Soldiers reading.I picked up my WIP for the first time in four months and there are some issues I noticed.
I really hate the title now: DARKNESS TAKES A DAUGHTER, and, in fact, it no longer exactly applies to the story. Anyone have a good title I can borrow? It's not too late to make the book fit the title.
I also noticed that it's pretty episodic-due to my fear of any downtime. The women lurch madly from escapade to escapade. It still bears the finger prints of a short story writer.
I also noticed that a couple of passages seem to be written in a slightly different voice. Who was I reading when I wrote them? Castle Freeman? Charles Willeford?
On the good side, it's funnier than I remembered. And it's a pretty clean copy due my tendency to rewrite every day. Not that good grammar and spelling count for much.
Does this happen to you when you come back to something you wrote a while ago? Do you get a truer look at a piece of writing or just a different one? Which view do you trust?
8 comments:
Even in the days when I was writing three books a year, I always tried to set the first draft aside for two or three weeks and come back to it--even if I was facing a deadline. I try hard to make the first draft pretty much the finished book but when I go back to it fresh I almost always find at least one major element that needs changing. Then there are the poorly written sentences and characters I didn't quite bring into focus. I just finished a novel last week. When I came back to it I realized I needed to do some serious reshuffling. I switched several scenes around for pacing--a few times to speed up the pace, a few times to slow down the pace. I also clarified the motives of two major characters. I wouldn't have been aware of these flaws if I hadn't put some space between first and second/third draft.
The four month hiatus was long enough to make it seem written by another person. I do think that one good thing came out of the period, I understand how it must end better than I did. Thanks for the insights. Can't wait to read yours.
O think some time away is necessary if you are to view the manuscript as a reader, and not as a writer. Too close to it, and you'll remember what you were going for with a scene or phrase, even if it might be clear to someone reading it for the first time. Several weeks away, and it's obvious.
You'll also see things early in the book that you know you'll have to change later on, just because your perspective may have changed toward a character or event over months of first drafting.
I always find inconsistencies in voice after the first draft. They get worked out in subsequent drafts.
I don't even know how long it's been since I looked at my 3 or 4th draft of the first novel length manuscript I have kicking around..... 3 or 4 years.....
anyway, rewriting, I might run spell check over something, but until I have the first draft I think it's always best to just keep going. I forget who said it, you write the first draft with your heart and the second, third, fourth etc with your head. I think that it's during the later drafts that the voice and be smoothed out.
depending on what you are going for, episodic can be ok.... for instance take the film Men in Black, which was really like the TV shop Cops with Aliens... what worked for me the going from call to call and dealing with each challenge, what didn't work for me was the underlying plot of the film... episode to episode ( or call to call) and work if you are trying to show a day at work.... or the adventures that take your story from a to b to c and so on.
Title, with out knowing anything other than your original title I don't know what to suggest. Darkness Takes A Daughter sounds to me like either: A drug story, a horror story or a book about some middle aged middle america woman dealing with the death of a daughter .
Which view to trust? I tend to go with the original view with things that are older (maybe more than a year) as that view reflects what I was thinking and what I wanted to say at the time.
Eric
Oddly enough, I wrote the first draft with my head. Now my heart kicks in.
I think the way I work produces overly polished early chapters. I can see the sweat in them.
I am tempted to go back to the first novel-because that one would be easier to deal with. It's very old business.
Sorry, but I love that title!
I think it's good that you set it aside. You can really approch it from a different vantage point and get down into the meat of editing. I really like the pic of the soldiers reading :)
Darkness Takes a Daughter was a title you lifted from the title of a fictitious book in Law and Order Criminal Intent S4 ep 12
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