How To Make a Good Book Better
Write Better Now
I am currently being whipped down into one of Dante's lower circles of hell due to:
1. My deadline crunch on a million things.
2. My dog who has decided that something evil is in the lot behind our house and she must press her body into mine at all times in order to keep me safe. She simultaneously barks while doing this. It is making writing a little - um - difficult? Have I mentioned that she's a large dog?Â
Here are some things I (should)Â think about when I'm revising. Hopefully, they'll help you out, too.
I've taken them from James Plath's article "Twenty-One Tweaks to a Better Tale."Â
1. Does the beginning need to be an ending?
Sometimes our beginnings stink.Â
Beginnings need to be:
powerful
witty
stunning
This could be a powerful piece of dialogue, a witty description or a stunning scene.Â
Sometimes we writers have to amp up, sort of rev our engines before we start the race of the story.Â
Side note: Some of us never get started.
It's okay to cross entire paragraphs or a chapter out.Â
2. Check Out How It Ends
Just like a beginning needs to be powerful or witty or stunning to draw us in like a really good appetizer, the ending has to linger (not in the way heartburn lingers). The ending has to resonate.
Is there a way to echo earlier images or words or a phrase so that it has that extra kick, making the reader realize that there are deeper things going on, that there is a deeper meaning, that this story or poem somehow touches on the truth that is life.Â
3. Make Love to the Image
Have an image that resonates throughout the story. In the movie, Brokeback Mountain, it's when one guy is hugging the other guy from behind him or it's when he says, "IÂ wish I knew how to quit you."Â
Think about a book like Carolyn Coman's MANYÂ STONES or THEÂ HOBBIT or CAPTAINÂ UNDERPANTS. There are central images in there. Do that. Use an image. A strong image will keep your story in readers' memories.Â
4. Is the right person telling the tale?
I mean, I have often written gothic murder love stories from the point of view of Barney the Dinosaur, but it never seems to work. Have you had this problem too?Â
Do not be afraid to switch that tale teller to Baby Bop.
5. Is your narrator talking to him/herself too much?
My former teacher and amazing writer-man Tim Wynne Jones once yelled at me (via email and in a lovely way) because I stopped a fight scene to have the narrator look at her Snoopy shoes.Â
Dude. That is just not cool.Â
Don't have the character talk too much internally, but don't have them not talk at ALLÂ internally because then they are just robotic or perhaps a little shallow.
Nobody wants to read a whole novel from Barney's point-of -view. It is not super-dee-duper.Â
So get some internal monologue in there.Â
6. Do you have enough people in your story? Too many?Â
I once wrote a story with three characters in it. It even actually won an award, which had actual money attached to it, but it did not get published.
Of course, my agent hasn't submitted it, but that's probably because it's soooooooooo thin. A story with too few characters is like going out to dinner and only getting a cracker. It is not satisfying usually unless it's a really big, yummy, super-cool cracker.
It's the same thing with too many characters. I am one of those people who are easily confused. If there are twenty character names in the first two paragraphs I pretty much give up on the book.
Get rid of those unnecessary characters.Â
7. Check your scenes
Sometimes we have scenes that don't fit. And those scenes have to go.
Yes, you may want to have an especially poignant scene in your sci-fi thriller where Douglas, the hamster, gets out of his cage and is trapped in the minivan beneath the cushions. But does it really fit in a futuristic fable?Â
"A scene should reveal something about the character, advance the plot in a significant way, provide insight into the 'theme,' or, as Eurdora Welty suggested, do all three,"Â Â James Plath says.Â
Too little? Your story feels like a writing exercise.
Too many? Your story is lost in a lot of moments and more moments and all the oomph of your story is gone.Â
8. Think About How the Story is Framed.
This is the set-up. Think about THEÂ COLORÂ PURPLE or Jay Asher's 13 REASONSÂ WHY. Brilliantly done.Â
9. Don't Forget That We Have More Than Eyes
Readers can smell and feel and taste, too. Make them do that in your story. Make your story a world that isn't just visual. If everyone is looking and glancing and gazing and seeing all the time, maybe switch some out.
10. Think about Place
Where is it set? How does that setting influence the characters, the plot, the theme, the ambience?
Plath says, "Many stories exist in a vacuum, where lines are spoken without any description of an interior or exterior settling. That's like going to the theater and having the house lights never come on.…"
NOTE
These revision tips this week are all originally from James Plath's article "Twenty-one Tweaks to a Better Tale," which was published in THEÂ COMPLETEÂ BOOKÂ OFÂ NOVELÂ WRITING, Writer's Digest Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, Edited by Meg Leder, Jack Heffron, and the Editors of Writer's Digest.