Category Archives: editing

How to begin a novel

Posted on July 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

Q:  How should a good novel begin, according to writing experts today?

  1. With backstory
  2. With an inciting event

A:  b.  With an inciting event, with action of some kind to grab the reader into the story.  Two hundred, one hundred, even fifty years ago this wasn’t the way writers started novels.  But times have changed, and so have readers who expect writers to grab them into their stories in the opening paragraphs.

Q:  If that’s true, then how should a novel introduce backstory?

  1.  By getting the story underway, pausing to fill in background details, and then resuming the forward action of the story.
  2. By weaving background details into a story as needed without ever pausing.

A:  b.  By weaving background details into a story as they are needed, without stopping or even slowing down the forward action, is the recommended way to include backstory today.

And yet,

This past week I read a novel which received high praise from a news source I respect.  As I turned from page 3 to page 4 to page 13 to page 24, I thought, C’mon, c’mon. When is this story going to take off?  It did around page 35, or so I thought for a couple of pages.  But I was wrong.  The scene described there turned out to be more backstory.  It wasn’t until about page 70 that the action really started.

70 unnecessary pages.  Or at least 70 pages which could have been reduced to two or three pages and tucked into the forward action part of the novel.  If not for the four-star review, I would have stopped reading by page 10. 

Q:  So how did this novel get published with such a laborious beginning?

A:  The author is an established writer with several best sellers, some of which have been turned into TV miniseries.  Editors are reluctant to ask such a writer to cut 35 pages, no matter how slowly they move the novel along.

Q:  What can we learn from this?

  1.  If you are a best-selling author, anything goes.
  2. Even if you are a best-selling author, some reviewers will pan your book if it has a slow, wordy start.
  3. Listen to writing experts and start with an inciting event until you become a best-selling author.

A:  a.  Yes.  b.  Yes.  I went online and found reviewers who liked the book and others who said it could have been improved by eliminating several dozen pages at the beginning.  c.  Yes.  Jump right in if you want to hook your readers.

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Posted in backstory, editing, fiction writing, good writing v. bad writing, lack of appeal to readers, needless words, writing tips

Do you read like an editor?

Posted on May 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

I do, and I wish sometimes I could turn off my editing instinct.

For instance, last week I  reread Pride and Prejudice.  Everything was fine until I reached chapter 10.  There, the heroine, Elizabeth, is sparring verbally with Mr. Darcy, a stranger to whom she has taken a dislike, when the author reveals that “Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.”

Now, had I been Jane Austen’s editor, I would have told her to leave out this line and all future lines alluding to Mr. Darcy’s falling in love with Elizabeth Bennett.  Instead, let us, the readers, discover that Darcy is in love with Elizabeth the same way Elizabeth does, with his abrupt proposal of marriage.  To Elizabeth, this proposal comes out of nowhere, but not to us.  Since we, the readers, are identifying with Elizabeth as we read, let us feel the same profound shock she does at this startling announcement.

Another book I edit as I read is War and Peace.  Near its end, two of the main characters, Pierre and Natasha, meet up again after years separated by the Napoleonic Wars.  That is where the book should end (spoiler alert) with them falling in love.  Tolstoy should not have included the anticlimatical scene which occurs several years past that time.

Even Shakespeare doesn’t get a pass with me.  Every time I reread  Romeo and Juliet, I find Mercutio more fascinating than Romeo.  But what does Shakespeare do?  He kills off Mercutio in Act III.  Ugg!  What Shakespeare should have done was to recognize that he had created a mesmerizing minor character and made him the major character.  He should have rewritten the play to have the man-of-the-world, Mercutio, fall for innocent Juliet.  What a contrast!

But alas, Austen, Tolstoy and Shakespeare didn’t consult with me.

 

 

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Posted in editing, Pride and Prejudice, Rimeo and Juliet, War and Peace