Your draft should be in pretty good shape now, and you really are nearing the finish line.

However, eager though you may be to show your masterpiece toagents in order for them to snap it up, you don’t want to rush things and shoot yourself in the foot.

Take another break – at least a week if possible, and then come back for a final fine tuning.

You need to be really ruthless now, seek out clichés, telling instead of showing, lazy description, meandering prose. Cut it out. Cut it down. Look for inconsistencies and iron them out.

Here are a few more areas you can fine tune:

 

Dialogue Mechanics

Dialogue is important. It brings the reader into the moment, it feels alive and happening. When is the first dialogue on your story? If it’s not in the first few pages, you could consider moving it forward.

Many new writers overuse replacements to the word said, resulting in something like this:

“You look depressed.” observed Jennifer.

“I am,” answered Barry.

 “You should just cheer up,” concluded Jennifer.

“Whatever,” grumbled Barry.

These colourful replacements border on the cardinal sin of telling not showing, and are obtrusive, dulling the pace.

Instead of relying on words like this, use description of the action to keep things moving and keep the reader right in the action. Also, don’t forget that ‘said’ tends to be invisible to readers when they’re in the flow (unless there are really a lot in a row), and often you don’t need anything to describe who’s speaking, as it ought to be obvious from context.

“You look depressed,” said Jennifer.

Barry picked at his nails and sighed.  “I am.”

“You should just cheer up,” Jennifer put a bright look on her face.

“Whatever.”

 

Paragraphing

You may think that paragraphing is not really a central part of writing. Words and sentences, that’s real writing – paragraphing is what happens inbetween.

Well, how dense or open your prose is will make a big difference to how pacy it feels and whether your reader feels like they’re wading through or skipping along.

When you scan over your work, is most of the page filled with words? If so, it may benefit from more whitespace, giving your story space to breathe. Shortening paragraphs is an extremely effective way to tweak the pace and atmosphere of your novel.

 

Don’t labour the point

This means don’t repeat yourself, and don’t keep trying to get the same point across in too many different ways. One well thought out way will be stronger on its own than several obvious or weak ways.

For example.

Celine eyed the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the shelf and her mouth watered. She loved red wine. It was the colour, like liquid rubies, and the sharp delicious taste. Her desire for it ached. The way it warmed the back of her throat. She loved it so much. Her fingers twitched towards it.

In this example we are told three times that she loves wine, and by the last time you just want to scream ‘Yes, I know!’

It’s much stronger with the second two removed:

Celine eyed the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the shelf and her mouth watered. She loved red wine. It was the colour, like liquid rubies, and the sharp delicious taste. The way it warmed the back of her throat. Her fingers twitched towards it.

However, if you want the prose to be really tight, we shouldn’t be telling at all and in fact we can do without any of them, and get the same impression from the description alone:

Celine eyed the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the shelf and her mouth watered. It was the colour, like liquid rubies, and the sharp delicious taste. The way it warmed the back of her throat. Her fingers twitched towards it.

You've done it! You've written your novel! Congratulations, you are now a member of a relatively elite club. So now your adoring audiences will be beating down your door to buy your novel and make you rich.

Or... you can go to Step 15. Submitting your novel to an agent.

Congratulations! You’ve finished your first draft! You deserve a big cigar, glass of champagne or whatever it is you celebrate these things with. Feel free to take a few days or a week off, you’ve earned it.

But then, back to work! You may think that now you’ve thrashed out a first draft, the hard part is over, and you’re reaching the finish line. Afraid not. There’s a whole lot more slog to go. But don’t be disheartened! You’re still further then 80% of people who say they’re going to write a book. Don’t give up!

Most of the large scale structure of your book should be relatively fixed by now – if you planned well, it will mean less serious redrafting is needed (for example cutting out entire chapters of characters), so you can focus on fine tuning.

We’ve already looked at some of the mistakes that will instantly mark you out as an amateur, now let’s take a look at a few aspects of writing that you can perfect to take your writing from mediocre to excellent.

Note - if you're looking for a guide to the various different drafts of a novel, you might be interested in this article.

Have you over explained your characters?

The core of this is the good old ‘show, don’t tell’. Make sure you’re not explaining the character’s personality to your readers, as they’re likely to find it dull and distancing.

Compare:

‘Jane was a slob. She hadn’t tidied up in months.’

‘Jane kicked the mouldy plate off the bed and rummaged around for the least stiff pair of jeans from the piles strewn on the floor.’

In the first example, the author makes a statement about a character, and then backs it up with a little evidence, but they’re still just giving their word. In the second example, the author is keeping out of it, just describing the action and letting the reader draw their own conclusions about the cleanliness habits of Jane.

Also, new writers often feel they need to give the entire life story of a character early on, but this isn’t a good idea. It stalls the action, and anyway, it’s more natural to get to know people in a slower, more gradual way. When you meet someone new, you don’t immediately learn everything about them, that happens over time.

By just giving consistent broad brushstrokes, you allow your reader to use their imagination and fill in the gaps, in many cases creating a character with more layers than even you thought of.

Another useful technique for building character is to use what your character notices to give information about them. When they enter a room, do they notice all the pretty girls; the stains on the carpet; or do they note all the exits and times to reach them? What they notice tells us a great deal about their outlook and priorities.

Is the Point of View clear?

A nice way of thinking about point of view is ‘whose skin are you in?’ 

This doesn’t mean that you need to write your story from the 1^st person (using ‘I’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’), or even that you have to use the same character’s point of view through the whole book (although the latter may not be a bad idea if it’s your first book – learn to walk before you run).

However, it is critical that the reader knows whose point of view they are following in any given scene, and this shouldn’t change within a scene.

This is because changing point of view character within a scene is very disorientating for the reader and it breaks their suspension of disbelief, as they have to mentally adjust.

Writing from a particular character’s point of view is more than just where they are standing; it’s also about what they notice. As mentioned above in the section on characters, different characters will have completely different experiences from exactly the same environment. 

For example, you’d be unlikely to have a teenager commenting on the ancient gothic architecture (unless that’s a strong part of their character), and an old lady might notice a gang of louts hanging on a corner, but have no idea what the gang bands on their arms represented.

Also, remember that you may be able to mind-read the Point of View character even if you’re writing from the third person, but you absolutely cannot read the minds of anyone else (unless your PoV character happens to be psychic), so you’ll have to get across their opinions through what they say, how they say it, actions and body language.

How proportionate is your plot?

How does your prose balance? How much is action, dialogue or description?

In general, no sentence should be included if it isn’t critical to the plot, but this doesn’t mean there’s no time to stop and smell the roses. As long as the roses have some relevance to atmosphere, and they are described in a way that reflects the mood of the scene.

If you’re going to spend a lot of lines describing something, make sure it’s relevant. For example, don’t spend two pages describing the interior of one building and two lines on another, unless the first building is central to the plot. Because you can be sure your readers are going to think it is.

Likewise, if your character is doing something, such as cooking, or fixing a saddle, don’t describe it in too much detail unless it’s important to the plot or builds atmosphere. Just because you find a hobby interesting, doesn’t mean your readers will.

On the other hand, if there’s an action scene which is central to the plot, shows key aspects of a main character and throbs with atmosphere – then break it down into moment by moment detail.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules to follow about how much description to have and how much detail to include in a particular spot – it’s all about balance.

With the second draft in the bag you can see the finish line. It's time for Step 14: Refining the Final Draft of your novel.

For more guidance on novel writing, click here.

Not only for diabolical villains.

It’s time to weave all the elements of your story into a bulletproof plot, identifying the holes and patching them up and ensuring there are no carts coming before horses, that sort of thing.

A large block of text is not very good for giving you information at a glance and making it easy to move things about without getting tangled up, so at this stage it’s best to create a spreadsheet (or use some purpose built software).

Make a list of all scenes and plot points (colour coding them if you want to get fancy).

A scene can be defined as: A subdivision of an act in a dramatic presentation in which the setting is fixed and the time continuous. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/scene). For more guidance on scenes, see this post.

A plot point is something important you need to remember to put in, but isn’t actually a whole scene – such as: Bob discovers the knife in her knicker drawer.

Once you’ve got your list, you can set about checking your Head and Tail Scenes, ensuring there are no gaps or unexpected leaps and that you're following the Goal >> Conflict >> Disaster >> Reaction >> Dilemma >> Decision cycle. You may have loose plot points that need to be assigned a scene, or even given a new one. If you do create a new scene, you’ll need to create its partner Head or Tail.

Keep shuffling, adding, editing and deleting until you’re satisfied that your plot is in good shape. Once your happy with it, we'll move onto checking multiple threads.

If you enjoyed this post, then you should probably check out the Novel Factory.

Or you can go onto the next step of advanced plotting - dealing with multiple threads.

The Novel Formula - A Novel Writing Method: Step Eight

Head Scenes and Tail Scenes

Now we're really going to get into the nitty-gritty technics of writing a plot that is compelling, while feeling natural and balanced to the reader.

And we're going to do it with the cunning use of Head and Tail scenes. This method is based on Dwight Swain's 'scenes' and 'sequels'.

Roughly speaking, Head scenes are where your character is being active, doing stuff, hopefully getting into trouble, getting into people's faces, that sort of thing. But a character can't do that relentlessly throughout the whole book or both they and the reader will be exhausted, not to mention they're unlikely to develop much as characters.

So, inbetween Head scenes you have Tail scenes, which are where your character pauses to take stock, reflect, regroup and plan their next move.

Now, it doesn't have to be 50/50. The balance decides what sort of story you have. If it's 80% Head scenes, you've got a fast-paced, action type story. If it's 80% Tail scenes, it's a more reflective, thoughtful story.

As a general rule, Head scenes should be immediate, happening right here and now, with the action described in detail. Whereas, in tail scenes it's possible to compress time more, even skipping over weeks, months or even years in a few sentences or pages.

Head Scenes

Head scenes can be broken down into three parts:

• Goal
• Conflict
• Disaster

At the beginning of a Head scene, your character should have some kind of goal, something they want to achieve. Otherwise it's possible for them to spend the whole scene mooching about, and very few people want to read about that.

So your character should go for their goal and get it, right? Wrong. Boring. You're character should go for their goal and -bam!  Conflict. Something stops them achieving their goal. Now your reader is interested. They want to know if the character is going to overcome this obstacle to achieve their goal. If you're good, you'll come up with a series of mounting obstacles. Then...

Disaster! Not only does your character not achieve their goal, but they're in a much worse situation than before. After all that excitement, they're spent. In fact, the disaster was so great, they may even be locked up. It's time for a Tail scene.

Tail Scenes

Tail scenes can also be broken down into three parts:

• Reaction
• Dilemma
• Decision

The first bit is their reaction to the disaster. It should be an emotional reaction rather than an active one (we'll get to the active one later). Are they furious? Despairing? They've been through a lot, they ought to be feeling something.

Once the emotions have had a chance to settle, they're going to start assessing the situation. What are they going to do next? They should have at least two options, though they may have more. At a most basic level, the two options are sit there and do nothing, or take action. Ideally, there will be no good options. Having good options makes things too easy, and readers don't want to read about someone waltzing through the story easily - they want to see them struggle and strive, so they can root for them, and genuinely worry that they'll the thwarted.

Having weighed up all the options, the character settles on one of the options. The least bad one. Though it's risky, it's worth it, in order to stick to their principles. Now they've got a goal, and the cycle is ready to turn once more.

And repeat

By applying this pattern skilfully to all of your scenes, your story will keep gaining momentum and will feel balanced and real to the reader. You'll avoid having a character that seems to just leap to conclusions out of nowhere, or meandering scenes with no direction.

Of course, you may really need a scene where your character sets out to do something, and achieves it, or something similar which doesn't fit into the structure above. That's fine - you can insert Supporting scenes in where you need them. Just try to avoid having too many of them, or you may find that your story has lost the plot.

Next step: 9a. Settings Part One: mood, atmosphere, character development and foreshadowing

A good first line does not a good novel make, but a bad opening could kill a great novel before it's had a chance.

So what makes a good first line?

There are a few key points:

Change - if this is a day like any other, why are you writing about it? All stories are about change, so if you want to get your reader hooked right away, get straight into it!

Question - you need your reader wanting more. If you can make your first line raise questions that they cannot live without knowing the answer to, you can be pretty sure they'll keep reading. Of course, what constitutes a gripping question will vary depending on your readership. A computer geek is unlikely to care if the question is the heroine wondering how she'll ever find love - equally, a romance buff cares little why the Republic of Somewhere Alien is about to implode.

Surprise - for extra flavour and style, if you can surprise your reader in so few words, with something unexpected or out of the ordinary, they will want to read on to explain the mystery.

Some examples of awesome opening lines:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
George Orwell, 1984

Mira was hiding in the ladies' room.
Fay Weldon, The Women's Room


My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones


We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
 

Think about which of the key points above each of these meet. It's a great exercise to randomly pick books off your shelf and read their first lines.

Like writing? Like software? check out the features of the Novel Factory.

On a basic level, there are two kinds of pace. On a small scale, there's the pace of a particular paragraph. This is the pace controlled by things like the sentence length and individual word choices. On the larger scale there is story pace. This is controlled more by the balance of different types of prose sections in the larger story structure.

Let's start with the big picture

Story pacing

Direct Action vs. Summary

A key indicator is the balance of direct action prose and summary prose. Direct action tends to be at faster pace than summary even though, on a word for word basis, much less happens.

Direct action is where the reader is with a character and seeing the world through that characters eyes. Something happens, the character reacts. Something else happens, the character reacts. A continuous thread of cause and effect moving the story forward. Dialog is pretty much always direct action, and therefore will almost increase the pace of a section.

Summary sections involve the abstract description of events that the reader doesn't get to witness first hand. This is the place where characters reflect on past experiences, wonder about the future and go through events that are too long or unimportant to be shown in full. Months and years can pass in a single sentence. You can cross the sea, travel to a distant star or just sit on the bed and worry about your mortgage. Whatever is happening, the reader is not there in the moment and so it can feel slower.

Changes of direction

Changes of direction increase the pace. Each zig or zag, where new information takes the character in a new direction is like a pulse beat. If they come close together the heart beats faster, the feeling of pace is increased.

A slow, moody story may contain no abrupt changes of direction. Atmosphere built slowly over a number of seemingly straightforward events can be used to slowly bring the narrative round like a ocean liner changing heading. Inevitable change can be very powerful. Watching the ship turn, painfully slowly, never knowing if it will be enough to avoid the rocks.

A thriller may change direction like a wasp trapped in a box. Quick! To the university! Oh, no! It's a red herring! Quick! To the beach house! Oh, wait! A double cross! Quick! To the morgue! The mad-dash approach keeps the reader hooked by constantly wondering "What can possibly happen next?!" Of course, it's easy to overdo this and end up leaving the reader confused and lost.


Prose Pacing

The pace within a section of prose is controlled by the words and sentences you choose. It's possible to make scenes full of action and mayhem feel slow and tedious and moments of quiet reflection feel rushed and thin.

Description vs. Action

As a general rule, the more description and related information that a section of prose contains, the slower it will read. Long detailed descriptions of the window frames, curtains and sideboard or wordy asides about the choice of carpet all take up words that could be used to have something actually happening.

Sentence Length

It is often the case that short, sharp sentences read faster than longer sentences. This is not to say that fast sections of prose should contain exclusively short sentences nor that slower sections should only contain long sentences. It is just that a tendency towards the shorter, on average, has the effect of speeding up the section.

Word use

Fast paced writing requires simple words. Quick, easy to read words. Obvious words. Slower sections of prose can linger on big and clever words but unusual words, like opprobrium, tend to trip up a reader who is moving quickly. Tripping up can slow you down.


So which is better, fast pace or slow pace? Well - that depends on your story. It usually a good idea to carefully vary your pacing depending on the section of the story you're working on. Some stories are very faced paced throughout, others are slower with sharp rushes of action.
A story that is always slow paced throughout may become dull, but pace is relative. Even small variations in pacing can be enough to keep a leviathan of a story flowing along.