30 Days of Writing and Publishing Tips – Day 16 The best advice I ever got

Characters  – how many to introduce when, names,

Assume people will be reading your manuscript who are not from your culture

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I was lucky to have Barbara Lalicki at HarperCollins as my first editor. She had edited Beverly Cleary’s books as well as many other established authors so I was very intimidated to open my first edits from her. Barbara was meticulous. She even called me one Saturday after we’d already finished the page passes of WILDFIRE RUN to discuss one word (!) she wasn’t sure fit well.

I learned so much about writing from her. The absolute best advice she ever gave was the little comments on the first couple of edits of the book. I’d see this penciled in (she edited by hand) “Make it bigger” at various scenes throughout the book.

“Make it bigger” meant more dramatic or more interesting or both. I whisper that to myself now as I’m editing a draft, considering whether I’ve developed each scene to its maximum potential. Most times I haven’t, because like many writers, I push to get a draft done, sometimes taking the easy way out and writing scenes that are too standard, too expected, and too undeveloped.

I found this in my sci fi trilogy – I had a short outline necessary to sell the trilogy, but once I started writing it, what seemed fine in the outline turned out to be flat in storytelling terms. I went through the whole book and made scenes bigger. I also did this with my YA historical coming out next year, GONE BY NIGHTFALL. It’s set during the Russian revolution so lots of drama is happening all around the characters, but the main character was on the sidelines too much and the middle was dragging. I added in one scene which changed the whole feeling of the middle, but I didn’t figure this out until four drafts in.

I guess the moral of this story is ‘don’t take the easy way out’ and once a draft is finished, you often can still find ways to push the story further to make it better.

Write on!

Here’s the cover of GONE BY NIGHTFALL, coming out January 21st, 2020. (I love this cover!)

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If you are interested in my other writing and publishing tips posts, post 1 is here.