Is your manuscript at the stage where it needs tidying up?
Give it a good spit and polish with advice from Margaret JamesI
t’s not only our houses
that could usually do with
a good clean and polish
in spring. As the days are
getting longer, and as we’re all doing
our best to shake off our winter
lethargy – okay, as I personally am
doing my best to shake off my own
winter lethargy – I find it’s a good
time to think about spring cleaning
my writing, too.
All those cobwebs of redundant
adjectives and adverbs, all that dust
of repetition, all those carefully-
crafted episodes
that don’t actually
advance my story
line – at some point
in the process I
know I shall need to
be ruthless and to
sweep them out of
my literary house.
It can be somewhat
depressing to realise
I’ve written a first
draft that I’ve checked62 APRIL 2020 http://www.writers-online.co.ukFICTION FOCUS
Springcleaningfor redundant adjectives and so on,
but which still doesn’t feel quite
right, although it’s not obvious why.
So, when I’m trying to identify what
doesn’t seem to work in a piece of
writing, I refer to my list of points
to check.
The first item is always to look at
my writing style and ask myself if
it’s appropriate to its subject matter.
Does my thriller race towards the
finishing line? Or does it drag its
heels? Does my historical novel
feature vocabulary that’s right for the
time and place? Or is it mildly or
even wildly anachronistic?
As for my plot – is it satisfying
and believable, is it logical, is
there any emotional development,
and – most importantly – is there
something to find out? What doesn’t
need to be there? What doesn’t tell
the reader anything he/she needs to
know, and/or doesn’t advance the
action in any way?
Any subplots – are they actually
needed? Do they enhance the reader’sunderstanding of my central story?
Or are they distracting and/or
apparently part of a separate novel?
I’ve occasionally had to sweep a
subplot right out of a first draft and
file it away, perhaps to become the
plot of a novel of its own.
Now I check up on my characters:
are they flawed, sometimes likeable,
sometimes dislikeable: a mix of nice
and nasty? Also, are they ordinary
(and therefore recognisable and
sympathetic) people in extraordinary
situations? They shouldn’t be
superhuman – too good, too
gorgeous, too hideous, or too bad!
What about their names – are
these right or wrong? Do too many
begin with the same letter? Do my
characters have contexts – friends,
families, jobs? Or do they exist in
isolation?
My dialogue will need to be
appropriate to these characters,
it must push the action forward,
and there will need to be enough
speech tags (such as said Sally,crafted episodes
that don’t actually
advance my story
line – at some point
in the process I
know I shall need to
be ruthless and to
sweep them out of
my literary house.depressing to realise
I’ve written a first
draft that I’ve checked