Creative Writing Course – Week #13
This week's course continued to look at themes, basic plot ideas and character archetypes, going around the room and talking about the themes our novels use and what character archetypes populate them. Talking specifically about one person's novel-in-progress is quite time consuming when you have a room full of people, so this dominated the first hour or so of the class.
For my part, my basic plot idea, according to the list we looked at last week, was Overcoming the Monster. There's no actual monster, rather a metaphorical monster in my villian's violent reactions. My character archetypes are the Anti-Hero – my protagonist being a cop who employs dubious methods to get the job done and is more than flawed, The Devil – again the villian of the piece who must be defeated, and The Traitor – my protagonist who betrays people to get what he wants.
By looking at themes, basic plot ideas and character archetypes you should be able to get a better idea of the novel you are working on. These concepts shouldn't constrain the work, but you should see how the novel gravitates towards one or the other.
We also took a look at editing – or more precisely the types of editing that a novel goes through. Yet another list for you;
Cutting
Grammar/Punctuation
Spelling
Repetition
Point Of View
Dialogue authenticity
Looking for symbolism
Checking for character consistency
Adding more detail
Continuity
Narrative Flow
Formatting
Clarity
Once the editing has begun, there are various approaches to take to editing your work. You should read your novel through from beginning to end without really pausing to correct any mistakes you might have found. The quick, straight-through reading is designed to give you an idea of the total affect the novel has on a reader.
Printing your novel out is another obvious way to look at it and harvest those flaws. You need to see what is by now a very familiar work in an unfamiliar light. How does it look on the page? This is where the formatting issues can be seen, as one obvious example.
Combined with the above, reading your work aloud is another valuable exercise. Does it scan correctly? What are the rhythms like? Does the dialogue sound natural? Look out for repetition.
Cutting is an obvious by-product of the editing process. I find that my work shrinks, death by a thousand cuts, because I make hundreds of minor deletions to extraneous words and dialogue tags that add up over the course of the novel. I rarely cut large passages from my work unless I've decided they're now redundant or don't move the plot forward. If you do cut swathes of text or entire chapters, you might want to save them elsewhere – they may yield valuable extracts that could be recycled elsewhere, or even form new short stories or novels in their own right.
It has to be said though – editing is a massive chore. Why can't novels be born fully-formed, straight onto the page?
