16 | The Writer • April 2020
me, this is partly analytical: talking
through it with your enlightened early
readers, or anyone else, helps to reveal
themes, character, what you think
you’re after.”
But before a manuscript even
reaches readers, Nichols recommends
depending mostly on intuition when
identifying these problem points in a
draft: “If you suspect bloat, or insuffi-
ciency, you’re probably right.”
In terms of the novel’s language,
bloat is more often a problem than its
opposite – stripped-down or exceed-
ingly lean language – which might well
be a stylistic choice. And, by the same
token, don’t confuse excess with full-
bodied prose; rather, it’s unnecessary,
superfluous language.
“Every writer has certain habits, or
‘tics,’ you might say,” Smiley says. “One
of mine is overusing the word ‘just,’ as
in ‘things just started going downhill.’
If I do a search in a manuscript of the
word ‘just,’ chances are I will discover
that in that spot, I was dithering
around, trying to figure out where the
narrative was going. If I reread those
passages after writing a draft, I now
understand where the narrative was
going and can sort them out so that
they are more organized and direct.”
In relation to this issue of verbiage,
Smiley has discovered two particularly
helpful drafting strategies. “While you
are writing, put in whatever you can to
keep [the draft] going, and once you
have finished a draft, set it aside and
come back several months later. The
first one works because you don’t know
ahead of time what will spark your
imagination, and it might be some-
thing that you never thought of while
you were planning the novel. The sec-
ond one allows your brain some rest,
which means it pares away a lot of the
confused thoughts that surrounded the
composition.”
What about genre fiction in terms
of these two problems of excess and
deficiency?
Mejia, a crime fiction writer, says, “I
tend to skew toward the underdevel-
oped end of this spectrum. Thriller
readers expect awful things to happen
or to be on the verge of happening in
every chapter. They don’t have a lot of
patience for extended reflection or
exposition, and, to be honest, neither
do I. I get caught up in the plot and the
race to the finish.”
Having shot rapidly through her
novel in this way, Mejia finds her early-
stage drafts generally need more things
added than cut. As she revises, she
works to be sure she’s addressed sev-
eral key concerns: “Have I earned the
climax, or does it feel too rushed? Have
my characters transformed enough
internally to reflect their external jour-
ney? Have I evoked the setting on mul-
tisensory levels so my readers can
absorb this world?” With this last con-
cern, she attempts to gauge what’s just
right, avoiding both too much and too
little: “My goal is never paragraphs of
description but enough precise physi-
cal details in each scene to make the
world come alive.”
Sullivan tends to be “more intuitive
than analytical” when it comes to his
many rewrites. If he gets too close to a
manuscript, he moves on to another
one for as much as three months,
enabling him to gain a fresh perspec-
tive. “If my mind wanders [while read-
ing], there may simply be too much on
the page to hold a reader’s attention. I
will then cut out what doesn’t count,
what isn’t essential to the reader’sunderstanding and the emotional
impact I’m trying to create.”
“At the same time, if I find myself
going back to reread a scene that I
didn’t grasp, almost always it’s because
the writing and voice are thin,” says
Sullivan. “It usually means I haven’t yet
found the telling incident or descrip-
tion that could bring the scene to life
in a meaningful way.”
That lack must be addressed, he
says, since it’s key to a completed
novel: “That’s the critical part, the
meaning, the emotion you are trying
to stir in a reader’s heart. I’ve found
that when all else fails, trying to under-
stand at an emotional, connected level
usually unlocks what needs to be said.”Solving problematic novels
If you’re like most novelists, you’re
likely to encounter a snag from time to
time. It could range from something
that seems minorly puzzling to some-
thing that, if not solved, will amount to
a fatal flaw in your novel. What kinds
of problems might these snags be, and
how can you get beyond them and fin-
ish your novel?
Sometimes authors know there’s a
definite problem with a draft, but they
can’t isolate it. Leavitt experienced this
problem with her soon-to-be released
novel With or Without You. She had
sold the book on the basis of 70 pages
and a synopsis, but when she finished
it, she says, “It didn’t make sense to me.
It felt flat and boring. I had no idea
what I was writing about!” Feeling
clueless, she was about to give up and
give the advance back – but instead,
she “hunkered down and began to do
structure work, mapping characters,
looking at where the reveals fall, if the
stakes rise – and I did it really slowly.”