Writing tip – It’s too long!

This is a companion piece to my blog ‘Writing tip – It’s too short! here

As we writers know, some publishers set an upper limit for fiction submissions. There are several valid reasons for this. The limit can vary from 50,000 to 100,000. Rarely do they want in excess of 100,000. Yes, there are exceptions, though I haven’t found any when searching on my wife’s behalf for her 150,000 romantic suspense novel.

So how do you clip off those extra words, expunge all that precious prose?

Here are ten suggestions:

1. Break the novel into two books. This will only work if the plot and flow of the story permits. The ideal point to break would be where the protagonist encounters a serious obstacle that seems insurmountable. Not the final black moment, but similar. So end on a cliff-hanger. That will inevitably require some rewriting. If you’ve captured the reader for the first ‘half’, then ending in this way is likely to entice the reader to seek out the follow-up.

Some books previously published were chopped up into smaller units because of their size – notably The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant – that ended up as a trilogy (to be followed by others!) Edgar Rice Burroughs ended on a cliff-hanger at the close of The Warlord of Mars, the second in what amounted to a trilogy. Dickens did it all the time with the magazine versions of his novels: leave the reader wanting more. But not all books lend themselves to this kind of surgery.

Be ruthless. Yes, a good author should ruthlessly edit anyway. But many just tend to tinker rather than excise. Follow these suggestions and cut, cut and cut; put the manuscript away for a while, come back to it with fresh eyes and then cut, cut and cut again.  

2. Is every scene doing something to add to the plot or increase our understanding of the characters, or move the story forward? If the scene does none of those things, why is it there?

3. Is all that research that you’ve infodumped really necessary? Can it be condensed without losing the salient points in order to aid the story?

4. Repetition. Time and again I read where the same sentence or two is repeated, though using different words; the sense is the same, twice. Combine, or excise. Same goes for whole paragraphs.

5. Too many characters. This is a tough one. It depends on the type of story, naturally. A saga, or the first in a series, might contain a good number of characters. But do they all do enough to justify being there? Some need to be sounding boards, perhaps, for the main characters; others need to be there so they can meet a grisly demise that will signpost the threat to the protagonist. Fine.

Compare the screenplay of a novel; you’ll notice that some characters have been dropped, while in other cases two or more have been fused into one. (Yes, this is to save on actors’ pay, but it’s also to make the story less complicated). All your characters have to work or they don’t belong; in which case, send them to another work in progress.

 
6. Description. I believe description is necessary to put the reader into the scene. Admittedly, there are authors – and readers – who are happy with minimalist description; or none at all, relying on neat character-filled dialogue. That works, when done well. Though my argument is, it’s a novel that rattles in the reader’s head, not a radio play. Still, there can be too much description. Is all the description through a character’s eyes? Or is it imposed by the author? If you’re writing omniscient POV, then the description may tend to be too rich. If it’s character POV description, keep it tight and relevant, to create mood, foreshadowing or a sense of place and character.

7. Dialogue. Some characters can become irksome, running off at the mouth without let up. These folk need reining in. Does what they say have relevance to the story, to the forward movement of the plot? Occasionally, you can get away with ‘one sugar or two, Vicar?’ when the mood’s appropriate, but be ruthless where possible. Dialogue also falls into the repetition trap – beware, and if found, cut!

 
8. Scene shifts. Scriptwriting gets round much of the tedious bits by scene shifting. Do the same – unless it’s necessary, do you have to relate how your characters get to the next scene? Start the scene with them there.
 
9. Conflict. Without conflict, there’s no story. The conflict doesn’t have to be physical. It can be verbal, psychological, or even caused by the environment. Some scriptwriters arrive at the conflict slowly, letting us get to know the individuals first. That’s fine. But you’ll grab your reader faster and more firmly if you begin with the conflict and then get to know the characters through their actions. Cut the lead up to the conflict – go for the jugular straight away.

10. Tangent. If you don’t watch them, characters can go off at a tangent and take the plot with them. It’s interesting as you go, but is it necessary to the story’s main flow? Yes, you need sub-plots, but you can have too many of them. Be ruthless with the sub-plots and leave them only if they serve a purpose.

 
Finally, don’t discard. That might sound contrary, considering the purpose outlined. If you’re going to excise vast chunks of prose, that’s good. But cut and paste these chunks and save them elsewhere in another document. You never know, some or all of them may prove useful at a later date in another work in progress. If nothing else, it doesn’t seem as if you’ve entirely wasted your time on all that prose! [Whenever I decide to edit, I always start with a new copy, so I’ve always got the earlier version, in case I have an aberration and go too far!] Remember too that the time spent on those words wasn’t wasted; the simple action of writing improves your style every time, every day.
 
Of course, if you have a plot-plan and stick to it and monitor your word-count as you work, you’re less likely to exceed by too much that upper limit. I would estimate that 5,000 words over isn’t going to be frowned upon.
 
Truth is, you can always add more; the obverse is also true, you can always cut more.
 
Nowadays, of course, if you feel you cannot cut your prose to meet the upper limit of a publisher, you can always resort to self-publishing at reasonable cost – though bear in mind that usually every extra page of your masterwork will cost more in production and postage.

***

Advert time.

In my book Write a Western in 30 Days I discuss infodumping, plot-plans, conflict, description and character building.

 

On Amazon.com this book has eight 5-star reviews and two 4-star reviews; on Amazon.co.uk it has an additional three 5-star reviews.

 

This book is a very useful guide for anyone wanting to write genre fiction – that is, any genre, not only westerns. Those aren’t my words, but the opinion of reviewers on Amazon.

 

E-book from Amazon com bought from here

E-book from Amazon co uk bought from here

 
or paperback post-free world-wide from here

Hearing voices

Writers do it, if they’re fortunate enough. Hear the voices of their characters. It doesn’t happen for every author and it doesn’t happen all the time for any author who hears those characters speaking.

When I get so far into a novel – or, sometimes, a short story – I start hearing the characters speaking to each other, resolving issues I haven’t sorted out in my plot-plan, creating conflict I hadn’t designed, and generally moving the story forward. These moments are marvellous, for if the characters are ‘real’ to me, then I just might be able to convey that ‘reality’ on the page. That’s what writers constantly strive to do, in effect: impose their reality on the reader for the duration of the story. So, from this perspective, hearing voices is a good thing.

Yes, there’s no need to send for the men in white coats. Having read some imaginative literary forays, however, it’s possible that a few critics or psychiatrists might lean towards that opinion. Gruesome murders and overtly sexual themes suggest they may be authors’ cries for help. Nonsense, of course. Whatever the imagination can conceive is never as strange as what occurs or has occurred in real life.

Sketch of the human brain - Wikipedia commons

Seriously, though, for a long time, there’s been a tendency to assume that anyone who hears voices in their head must be suffering from a hallucination. This is not a delusion, which is someone interpreting something differently from others. [A few politicians might be deluded, thinking they’re doing the right thing, perhaps.] Another example of delusion is paranoia. Whereas a hallucination is something that a person perceives that nobody else can.

Sufferers of hallucinations have been thought of as schizophrenic. Those hearing voices have been regarded with caution, concern and even suspicion. Ergo, someone who hears voices must be insane. [A few authors have thought they might be mad to continue writing when the muse, the publishers, the critics or the reading public abandon or ignore them…]

Statistics indicate that several million individuals have experienced hearing voices at some point. Opinion is divided but many consider that these voices are bad, encouraging violence, evil acts and are even sourced from the devil himself. [I’m sure authors may be responsible for perpetuating this, too, reflecting on commonplace if misguided opinion.] Yet, reality leans to the statistic that some 50% of people say that the voices they hear are positive, friendly and helpful.

Mind map - Wikipedia commons

 

According to the medical profession, notably many psychiatrists, there is a strong belief that hearing voices is a sign of psychosis. And psychosis = psychotic, insane, mad. To combat this view, a movement was set up.

In 1987 Marius Romme and Sandra Escher formed the Hearing Voices Movement. They seek to investigate and provide support for individuals with this condition. The movement is now called Intervoice and has branches worldwide.

The credo of Intervoice is: hearing voices is not in itself a sign of mental illness, and indeed is experienced by many people who have no symptoms of mental illness. The condition may be linked to problems in a person’s life history. They can develop coping mechanisms to confront the unresolved issues. Intervoice oppose the blanket use of anti-psychotic drugs.

Research shows that hearing voices is associated with severe trauma or other unfinished business in the past: perhaps an accident, divorce, bereavement, sexual or physical abuse, a love affair or even pregnancy. It seems that the voices become more insistent or stronger when the person is under stress. The voices are not the problem; it’s what they represent or bring to the surface that is of concern. Denial of the existence of the voices can actually help maintain them. [Authors write about the human condition and there is enough material here for a good number of novels, I suspect.]

Hearing voices can be distressing to the listener. A person who hears voices can become frightened, not by the voices but by the concern over control of one’s mind. Unlike fictional examples, this is not the case. There is no mind control by evil forces through voices. [There may be evil individuals who manipulate the sufferers of these voices, however; which is often the meat of fiction and screenplay writers.]

 
No demons, no evil spirit, just a troubled mind that needs the soothing balm of comprehension.

***

The above is based on the ‘Psychotherapy and the power of the mind’ column’s article ‘People who hear voices’ by Graham Milton-Jones, Costa Blanca News, February 7, 2014.

Living with Voices: 50 Stories of Recovery (2009) - This book claims to hold true for those who have been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. At its heart are the stories of the 50 people who have recovered from the distress of hearing voices, and how they have changed their relationship with their voices in order to reclaim their lives. – Wikipedia article, Hearing Voices Movement, definitely worth reading.

 

 

Blog guest - Michela O'Brien - a strong sense of place

Today, my guest is Michela O’Brien. She is the author of Playing on Cotton Clouds (2012) and A Summer of Love (2013), both published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

Michela was born in Milan, Italy, in... well, let's say some time in the last third of the 20th century. In Milan she grew up, studied, worked as a teacher, made friends and wrote, commending thoughts to page, imagining plots and characters, recording events in her life, noting observations about the world: stories, diaries, letters... In an era before personal computers, Internet, blogs and social networks, it was pen and paper and she still carries a notebook and a pencil with her to sketch ideas on the spot. She moved to England in 1994 and lives at the edge of the beautiful National Park of the New Forest with her husband and two sons.

Her greatest inspirations are ordinary people and real life stories, and her novels and short stories centre on themes of friendship, love, coming of age and self-discovery, human emotions and experiences everyone can relate to. Michela is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Playing on Cotton Clouds

When arty Livy falls for her sister's boyfriend, she knows her dreams are unlikely to come true... Sensitive Seth thinks he has hit the jackpot when the girl of his dreams finally looks his way... While laidback Aidan is every girl's hero.

Fast forward twenty-five years as carefree youth turns into adulthood responsibilities, relationships begin and end, music and fashion change, and life moves on with its successes, failures and heartaches. As the friends grow up, they discover life rarely turns out the way you imagined it at fifteen. The rites of passage through years are eerily familiar to every 1980s teenager in this moving, heartfelt novel.

 

A Summer of Love

Successful artist Jonah Briggs is a man who has made mistakes. Aged just eighteen, he was sent to prison for two years, leaving his family shattered and his first love, Sally, to wait for his return. But at eighteen, two years seem like a lifetime, and some promises are hard to keep. 

When Jonah reappears in her life, Sally finds herself torn between him and Ewan, the young Cornish farmer she has married, divided between loyalty and passion, duty and love. 

Over the course of almost two decades, through meetings and partings, secrets and revelations, and two momentous summers, Jonah will have to confront his past and heal old wounds, while Sally will face the consequences of her choices – whether to follow her conscience or her heart.

My review of Playing on Cotton Clouds

In this superb book about friendship and relationship, we travel with the main characters from 1983 through to 2008, with a poignant flashback to 1980. What's interesting is that the author was born and lived in Italy until 1994, when she moved to England; yet she captures the period prior to her arrival very well indeed.

There are three teenage friends, Aidan, Livy (Olivia) and Seth who meet up at the bridge that crossed the town's river. Even when they move away into the big wide world, the bridge has significance, sometimes in their memories, sometimes when they visit the town again. It links them, it seems. Added to the mix is Livy's sister, Tara. First fumbling with sex and alcohol are depicted, inevitably, with humour and a core of truth. Indeed, truth shines through this book - we believe these people lived, we live with them for the duration of the novel, getting anxious in moments of crisis, becoming pleased in moments of happiness. Life isn't tidy, there are false paths to take, wrong turns to make, and they drift apart, yet return after years, an invisible thread connecting them. `Can you fall in love at thirteen, one rainy afternoon, in an old faded café, and find yourself at twenty-nine, sitting in the fragrant summer sun, feeling as you did then?' The answer, of course, is `yes'. That's the human condition.

Aidan isn't too bright, but he's attractive to women, which is his downfall, yet as one conquest says, `People can't stop loving you, even when they think they have.'

Seth is a little self-centred, wrapped up in his writing, early on suffering from depression (`... in the small hours of the morning, when he felt himself slowly falling and darkness seemed to chase him with cold, invisible fingers'), but with the help of his friends he defeats the Black Dog, though he's always going to be a `half-empty pint' kind of man: `I wasn't interested in collecting stamps, so I went for rejection letters. Fascinating. Some can be perversely creative.' (I have to agree with his praise for Philip K. Dick).

Livy is in love with Seth, but (fool that he is) he's infatuated with her sister, Tara. `Carefully tucked away feelings were scattered around Livy's mind, leaving her with the painful task of picking them up and hiding them again... contemplating old memories as they lay on the floor of her recollection.'

The narrative is from the perspective of these three, and at every stage there's a depth of character and an emotional resonance that rings true. Emotion in a relationship novel has to be felt by the reader, not simply observed - show, not tell, and Michela O'Brien does that brilliantly: she could have written `Livy felt hurt by him' or something similar; instead, she gives us `Her heart had taken a dive into her stomach and she briefly held her breath to fish it out and put it back in its place.' There are several clever allusions, to springs in beds and Jack-in-the-box and feelings like thorns, imbedded in the body, making themselves felt after time, which `he could not tear out without maiming himself.'

There is a birth and a death, both handled with exquisite restraint and all the more powerful and moving for that. This debut novel is excellent, the writing controlled and a delight.

Q&A

Michela, your debut novel has picked up an enviable number of high-scoring reviews on Amazon. How does that feel?

It feels great! I’m still taken aback by the praises the book received. I’m especially moved when people say they loved the characters and that they felt like “real people” and “friends”.

What was the initial inspiration for the book?

The initial idea was to write about a male friendship. I started out with Seth and Aidan and their relationship. It was interesting to explore, as I was doing it from a female perspective, obviously. I then added another element with a male-female friendship between Seth and Livy, another theme that interests me.

Do you find that your characters – say, Livy, Aidan and Seth - have become real people, that you remember them as such? Or are they brief acquaintances who’ve drifted apart since you’ve moved on to meet new characters?

They are definitely very real to me. I feel like they are friends I have come to know well. Both my books span several years and I got to see the characters grow and change from youth into adulthood. I sometimes think it would be nice to revisit them and find out what they’ve been up to. I might very well do so, in the future.

Most debut novels take a long time to gestate. How long did you work on Playing on Cotton Clouds?

If we are talking about the actual writing, it didn’t take very long. About six months. If we are talking about “gestation” and how the story came together… well, I subliminally wrote this novel since I was 19 – and that’s a long time ago! I love choral stories, with different threads and subplots, and wanted to write about a group of friends, how they start together as a unit, and how then life splits their paths. Sometimes they run parallel, sometimes they meet and part and meet again. I actually started this novel many times and never finished it. Finally, I managed to get to the end.

In many ways, second novels are easier, because you’ve learned a lot from the first. (Some feel cursed by the expectations implicit in a second novel after a successful first one). At what stage did you begin A Summer of Love?

Funnily enough, I wrote A Summer of Love first. I sent it out to a few agents and publishers with no joy, so I shelved it and moved to another project, what became Playing on Cotton Clouds. After the latter had been published, I got back to the first novel and edited it, cutting a big bulk of the first draft and rewriting entire sections, until it was in the current form, which led to it being published too.

Excellent approach, to rewrite and rewrite, rather than just send out the MS! Now that you’ve got your second book published, are you writing another novel at present – and if so, can you tell us a little about it?

Yes, the third novel is almost finished and ready for editing. It has the working title of “Finding Paige” and it’s another story focusing on relationships, with an exploration of “timing”, meeting the right person at the wrong time and making what could be the wrong choice.

When you’ve finished your books, do you feel you’d like to see where the characters go next, or do you leave them alone to get on with their lives without your input?

Normally when I reach the end, I’m satisfied with the journey my characters have taken and happy to leave them where they have arrived. So, yes, I tend to let them “get on” on their own. Plus, I’m always thinking about a new project, a new idea. But you never know, one day I might like to revisit some of my characters and take them on a new journey.

How long have you been writing? 

Forever! I started writing stories as soon as I was able to, at about six. More seriously, though, with a look at being published, about 12 years.

What influenced you to start writing?

As I said, it was something I started doing very early on. I just love stories. Hearing stories, reading stories, watching stories… so I started to create my own.

You obviously know Italy well. Do you bring in other foreign places into your fiction?

Yes, I have done. In Playing On Cotton Clouds the actions move between the UK, Italy, Amsterdam and New York. A Summer of Love is based in the UK, switching between London and Cornwall, a county I know well and love. My new novel moves between London, Devon, the South of France and Northern Italy. Some settings like Cornwall, London and Italy, are very familiar to me, others I make up – for example the Midlands town the characters in Playing on Cotton Clouds come from, or the Cornish village to which Jonah belongs in A Summer of Love, are fictitious amalgams of similar towns and villages – and others I get to explore through research using the internet and even Street View! I did that when describing places in New York, a city I never visited.

New York is like you describe in Clouds, like being in a film, it's so familiar! I believe that a sense of place is important in fiction; how do you achieve that?

I share in your belief and as a reader I love books that have a strong sense of place. I treat the settings almost as another character, describing not just its appearance, but the feel it conveys and the influence it has on the characters. Roots and belonging versus a sense of adventure is a recurrent theme in my stories.

How do your family/friends feel about your writing?

They are very proud of what I have achieved, though writing takes a big chunk of my time and that is not always easy on family life.

Do you intend to stick with the personal relationship genre or switch to other genres?

Writing about relationships and emotions is what I like best and I will probably continue in this genre. But I have a few ideas for more “topical” stories and I’d love to dab into historical fiction as well.

A tall order, I know, but what is your favourite book? And why?

That is a hard question to answer! The first novel that made a huge impression on me was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, which I read when I was about 13. It encapsulates everything my writing is about: relationships, families, everyday life against big political and social changes, ordinary people dealing with small and big issues. Jo March was more than a heroine, she became a role model. An independent woman, aspiring to be a writer, who also happened to become a teacher – which I am too. I don’t know if it’s my “favourite” book, but it certainly occupies a special place in my affections.

Other books that made a big impact on me were Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith and Rosso di Sera by Brunella Gasperini, an Italian writer, journalist and feminist that shaped a great deal of the way I write and view the world.

Where do you hope to be in 5 years?

Mainly alive and in good health! I’d like to take my writing career forward and hopefully have my books in more homes!

You’re generous with giving space and time to other authors on your blog. Can you tell us how this came about?

To be honest, they do me a favour writing for my blog as I’m always stuck for ideas! And I’ve had some truly interesting and fascinating entries. How it came about? I just asked “would you like to write a piece for my blog?”

Where can readers find you?

I’m on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michela-Sacchi-OBrien/16450121895

Twitter https://twitter.com/michela_obrien

Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5822651.Michela_O_Brien

and, as you mentioned, on my blog  http://words-in-a-jar.blogspot.co.uk

My books can be found on Amazon

Playing on Cotton Clouds http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playing-on-Cotton-Clouds-ebook/dp/B007WFK3B2

A Summer of Love http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Summer-of-Love-ebook/dp/B00B3MKEQ4

'A lot of good advice...'

It's very pleasing to get a 5-star review, and it's appreciated!

 

A Gold Mine of Information About Writing Westerns

By Suspense Fan on August 8, 2013

Format: Paperback Amazon Verified Purchase

 

Write a Western in Thirty Days is one of those books anyone who is thinking about writing a western should read before they get started. It contains a brief outline of the era that would be of great use to the beginner--and as a general reference for the seasoned writer. Besides tips on how to create plot, theme and chapters, there are dependable book references and online website suggestions for those who write in the western genre. Even for writers of other genres, this book has a lot of good advice about plotting, creating character biographies and setting up a book in general. Recommended.

 

Thank you, 'Suspense Fan'.