Well, I did get through it. If you read my last post I had come to a bit of a halt when I reached Constance in the midst of Osondrous’ story. I got so comfortable working on one at a time. That was why I split my book up in the beginning. Each story of my three main characters were standing on their own.
I got spoiled.
I finished Jezaline’s story adding things I had never considered before. It all came together in a way that it never could have without my full focused attention. I can’t believe I never did this before.
Every time I tried attacking this novel before it was one page at a time. Start to end. Moving back and forth between the characters as I went. And I have found out that I am not super woman. Some writers could absolutely do that: go back and forth without forgetting anything, without losing the acceleration and the attitude of the previous character.
I am not capable of that.
I know this now. I work much better with one focused task. Last week it was Jezaline, start to finish and I am elated to say that her story now has a richness that it never did before. Her childhood, her history her entire life became an element when before she was so one dimensional. She has a real ending now. Not just for the story but for her emotionally too.
Telling the emotional story.
I am becoming more and more aware as I go of the two separate stories that make up every book I have ever read. The emotional story and the physical story. I think I have mentioned this before in recent posts. But I’m going to spend some time now to elaborate on what it means to me, as a writer, right now.
I have struggled consistently with what I call my “A.D.D” I am the worst kind of reader, I am bored, I am skipping and scanning because I can’t stand needless diddling. Until a writer can prove to me that that shit they just wrote about the history of that tree matters to the story at all, I am not going to read it no matter how great that description might be.
I am obviously commercial fiction through and through. That I have never denied. It’s no wonder that my favourite book this year was written by Stephen King (It) and the book I’m reading (for the second time) right now (Lisey’s Story) was also written by Stephen King.
I don’t just read Stephen King because he appeals to my reader but also because he equally appeals to my writer. I am absolutely in awe at his genius. I have never read a writer who took “omit needless words” to such an exceptional level. If I could worship him as a God, I would, but I don’t think he’d give me the time of day and I wouldn’t blame him.
In the past, because of the reader in me, I was very very bad at just writing the physical story and letting the emotion story be nonexistent. My worst habit as a writer was that, in the very early beginning, I took “Do not tell. Show.” to the literal level.
Don’t do that.
“Don’t tell. Show.” does not mean to omit your narrator. What “Don’t tell. Show.” means is to give reason for the emotions of your characters. For the telling of the emotional/past story behind the physical story. You must link your physical to your emotional. Instead of just having her sad one day and a telling description of her past give her a link that makes her sad that reminds her of her past by planting something important in the physical. Why is she outside? Why don’t you link that. Don’t have her outside just wandering around for no apparent reason cause she likes trees for no apparent reason. Maybe she’s outside because she was driven there by her haunted past. Maybe trees have always been a place she can run because she climbed in the oaks behind the barn at the farm she grew up on. Think about it. Omit needless everything.
It isn’t just about sentence structure, about “the road to hell is paved in adverbs” this goes all the way down to the very bones of your story. If Stephen King can’t find an important reason for that very cloud to be in the book, it’s just not there. If that beautiful day has no relevance, than it shouldn’t be there.
And you say “But I do shit all of the time that has no apparent meaning!!” Yeah, and how long would you want to read about your life?
I tell myself again and again. I will not waste my readers’ time on insignificant shit. No matter how well it’s described.
Ten pages to go.
And that is it. Only ten more pages to go of 142. I have now cut Osondrous’ and Constance’s part of the book down from 92,567 words to 73,881. I am happy but a little apprehensive. I am disappointed in the place I am working on right now. It seems I rushed their ending a bit. I did not keep up their rhythm like I thought I had through the end. In fact I really reverted. I skipped whole days and recalled important events in scanty dialogue. I don’t really want to but I’m afraid I may have to add a bit more to their story though I was really hoping to hit a full twenty thousand words cut.
But I did break through the problems I was having. I did manage to find the heart of Constance. And even Osondrous seems to have taken on more layers. I have made her with more flaws now. They are both more realistic, I think. I still have to add though and I am apprehensive about it. I fear my doubt it showing again.
