Writing a first draft frees your mind from the world you inhabit at this moment. It allows you to move into the world you’re creating. This is absolutely necessary if you hope to describe this world for your readers. If you don’t believe that, try describing people and places you’ve never experienced. Try it using 100,000 words. If you’ve never been to India, for example, or done serious research on it, you’ll find that words fail you after the first few hundred.

  This place and these people you are excavating from your soul are real to you. The challenge is to make them real for the person reading your book. You can know all the pretty words and all the right ways to express them, but if you aren’t writing as if you were really there, the reader won’t be there either.

  Your approach to writing this first draft will depend on your approach to writing an outline. If you haven’t written anything very detailed yet, you’ll just have to start writing. If you have a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, you will probably want to write your first draft in chapters too. Or if your book is character-driven – as most non-genre fiction is these days – you can write detailed studies of your entire cast of characters, saying something about who they are and what they contribute to the plot. Start with the main characters and progress to the ones that have only bit parts. Sketches for the secondary characters will not be as long or as detailed as t
hey are for the main characters, but remember that these people add charm, wit and information to your book. The story may not revolve around them, but they make it more interesting.

  By the time you finish, you should have a discovery draft of your story. It will have to be pieced together, but that is what revisions are for.

  Whichever approach you choose, remember two things:

  1.Spelling, punctuation, grammar and paragraph breaks are not important at this stage. Don’t get bogged down worrying about semi-colons when you should be telling a story. Tidying this sort of thing up comes later.

  2.If you don’t like something you have written in your outline or character studies, or if you find that you want to put something in Chapter 3 that your outline had in Chapter 5 – just go with it. Change it. Rewrite it. Your outline and notes are there to help you, not to restrict the flow of your creativity. They’re like a road map. If you find that the road you planned to drive along is closed, you take a different route, don’t you? The same applies here. The important thing is to get to the end in the best possible way. Minor detours can strengthen your novel and give your characters a better way of getting from point A to point B.

  Because there are no rules for this part of your work, you can relax. Have some fun. Enjoy your writing. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes – explore the possibilities. Maybe you thought your hero empathized with the heroine because she was the product of a broken home, as he was. But in the discovery draft you realize it would create more interesting situations if she had a big family she was very close to. These are things you can’t see until you start writing. Characters don’t relate to one another in an outline, however detailed and organized that outline may be. They don’t interact until you have them face to face in a situation.

  Writer’s Block

  All writers dread it, but most suffer from it at some point. Your mind refuses to move a character another step forward. When this happens, most writers find it helpful to get away from their work for a while and focus on something else. An idea to resolve the situation may pop into your mind while you are loading the washing machine or taking the dog for a walk. Another option is to abandon (for the moment) the scene that is causing you problems and move on to the next. After a while, interest and enthusiasm usually return and you can go back and fill in the gaps.

  Turn Off Your Inner Editor

  Many writers are natural editors. All their lives they’ve irritated their families by correcting their spelling errors, and been annoyed by people using words wrongly. They notice if there is a question mark where there isn’t a question. They point out mistakes they see on advertising hoardings or in the newspaper. It’s all part of the love of language that makes writers want to write.

  All this attention to detail (did somebody say nitpicking?) makes writers their own toughest critics. They may not be able to see holes in their plots or character flaws because they’re too intimate with them. But the errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation that they see in their own work haunt them like a song they can’t get out of their heads.

  Get On With It!

  Perfectionism is a form of procrastination. Don’t get hung up on honing each and every word to make it perfect, if that’s keeping you from completing your novel. You want your writing to be the best it can be, but you don’t want editing to become your excuse for not finishing. Remember, successful writers are the ones who get published and publishers can’t publish your novel if you don’t finish it.

  This will be difficult advice to follow if you are that sort of person, but you have to let those things go for the time being. Don’t let your inner editor keep you from telling your story by making you worry too much about mistakes you can deal with in later revisions. Resist the urge to correct every minor detail. If you can’t find the perfect word to describe the colour of a flower, just call it red or yellow and highlight it to remind yourself to come back to it later. It’s not important right now.

  On the other hand, if you have to change the fact that your murder victim died going over a cliff in his car, that will affect the rest of the plot. The clues that the detective is going to discover will be completely different if you decide the man was strangled in his bath. You need to work on this straight away. Changing what kind of car he’s driving when he goes over the cliff isn’t a major plot point. It can wait until you do revisions.

  If you find a gap in your research – if you want to describe the dress Marie Antoinette was wearing but have forgotten to read up on 18th-century French fabrics – you could decide to stop writing and look it up, but that probably means the end of writing for the day, or at least a break in your flow. Instead, leave a gap or highlight the place in your document and carry on. Unless the details are at the core of your plot, that information can wait. Don’t ruin your creative moment worrying about jacquard and brocade.

  When You Finish

  Finishing a rough draft, no matter how rough, is a huge accomplishment. What you should do next is simple: sit back and relax. Yes, you still have a lot of work ahead of you – it’s possible that you’ll need to make major revisions, do more research and then revise again. But for now, consider what you’ve accomplished. You’ve told your story from beginning to end. All the problems you created for your hero to solve have been solved. True love has conquered all. Your sleuth has found the killer. The world has been saved.

  The best thing you can do now is take a break. Move away from your computer screen and refocus your eyes. Reacquaint yourself with your family. Stay in bed for an extra hour or two. If you are not working to a deadline, leave the manuscript alone for a while – a few days or even more. This will give you a fresh perspective when you come back to it.

  Do More Research

  Now is the time to look up the information you were missing. You may find your flower is scarlet or vermilion, golden or amber. You may discover that jacquard wasn’t invented until ten years after Marie Antoinette’s death. It’s fine to go back and fill in this sort of gap, as long as you resist the temptation to start editing just yet.

  This is also a good moment to reread all your reference materials and check for any errors you may have made in your background. Be thorough. Remember what we said earlier about setting: there will be someone among your readers who knows all about the subject, whatever it is, and even those who aren’t familiar with it will probably spot a lack of authenticity.

  It’s Time to Edit

  Taking even a few days off can give you an amazing amount of distance and objectivity when it comes to rereading your work. You notice all sorts of things you had never noticed before. At this point it is almost inevitable that most of them will be bad. The plot isn’t as exciting as you thought it would be. The characters don’t interact, or they react with the force of a sledgehammer. You didn’t realize there could be so much bad dialogue in a single book. Your setting feels about as real as the backdrop of a silent film. You want to throw the whole thing away and start again.

  Hold on. We’ve been through this before. There are cures for almost anything that ails a rough draft. Remember, this was never meant to be the finished product. You were supposed to make mistakes. Now is the time to correct them.

  Your hero seems weak? He stumbles when he should be walking confidently? He mumbles when he should be taking charge? Put it right. Figure out what is wrong and correct it. He’s still your character. You have the final say in everything he does. If he stumbles, help him up. If he mumbles, change his dialogue. Consider how you saw him the first time he popped into your head. Reshape him to fit that image.

  You don’t like the dialogue? Your heroine sounds mild-mannered when she should be outspoken? Or abrasive when she’s meant to be sweet? Go through her dialogue and pinpoint what you don’t like about it. Change her words to suit what you first envisioned and what the plot needs. And make sure that the rest of her character changes with her.

  Not enough plot? Your novel is supposed to be 100,000 words. Your ro
ugh draft is a mere 50,000 and even so the plot runs out before the end. Go back and find the place where your plot starts winding down. What can you do to give it more oomph? Do you need to add an incident (another murder) or complication (an old girlfriend comes back into the hero’s life)? Or do you need a larger, more important subplot? Either approach could help.

  Too much plot? This can be even worse than not enough. Half-solved theories, partially developed characters and storylines that go nowhere are the hallmarks of this problem. You want to keep your readers engaged. You want to give them plenty of action and excitement. But too much excitement that doesn’t fit in and makes the book too busy isn’t good either. It leaves readers feeling as if they have been run over by a car at an intersection. They wonder what happened and how they failed to see the oncoming vehicle. Correcting this mistake can be as easy as removing an unnecessary subplot or character. Focus on what’s important to the story. Make that exciting and you won’t need anything else.

  A weak ending? Go back to your original premise and revise with the idea that the reader has to be as excited at the end of the story as you were when you began to write it. If she doesn’t know what happened, she may be frantically looking back through the book trying to figure out where she lost the thread. Letting the reader down gently is a fine art. When she finishes a book, she wants to feel satisfied with the conclusion. She wants the story to have played itself out. If the characters seem rushed or the plot seems cut off, she’ll feel cheated. Not let down gently – just let down.

  Some writers dread writing the last scene, because it means they have to let go of a character they have come to love. But you can’t drag the book out just so that you can stay in the world you have created. You may be able to write another book with the same characters. First you have to finish this one. If you find yourself staring at a blank final page, ask yourself what your reader would like to see here. What would give a sense of ending and completion? What would make her come back to read about this character again? The answers to these questions should help you finish the story, even if you don’t want to.