“With all your experience writing,” someone asked me, “and if your new novel is going badly, do you always know what to do?”
The short answer is no. Moreover, I would suggest, if the work is not going well, you do not need to know what to do. You need to know what the novel needs.
I think this is a difficult aspect of writing to grasp. Yes, the writer creates the story, the characters, the essential parameters, the arc, as people like to say these days. The key thing is, however, at a certain point, the novel becomes a work unto itself, and you need to respond to its demands, not your own.
You may have set out to write a light-hearted comedy about whatever. In the process it has become a hard, realistic work about whatever. And you have not noticed. So there you are, still trying to add lightness, when what the story needs is dark tension and suspense.
Writers, like everyone else, can fool themselves about what they are doing, and find it hard to stand back and look at self with objectivity. Instance: You try to do good but you are really doing harm.
There comes a time when you have to be able to look at your own work as if it is not your own work.
I believe I once read that Madeleine L’Engle had her husband (an actor) read her drafts to her, as a way of hearing her work objectively. To be honest, I do not think I could bear it, but I bet she learned a whole lot.
Sometimes to make your work better, you have to act as if it is not yours.
2 thoughts on “What the novel <em>needs</em>”
This is a great post. I’m in that stage right now — editing the first book in a series. It is very different now than when I first conceived the idea, and wrote it…
This is a great post! I really needed this advice. Thanks!