Your First Novel

by Ann Rittenberg

  Check Back: Cross-check specific names and descriptions for consistency. Make sure that the name of your character's home town or street or goldfish, doesn't change halfway through the book.

  CUTTING AND ADDING

  To perfect your story you need to cut out what is not essential and add whatever you need to for clarity and beauty. All adding and cutting should heighten the drama, or humor, of your novel,

  REPETITION

  Certain instances of repetition are good—sometimes we need to be reminded that Vince is Bruno's cousin, especially if we haven't heard from

  him in a hundred pages—but remove all unnecessary repetition: mistakes like having someone sit down again when you've already got him seated, using the same description twice, giving the same piece of backstory in chapter three that you gave in chapter two. Repeat only with the intention of reinforcing something vital, and only with finesse. Here are two examples of bad repetition and how they can be fixed.

  BEFORE

  She unlocked and opened the door and he stepped through the doorway.

  "What's with the chain?" he asked when she had let him in. He watched her close the door softly, sliding the lock back in place.

  She said nothing. He had a bunch of daisies and a box from Bronzini. "What's the matter?" he said, handing her the flowers. She closed the door, rechaining it. "I'll tell you inside," she said as he gave her the daisies and a kiss.

  AFTER REMOVING REPETITIONS

  "What's with the chain?" he asked when she had let him in. She said nothing, closing the door and rechaining it. "What's the matter?" He had a bunch of daisies and a box from Bronzini. "I'll tell you inside," she said as he gave her the daisies and a kiss.

  —Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin

  BEFORE

  I sat down again and tried to keep the old conversation going. She was a lousy conversationalist. "Do you work every night?" I asked her—it sounded

  sort of awful, after I'd said it. I sat there. She wasn't very talkative. She didn't sit down.

  'Yeah." She was walking all around the room. She picked up the menu off the desk and read it.

  I didn't get up—just watched her standing there. "What do you do during the day?"

  AFTER REMOVING REPETITIONS

  I sat down again and tried to keep the old conversation going. She was a lousy conversationalist. "Do you work every night?" I asked her—it sounded sort of awful, after I'd said it.

  "Yeah." She was walking all around the room. She picked up the menu off the desk and read it.

  "What do you do during the day?"

  —The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

  WHERE DOES THE STORY START?

  Your story might seem to start with the beginning of your protagonist's life, but if the first relevant thing that happens to her is at age twelve, cut out the first twelve years. You might think that because your story begins on your hero's birthday you need to tell us about the whole day. You don't. Notice that Dickens's A Christmas Carol starts on Christmas Eve, but not in the morning, because things don't get cooking until after dark. If something in your character's past is important to your story, can it be saved and brought up later? Try to find the real beginning of the story. Romeo and Juliet starts with a street fight, Gone With the Wind starts with Scarlett finding out Ashley is engaged, Interview With the Vampire starts after the reporter has already begun to ask questions.

  The Implied Openers

  Some conversations and scenes can be trimmed at the front as well. When one character calls another up on the phone you don't have to start with hello. Let's assume they greeted each other.

  DON'T START HERE

  Jack was just about to leave for the pool hall when the phone rang. He caught it on the second ring. 'Yeah?"

  "Is this Jack Knight?" came the voice on the other end. 'Yes,"

  "This is detective Laurence." "What do you want?"

  "I'm calling because we found your brother's body in Macy Park this morning."

  START HERE

  Before Jack could get out the door, the cop from Nick's party called with a piece of news that stopped him dead.

  "We found your brother's body," the detective said, "in Macy Park this morning."

  And when a character goes from one place to another you don't have to start with the car pulling up or the door opening. We know how people enter office buildings. Start the conversation or scene where it becomes important to us.

  DON'T START HERE

  It was eight in the morning and raining hard. She pulled up to the curb, parking her car in the crosswalk. Maybe she would get a ticket, but she didn't care. A handful of yuppies filed in and out of the Contec Building. Olive rode up to the seventh floor in a mirrored elevator, standing between a middle-aged man in an Armani suit and a teenaged delivery boy carrying a pastry box.

  Patrick's office door was open and his receptionist was nowhere to be found. Olive strode in and slapped the newspaper down under her ex-husband's nose.

  "What the hell is this?" she asked him.

  START HERE

  "What the hell is this?" Olive slapped the newspaper onto Patrick's desk.

  THINGS YOUR READER ALREADY KNOWS

  Look for places where you can cut words because you're telling or showing your reader something she gets already. For example:

  He would have to speak to her soon. He stood up at last from his bath, shivering, wet, in no doubt that a great change was coining over him. Without dressing, he walked naked through his study into the bedroom.

  If you cut out three words you will have the passage Ian McEwan actually wrote in Atonement. Cut out the word wet—the reader already knows that a bath includes water. And cut the words Without dressing—if the character walks naked into the study, the reader will assume he didn't get dressed.

  PADDING

  Too many adjectives, adverbs, and extra words can muddle your dialogue. BEFORE

  "You're not quitting, are you?" she asked coyly. "Well, maybe not. Maybe just one more."

  He playfully dropped one more shining dollar into the hungry machine and cheerfully pulled the still-warm handle, realizing ruefully this was exactly how profitable casinos made the majority of their money.

  AFTER TIGHTENING

  "You're not quitting, are you?" she asked. "Well, maybe not. Maybe just one more."

  He dropped one more dollar into the machine and pulled the handle, realizing this was exactly how casinos made their money. —Indian Killer, by Sherman Alexie

  BEFORE

  'You don't have enough for a whole script. You need more substance. You have the beginning of an idea that doesn't go anywhere ..."

  "No, really, I've been developing it. I put in more characters. There's a girl in it now."

  "Oh, yeah—and so what happens? Where's the action? What's the story?" "You mean what's the theme? Theme is tricky. I'm still thinking about the visual fabric, as they say. I'm fleshing it out."

  AFTER TIGHTENING

  'You don't have a script. You have the beginning of an idea that doesn't go anywhere ..."

  "I've added to it. There's a girl in it now." 'Yeah—and what happens? What's the story?"

  "You mean what's the theme? I'm still thinking about the visual fabric, as they say."

  —Get Shorty, by Elmore Leonard

  CLARITY

  You might need to add words to your text to make things more clear.

  BEFORE

  "Quin failed this math test," she said. He looked past her. "Rats!"

  AFTER CLARIFICATION

  "Quin failed his math test," she said.

  He looked past her at the mouth of the tunnel, which was filled now to overflowing with a swarm of filthy rodents. "Rats!"

  If you describe actions too briefly, there might be some ambiguity about the physicality of the scene.

  BEFORE

  He put his arm around her waist.

  "What do you think of my idea?" he asked. "Don't make me laugh," she said.
/>   AFTER CLARIFICATION

  He put his arm around her waist.

  "What do you think of my idea?" he asked.

  "Don't make me laugh," she said, squirming delightfully under his fingers.

  DEPTH

  You might find you want to add words that enhance the resonance of your story. For instance:

  The social worker passed a wad of letters across the sticky table to me. Such potential for damage. I didn't even want to pick them up. I hated the sight of them, my mother's handwriting, the crabbed lines I could see through the blue airmail envelopes. She could get seven pages per stamp, and each thin sheet weighed more than the night.

  —White Oleander, by Janet Fitch

  That last phrase isn't required for clarity, but it deepens the meaning. Unlike padding, these kinds of additions enhance the quality of the writing rather than diminish it.

  RECOMMENDED READING

  On Writing, by Stephen King. King not only tells the story of how he became a horror writer, he offers concrete advice in an accessible way. My favorite tip was about finding and cutting the extra words that weaken your writing.

  Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King. Browne and King's book can help you with depth by covering more advanced topics such as sophistication, interior monologues, and proportion.

  Webster's New World Roget's A-Z Thesaurus, by Charlton Laird. When struggling to find the right words, have a hefty thesaurus on hand. At more than nine hundred pages, this one is a good choice.

  CHAPTER NINE:

  making it shine

  REWORKING_

  Reworking is the process of looking again at the story to make sure you're not missing an opportunity to be stunning. There are five things to look for at this stage of rewriting: beginnings and endings that match, varied locations, character arcs, glowing points, and finesse.

  1. BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS

  After you've rewritten your rough draft by cutting, adding, and fixing things, review your first page and your last page, or first scene and last scene. A novel is like a symphony—it's long and complex, and it has themes. It takes us on a journey, and the best ones close with a memory of where we came from. It might not be in the same key or recall the exact melody line, but the last movements of great symphonies refer back to their opening measures. Something about your first page relates to your last page, whether your novel is a hundred pages long or a thousand. No flashback is needed. No repeated lines. But reflect on your opening as you rewrite your last page. Reflect on your last scene as you rewrite your first paragraph.

  For some wonderful examples of openings and closings that are well matched, reread the first and last scenes of the following novels:

  REBECCA, BY DAPHNE DU MAURIER

  Opening: with a dream of the grand mansion Manderley as if it still existed but had gone to ruin

  Closing: with the haunting image of the same house burning to the ground

  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, BY JOHN IRVING

  Opening: with the protagonist's mother Closing: with the protagonist's daughter

  THE TURN OF THE SCREW, BY HENRY JAMES

  Opening: with the beginning of a story in which a child sees an apparition and wakes his mother, who sees it as well Closing: with the end of a story where a governess sees an apparition and, in forcing a boy to see it as well, puts him to sleep forever

  THE GREAT GATSBY, BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  Opening: with an eloquent argument for avoiding judgmental observations of one's fellow man

  Closing: with an observation of Gatsby that is profoundly empa-thetic

  CARRIE, BY STEPHEN KING

  Opening: with an excerpt from a newspaper about an unexplained phenomenon, closely followed by the introduction of a girl with a power that explains the mystery—"What none of them knew, of course, was that Carrie White was telekinetic." Closing: with an excerpt from a letter introducing a girl whose power to make marbles move by themselves is unexplained

  DRACULA, BY BRAM STOKER

  Opening: with a journal entry that begins the odyssey into horror Closing: with a journal entry that points out that journal entries do not actually prove that the horror happened

  PRODIGAL SUMMER, BY BARBARA KINGSOLVER

  Opening: with a hunter observing a woman who is the protector of coyotes

  Closing: with the same hunter observing a female coyote and letting her live

  2. VARIED LOCATIONS

  This is also the time to review your settings. List them as if your novel were a play or a movie. If you have too many scenes that take place in the bedroom or in the car, find other places for your characters to have the same conversations—waiting in a movie line in the rain, walking around a strange neighborhood in search of a lost dog. Settings should be striking whenever possible without being so odd that they distract from your story. Make a list of your settings and, if they've slipped into a rut, find more interesting environments.

  3. CHARACTER ARCS

  This is also the right time to make a list of what each of your main characters is experiencing in the novel—what emotions is each going through? Look at these character arcs separately. Each character has his own journey through your story. If you find one of your characters is either always hitting the same note (sad in every scene) or flip-flopping too much (too often, let's say, going from scared to angry) you might want to make adjustments. What would be an overall realistic or desired emotional journey for this character? Should she start with suspicion and build to anger, breaking into fear in the last chapter? Be true to your characters. The plot needs to work for them, not dictate fake behavior for them. This exercise will also let you know if you've spent too much time on one character and not enough on another.

  4. GLOWING POINTS

  Glowing points are those phrases, paragraphs, or scenes in your novel that you admire so much you can hardly get over yourself. Now think about why you love those bits. Imagine that those sections are true representations of your talent. Then rewrite your novel, lifting the rest of your writing to that level of excellence. Okay, I admit, it's easier said than done, but it can't hurt to try. At the very least, it gives you more practice and hopefully a few additional glowing points.

  5. FINESSE

  Finally, rewrite for finesse, looking for subtle changes that might make the novel more refined. Scan for things that don't look broken but might be enhanced by a fix. This flashback might be better in chapter nine instead of chapter seven. Rather than a dead cat in chapter eleven, it should be a dead dog, because that will remind the hero of the family dog she had to put to sleep years ago. In chapter five, why not have the lady across the hall fail at dialing 911—maybe her phone's out—so she has to scream down the fire escape like the antagonist's mother used to do? In the last chapter, the movie on cable that the snitch is watching shouldn't be an action movie—a sitcom or a children's cartoon would be quirkier. How about a Will & Grace rerun? Scan for those little things that might make your writing more memorable.

  THE POET'S EAR_

  Whether the voice you have chosen for your novel is first or third person, whether your genre is literary or horror, whether your style is clipped or

  Victorian, your novel can be improved by reviewing it with a poet's ear. I'm not suggesting you sprinkle in flowery or antiquated phrases. What you want to do is find just the right words to make your prose resonate. Your choice of verbs, the details you choose to describe, your metaphors and similes all make up your personal poetry, the quality in your voice that makes it stand out.

  One way to improve the sound of your writing is to transform your cliches. If you find your pages full of worn-out phrases like "sweltering heat" or "pouring rain," look at the scene with new eyes. Would it be more telling for your protagonist to notice that it's so hot it feels like his eyes are cooking? Maybe your antagonist finds the rain so brutal it scours the paint off her car like acid. Catch a glimpse that is unusual but that rings true to your narrator. Wha
t is it that your character might focus on? Hailstones the size of babies' teeth?

  Sometimes it's not that a cliche has been used, but that a bland phrase has crept in here or there. If you find yourself using the same words over and over—he turned, she looked at him, he moved to the door, she walked away, they sat down across from her—you might want to go over some of the sentences with a poet's ear. Sometimes a thesaurus helps to stimulate the imagination, but don't just look up synonyms for the overused words. Think about other phrases that would have the same function but would be more interesting. And decide whether the boring bit is even necessary.

  In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck could have written:

  Lennie grabbed Curley's fist in his big hand and crushed it.

  He could have flipped through a thesaurus and tried:

  Lennie snatched Curley's fingers in his huge paw and pulverized them.

  Instead Steinbeck wrote:

  Curley's fist was swinging when Lennie reached for it. The next minute Curley was flopping like a fish on the line, and his closed fist was lost in Lennie's big hand.

  Sometimes the poet in you can improve a paragraph or page by refining the rhythm of the language, even the placement of the white space. When a scene ends before you know if your hero will murder his betrayer, the double space that lies between it and the next scene is a held breath. Read your scenes out loud. Does part of the page feel better than the rest? If the pattern of short to long sentences feels perfect in one area but awkward in another, go back and try to rework the awkward area with a poet's rhythm in mind.

  Poets have the freedom to shape their words on the page. They put a single word on a line by itself when doing so will bring the desired emphasis. In The Princess Bride, when a gust of wind picks up half the contents of the royal dining hall, William Goldman places the line: "Particularly the hat of Princess Noreena" in its own paragraph because he wants to emphasize Prince Humperdinck's distaste for bald brides.

  Poetry can and should be applied to all the senses—smells that conjure images from your hero's past, sounds that reflect your antagonist's loves or fears, qualities of light or tones of color that in their references bring significance to the telling of your story or project the plot's outcome. Litde things make a big difference when the cumulative effect becomes part of your writing style.