I have nearly finished what I hope is the penultimate thorough edit of my novel. I must have done over twenty edits. Editing has been an exhausting, but enlightening process. In the beginning, I thought that each subsequent edit would be much easier. I was wrong. But after each subsequent edit my novel was tighter and pacier.
During my edits I discovered weaknesses, repetition, shoes and socks problems, clunky sentences, poor grammar and punctuation, missing signposts, unsuitable chapter titles, chapters that ended without a hook or cliff-hanger, 48,000 words of superfluous text, lengthy descriptions, and dialogue that needed much improvement.
I thought my first draft was brilliant, but Hemingway was right, ‘The first draft of everything is always shit.’
I continued to read the best award winning authors of adult and children’s literature as I wrote my first draft. I believe it was beneficial to my prose. I noticed a significant improvement in my writing, the further I progressed through my manuscript.
I have learnt much in the process of writing my first novel. I believed I had a firm grasp of the aspects of the novel, but knowing how to best orchestrate them was another matter. I hope that I have got it right. I have more work to do, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The most important lesson I learned is to thoroughly plan from the outset. If I had planned better, I would have saved myself considerable effort and time. But I am confident that the second novel in what I hope will be a series, will take less than half the time of the first.
I read an interesting article by Gregory David Roberts, the author of Shantaram on the 'Architecture of the novel' on his website.
Everything points to planning your novel better when you start, but I am not sure that rule applies all the time. Sometimes one writes because one feels compelled and can't wait to plot the ending, the deeper significance or the genre. If I would been that organised, I would never have written anyway, I just had to grab the time available and do something, anything. The novel takes a life of its own as you write, too. Some of the really good parts came in the first draft for me, the parts that were most honest, most urgent .
The state of mind one writes in is important-it should be a creative time (be you a night owl or morning person), a peaceful time and when one is unlikely to be interrupted.
Jotting down your idea as and when it comes, I found invaluable, otherwise I at least, can completely forget it even an hour later and spend the rest of the day fuming, wishing I had written it down when it came. And then spending time hatching that idea before you actually write it from those vastly scribbled notes.
And lots and lots of coffee when writing goes without saying. And celebrating your personal milestones.
I agree with David.
Certain genres are more tolerant of long descriptive passages than others, but you have to balance what readers might expect with what you feel comfortable leaving in.
For example, I had a partial edit of the first chapter of my first story done by a professional firm. It's historical fiction, which tends to be heavy on description, and they wanted more incorporated rather than removed. I was reluctant, since it's an action/adventure story, it was early on (when nothing much was happening, if you see what I mean) and I thought it adversely affected the pacing. So I left it as it was.
I've had criticism the first part of the book is light on action and could have been reduced in length so the nitty-gritty comes along more quickly, whereas others like it.
You can't win, so do what you feel is best :)
Emma. You're first sentence is the important one. "You can't please everyone". If you edit out much of the description you will probably find that the next reader - possibly even the same one that said there was too much description - will say that there is too little description.
The basic principle is that you are never going to win - unless you make the rules.
Okay - these are not the same rules as the agents, the publishers etc - but they will probably change as they go along - influenced in some cases by the books that they rejected, someone else took up - and became best sellers.... JKR is the classic recent case. How many publishers are still trying to not make that mistake again?
The thing I do - is go with what feels right for me - and, from time to time, I have enormous doubts... But ultimately I have the choice between keeping going (and enjoying myself) and just giving up "because it will never be right".
I was thinking earlier today thet I bet Mary Shelley never had all this hassle about editing, genre, planning and all the rest.
The key question about description - and about action and dialogue - is whether it is relevent. If it's relevent it should stay in - if it's not - then chuck it out.
There is a pitfall... Some description is needed but it can block action. Then taking it out may unblock the action but it will take away from the overall image... it may even mess up understanding the action... The thing to look to do here is to move the description to somewhere else.
If we need to know what is described to understand the action then we need to shift the description to some point before the action. In some cases it can be useful to put the action first and then add the description to explain (at least some of) what has happened. This is much more difficult to write though.
One principle to keep in mind is that cutting to "simple fixes" is not always (maybe not often) a good solution.
As an example one of my readers objected to a slice (an unusually small slice) of description I had in a text where it didn't cause any problem - it was almost an aside. I said "okay" and took the slice out for the next read-through. He came back to me and said that part of the action was confusing - it needed more description. So I put the description in where he said it was needed - and he said that it interupted the action... So I said "how about I put it - somewhere else - like here... I don't think that he realised that I went back to the first version - but he liked the last version he read...
Moral of the story? A reader is often only taking a single look at the work - and, unless they are a professional editor, they are only going to respond with an impression. Impressions are useful - but you need to remain in charge.
Hope this helps.
David