Writing a novel can be overwhelming, especially if you've studied
creative writing or learned anything about doing it well. There's so
much to keep in mind--plot points, narrative arcs, character
development, setting and atmosphere, dialogue, action, sensory details,
emotional truth, motivation, suspense, surprises, secrets, transitions,
ad infinitum. All of these factors and so many more go into making up a
satisfying novel. How do we keep them all in our head and get them all
down on the page?
As a reader, it just seems magical
when a novelist brings all these elements and more into play to create a
good novel. When important ones are missing, the reader may not know
why the book isn't satisfactory, but she knows it just doesn't make the
grade.
My own solution has been to work in layers, much
like building a house. Once I've developed strong characters and a
dramatic situation to involve them (laying the foundation), I write
straight through a scene or several scenes, getting down what the
characters do and say. This is the basic storytelling structure like the
skeletal wooden framework of the house-to-be that rises from the
foundations.
Next, I go back through and let the reader
see and in other ways sense the surroundings of the scene as
experienced by the viewpoint character--and I include emotions at this
stage. After that, transition work take place. Each scene must be made
to follow smoothly and inveitably from the one before it. Of course, by
this time I may have moved the scene around to different places in the
story timeline to create more suspense or generate surprise, to further a
narrative arc or optimize a plot point.
Then comes the line editing. Can I say this more clearly?
Or make this more truly felt? Or give this more emotional power of
statement? Or compress this paragraph or scene to add tension and vigor
or energy?
This is, of course, a simplified description
of this whole process. It often goes in fits and starts on sections at a
time instead of the entire manuscript. Frequently, while in one later
process, I realize that I made an error or omission in an earlier
process, and I have to tear down that section and rebuild. But in the
end, I should have a snug brick cottage or grand pillared plantation
house or fashionable urban apartment complex.
After
that, the problem is how to sell it? How to convince the person in
search of living space that mine is the perfect one for him? And that's
another whole job!
How do you see the process of
writing a novel? What areas do you find most often skimped? Which areas
make you toss the book at the wall if missing or ill-written? And if
you're a writer, which layer gives you the most trouble, the most joy?
I love the imagery of constucting a house and comparing it to the creative and hard work of writing a novel. So true, and of course, as in building a house, if there's not the painstaking attention to detail, you'll have a shoddy house or a shoddy novel.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, Gloria. Both kinds of work are creative and labor-intensive. And shortcuts tend to turn into disasters eventually. But it's all worth it if you do it right. there's no greater feeling than the satisfaction of a book well-written--or, I suppose, a house well-built. (I'm just guessing on that last one since I've never built a house.)
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