Take your novel to the finish line (I)

Novelists are the distance runners, the long-haul truckers, the transoceanic captains of the literary world. There is no sprinting through a novel, at least not for the novelist; there are simply too many characters, too many scenes, too many story lines and pages and sentences to be written—and then rewritten, revised and polished. Endurance is […]

Novelists are the distance runners, the long-haul truckers, the transoceanic captains of the literary world. There is no sprinting through a novel, at least not for the novelist; there are simply too many characters, too many scenes, too many story lines and pages and sentences to be written—and then rewritten, revised and polished. Endurance is key to completing the task. Yet endurance is not enough, not nearly. Because reading the novel is also a marathon experience, and that means the primary goal of your revision process should be to take pains to create a human pace for the reader, a pace that alternately rushes, strides, saunters and lingers, according to the story’s—and the reader’s—needs. It’s no small task to keep those narrative wheels rolling, but that’s what you have to do, all the way from the title page to The End.

As a novelist, you need concrete strategies to sustain you on that long haul—and to transform your first draft into a work that can stand up to the task. Here are four rules you can use to make sure your readers won’t fall asleep, burn out or just give up before they finish the final chapter of your masterpiece.

1. WRITE THE WHOLE FIRST DRAFT FIRST—AND FAST.

This first rule deals not so much with revision, but with resisting the impulse to revise as you write. This is difficult in large part because it means forgiving yourself for writing terrible prose. There’s no way around it. Fast means sloppy—sloppy diction, syntax, grammar. Any damage suffered by your writer’s ego, however, will come at a small cost compared to the benefits gained.

Truth is, a quickly written draft produces a narrative with a clean trajectory. Think of it as a carpenter’s chalk line, the graph of your story’s arc. Your characters might remain undercooked and your subplots unexplored in this first go-through, but in working fast you have little choice but to hew close to the basic story line. As a result, you’re saved from the tempting side-trails and seductive tangents that can derail your progress. (You can come back to those later, when your task is to spice up and thicken your characters and plot, to pursue all of their wonderful complications.)

Here’s the point: Once you’ve blasted through to the end of a book, you have a much better sense of what belongs in the beginning and middle sections. And to your great advantage you won’t have wasted your time writing, revising and polishing unnecessary scenes that will only end up on the cutting-room floor.

How fast is fast, you ask? Depends on the writer. My natural habit is to work slowly, but I wrote the first draft of my current manuscript in six months, an hour a day, five or six days a week. My objective was to write two pages each time I sat down, not so daunting a task once I absolved myself in advance for committing every writer’s sin there is, many times, in every session. If you do the same—if you dedicate yourself to writing without self-editing—you’ll be amazed at how soon that draft is finished. Then it’s time for the rewrite, starting with the element that will sustain your readers on their own marathon: the action.

 

2. EVALUATE THE  DRAMATIC FUNCTION OF EVERY SCENE OR UNIT OF ACTION.

Readers can tell if a passage fails to advance the story in some way. If that’s the case, they begin to skim, or worse, they toss the book aside. Therefore, the best way to start revising is to begin rereading your first draft and ask yourself this essential question at the opening of every chapter or scene: “What exactly happens here, and how does it surprise my character or offer some new perception to the reader?” Be sure every dramatized incident, whatever it is—a fight, a conversation or merely a silent moment in which a character ponders some issue—moves the story to a new place. When you find scenes that don’t, you’ve found the first targets of your revision.

In Kent Haruf’s Plainsong, a small-town Colorado teacher goes out to visit a pair of old bachelor farmers/brothers and stuns them (and the readers, too) by asking if they’d be willing to take in a high school girl who’s been kicked out of her home because she’s pregnant. The two old men, understandably, are struck dumb. It’s a lively scene, the teacher’s request a surprise that sets into motion a key element of the novel’s plot.

The next passage, however, is quiet. The teacher has left the farmhouse kitchen, and the two men put on their coats and go outside into the winter night to fix a broken water heater. An entire page is spent describing how they chop free the heater from ice that’s formed in the water tank and how they relight the pilot—nearly 300 words during which the men don’t say one thing to each other! Nor does the narrator offer insight into their thoughts. Can such a passage justify itself? Listen to how it ends and to how Haruf transitions into the inevitable conversation:

So for a while they stood below the windmill in the failing light. The thirsty horses approached and peered at them and sniffed at the water and began to drink, sucking up long draughts of it. Afterward they stood back watching the two brothers, their eyes as large and luminous as perfect round knobs of mahogany glass.

It was almost dark now. Only a thin violet band of light showed in the west on the low horizon.

All right, Harold said. I know what I think. What do you think we do with her?

The passage in question may not advance the plot directly, but it does demonstrate the particular way these brothers communicate with each other: silently, through side-by-side labor. Also, its evocative language makes us feel as if the horses themselves are grateful, a feeling the reader—consciously or not—brings to the discussion the brothers are about to have concerning the girl.

Scenes don’t have to be highly dramatic in order to perform valuable work. Yet it’s important that you examine them one by one, satisfying yourself that each will deepen your readers’ connection to the story and urge them to turn the page.

Failing that test, scenes need to be cut—or reworked until they pass.

To be continued next week