When we first start writing we think everything we put down on the page is perfect. It takes a lot of years and a whole lot of rejection to sweep that notion from our brain. The problem is we get so caught up in our stories that we fail to see those pesky little things that trip up a story. We think, well, the reader will get this, I don't have to write in every little detail.
But the truth is, if you have to explain the story to a reader, you haven't gotten it right. A reader should be able to sit down, read the story, and get up satisfied that everything was explained to his satisfaction.
Recently I wrote a story, subbed it to my crit group and got back a crit that said, 'hey, cops aren't that stupid are they?' Now, I'd written in the very first line that this was a retired cop but I hadn't bothered to explain that the question he was asking was to satisfy his own curiosity, not solve a case and that the statute of limitations had already passed on the crime. This was a no harm, no foul story. But because I had to explain this point to my reader - I knew I'd failed the story.
It's an easy thing to do for beginners and pros alike. We tend to forget that readers aren't living inside our heads, privy to all the details we know. We go along merrily typing words that make perfect sense to the story in our head, but that's not the story we're putting on the page.
And that's where rewriting comes in. To correct all the flubs and flaws that we can't see in the heat of that first or second or third draft. I used to think that people who took six months to write a short story were either crazy or lazy, but after five years of focusing on fiction, I've found that a couple of weeks or months in a drawer does a story good. I can pull out those pages and see the flaws, see where I didn't explain things exactly right and correct them. And no, I don't always follow my own advice. Hurry up and send it out gets the better of me more often than I care to admit.
It's just a matter of trying to remember that time and patience are just as important to writing a story as the act of putting those first words down on the page.
2 comments:
Boy, does all this sound familiar. I often send it out too quickly. Especially since I don't have a critique group now.
When my first manuscript was edited I learned what I didn't know about my writing. Often I had left out important information that wasn't readily known by the reader. Of course, the answers were locked up in my creative mind and needed only to be placed into the story to make it cohesive.
Sandra, I enjoy your posts on the life of writing.
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