Eureka - Why You Should Reread Your Novel A Lot
This may surprise you, since this is perhaps the simplest bit of advice you will probably ever hear. But reread your story many times before you publish it.
I got massive writer's block on my current WIP, which represents books 3 and 4 in my novella series.
No, I didn't bite off more than I could chew, though it isn't uncommon to write more than one book at a time. Some writers even recommend it. In this case, I did an overhaul and turned novels into novellas. So books 3 and 4 in my series were one novel, which I happened to be working on at the time.
I suppose my second bit of advice would be to work on another project to give yourself space from the first, so that when you do return to edit, you have enough space to look with a fresh set of eyes. (That's handed down advice; we do learn best from one another. Thanks, Brandon Sanderson.)
Having finished my first book and started the sequel, I wrote until I lost track of myself and ceased horribly. Why did this happen? I wondered.
The answer was actually rather simple. I made mention of it on my Ask a Writer comments on my author page.
I was forcing my characters to do what they had no desire to do. You know, it's one matter, in an action adventure novel, for the character to square off against his nemesis and not have a choice in the matter. And there are plenty of things that your character will not have control over, just as we cannot control every aspect of our own lives. But for the most part, our characters largely have the freedom to think for themselves and decide what they will do in any given circumstance.
If our characters disagree with us, which does and should happen, they need to win out, or else we will have writer's block. Treat them like actual people and dignify them. If we make them stupid by forcing them to dance like puppets on a string, our audience will not enjoy our characters and we will have a harder time writing in the long run.
So back to that theme, how does rereading grant the Eureka moment, and how does it help to fix a single story and a series?
As we reread our own works, we will notice typos. The first batch are easy to find, because we are smart writers. On our second pass, and each subsequent pass, the errors are slightly harder to catch. But here's where it gets interesting. Each of these passes will give our story time to linger in our own mind, and things we regret will naturally pop out. We will notice something that makes our characters seem incredibly stupid, and not the good kind of stupid.
Having a stupid character is perfectly acceptable if it is intended. And even smart characters act stupid from time to time simply because of the stress of a situation. (If our situations don't have enough friction for our characters to act stupid at least once, we probably have a weak plot.)
But to elevate our characters, we need to change out those details. We can usually do so without ruining the rest of our premise, with a bit of thinking outside of the box to bring our story back into line. A bit of peace of mind: if you are a good writer (and usually that's the case, if you've stuck with it long enough), your characters are usually doing what they would do in a situation, in which case not much must be changed in your plot. And sometimes, something small can change everything for the better.
When we write a series, many features of our next book will be based on what our character showed a capability for in the first. So as we go forward too, reading our old books will help us to farm for ideas for subsequent books. And as we bring in ideas that our followers recognize from former stories they feel this excitement, their own "Eureka!" moment about what is to follow. So, if we happen to be stumped on what our character would do in a given situation, we can refer to older scenes to get a better grip on our characters.
We'd do better not to assume, as authors, that we know our stories inside out and will continue to do so. Robert Jordan, who wrote some of the lengthiest, and most incredible, fantasy novels of the last two decades (and sadly died in 2007), was known for keeping files of his universe far beyond what was ever in print, because he knew that remembering everything about the Wheel of Time would be impossible. Now, I will most gladly and readily admit that I am nowhere near the writer Robert Jordan was, but I don't think the length of a book or series has any impact on whether we keep personal notes and refresh our minds from time to time with our former published works, particularly if we are writing a series. Keeping notes, however, doesn't necessarily mean we can skip rereading our works. Notes and actual books work very differently on our thought processes.
So there you have it. Writing advice handed down.
1) Reread your novel or novella a LOT, at least enough to be irritated by the plot. Then fix it.
2) Work on another project to give yourself space from the previous one before editing.
3) Let your characters choose their own course. Look for ways to make your characters smarter.
4) Keep notes about your series to refer back to later. Use these to complement your rereading process.
Some of this, you might already have known, but the advice cannot be shared enough. Some of this, you may not have been aware of. Either way, as we learn from one another, our works always become better as a result.
Iffix Y. Santaph is the author of the novella Impulse, the first book in a series, which is available now at a variety of online retailers, including Amazon.com. The sequel Deception will be available in July.
Question for discussion: How has rereading your own work helped you to strengthen your story?
I got massive writer's block on my current WIP, which represents books 3 and 4 in my novella series.
No, I didn't bite off more than I could chew, though it isn't uncommon to write more than one book at a time. Some writers even recommend it. In this case, I did an overhaul and turned novels into novellas. So books 3 and 4 in my series were one novel, which I happened to be working on at the time.
I suppose my second bit of advice would be to work on another project to give yourself space from the first, so that when you do return to edit, you have enough space to look with a fresh set of eyes. (That's handed down advice; we do learn best from one another. Thanks, Brandon Sanderson.)
Having finished my first book and started the sequel, I wrote until I lost track of myself and ceased horribly. Why did this happen? I wondered.
The answer was actually rather simple. I made mention of it on my Ask a Writer comments on my author page.
I was forcing my characters to do what they had no desire to do. You know, it's one matter, in an action adventure novel, for the character to square off against his nemesis and not have a choice in the matter. And there are plenty of things that your character will not have control over, just as we cannot control every aspect of our own lives. But for the most part, our characters largely have the freedom to think for themselves and decide what they will do in any given circumstance.
If our characters disagree with us, which does and should happen, they need to win out, or else we will have writer's block. Treat them like actual people and dignify them. If we make them stupid by forcing them to dance like puppets on a string, our audience will not enjoy our characters and we will have a harder time writing in the long run.
So back to that theme, how does rereading grant the Eureka moment, and how does it help to fix a single story and a series?
As we reread our own works, we will notice typos. The first batch are easy to find, because we are smart writers. On our second pass, and each subsequent pass, the errors are slightly harder to catch. But here's where it gets interesting. Each of these passes will give our story time to linger in our own mind, and things we regret will naturally pop out. We will notice something that makes our characters seem incredibly stupid, and not the good kind of stupid.
Having a stupid character is perfectly acceptable if it is intended. And even smart characters act stupid from time to time simply because of the stress of a situation. (If our situations don't have enough friction for our characters to act stupid at least once, we probably have a weak plot.)
But to elevate our characters, we need to change out those details. We can usually do so without ruining the rest of our premise, with a bit of thinking outside of the box to bring our story back into line. A bit of peace of mind: if you are a good writer (and usually that's the case, if you've stuck with it long enough), your characters are usually doing what they would do in a situation, in which case not much must be changed in your plot. And sometimes, something small can change everything for the better.
When we write a series, many features of our next book will be based on what our character showed a capability for in the first. So as we go forward too, reading our old books will help us to farm for ideas for subsequent books. And as we bring in ideas that our followers recognize from former stories they feel this excitement, their own "Eureka!" moment about what is to follow. So, if we happen to be stumped on what our character would do in a given situation, we can refer to older scenes to get a better grip on our characters.
We'd do better not to assume, as authors, that we know our stories inside out and will continue to do so. Robert Jordan, who wrote some of the lengthiest, and most incredible, fantasy novels of the last two decades (and sadly died in 2007), was known for keeping files of his universe far beyond what was ever in print, because he knew that remembering everything about the Wheel of Time would be impossible. Now, I will most gladly and readily admit that I am nowhere near the writer Robert Jordan was, but I don't think the length of a book or series has any impact on whether we keep personal notes and refresh our minds from time to time with our former published works, particularly if we are writing a series. Keeping notes, however, doesn't necessarily mean we can skip rereading our works. Notes and actual books work very differently on our thought processes.
So there you have it. Writing advice handed down.
1) Reread your novel or novella a LOT, at least enough to be irritated by the plot. Then fix it.
2) Work on another project to give yourself space from the previous one before editing.
3) Let your characters choose their own course. Look for ways to make your characters smarter.
4) Keep notes about your series to refer back to later. Use these to complement your rereading process.
Some of this, you might already have known, but the advice cannot be shared enough. Some of this, you may not have been aware of. Either way, as we learn from one another, our works always become better as a result.
Iffix Y. Santaph is the author of the novella Impulse, the first book in a series, which is available now at a variety of online retailers, including Amazon.com. The sequel Deception will be available in July.Question for discussion: How has rereading your own work helped you to strengthen your story?
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Thanks, A.E. I appreciate the comments, and the inspiration. I've got to find more ways to make sure I have my writing with me, like this afternoon when I got stuck at an appointment for almost an hour. Thanks for the tip.
Just want to say I agree wholeheartedly with this. There is one fairly famous author I stopped reading because she got bored, and through out these rules because she wanted to do something completely different. (We had a cordial email exchange about it, and I understand her position, but I still think she blew it.) Now being a fairly famous author, I doubt it hurt her much, and people still seem to like to her work. But for the rest of us, frog-marching our characters in some direction we want to go, but they don't, is a bad idea.
Glad I found your blog!
A.E. wrote: "Sorry, it might be bad etiquette to write something like this about another author, come to think about it..."I think any author high up on the NYT Bestseller list is fair game (and especially Brown).
The thing you write here: 'Having a stupid character is perfectly acceptable if it is intended.' makes 'The DaVinci Code' come to mind. I forced myself to read through it once just to try and understand the hype about it, which of course failed me miserably, but there was one sentence that I'm still rolling around the floor laughing when I think of, and that is: 'The stillness of Langdon's mind'. It was obviously unintentional by Brown to make his lead character seem so entirely stupid, but that (and the sentence: 'You shouldn't have run') are still something me and my husband joke about. Sorry, it might be bad etiquette to write something like this about another author, come to think about it...
Anyway, my technique is to download a new copy of my current book that I'm writing on to my Kobo every night when I stop working, and when I go to bed, or out, or sitting waiting for the bus, etc., I usually always read and re-read my text. The Kobo is a great tool for this since you can actually highlight the words/sentences that you react on and also write down notes about whatever it was that disturbed you. With this technique you also get to see how your formatting works on e-readers as well, which is great.
Thanks for such an enlightening blog.
Cheers,
/A.E.