Craft

The Completion Stage

Published on by Kristi Holl

The past two weeks, I’ve talked about the stages we go through in our writing projects, including the challenges at each stage and ways to keep from derailing. After we have prepared the work-in-progress, let it germinate, worked on it, then deepened and shaped it, we are ready to complete the work.

“There is a completion stage,” Louise de Salvo says in Writing as a Way of Healing, “during which we again revise, revisit, rethink, and refashion. .. Often the drive to finish a work takes precedence over other needs and obligations—like being social or taking showers or eating well.” She said her sons used to call this her “demented stage” because she was so completely involved in her work.

Derail or Finish? That Is the Question

During the completion stage, you can derail your process several ways:

  • If you work needlessly, refusing to let go of your writing project and send it out into the world, your book can fail to be published out of fear. (The “world” can mean your critique partner, your agent, or an editor.) You know in your gut that you’ve made the book as good as you’re able at this point in your learning curve, and that continuing to work on the book is probably not helping it much. In fact, if you keep tinkering needlessly, you can do more harm than good.
  • If you lose interest in your work at this point, you may sadly end up putting the manuscript on a shelf in your closet “to work on later,” only later never comes. Instead of this solution, you must find ways to rekindle your original enthusiasm for your book. If you kept a work journal for this project, go back and read your original notes and hopes for this book.
  • If you become careless during this stage, you might not do the necessary polishing or changing that deep revisions call for. You might settle for a good manuscript or story, but not rise to the excellence you’re capable of at this point in your career. If you find yourself reading through your manuscript and being jolted by certain paragraphs or sentences—yet go on by, hoping no one else will notice the jerky rhythm or unclear sentence—then you’re becoming careless. This can derail your project.

It makes no sense to spend weeks, months, or years writing and then, when finishing, to produce a slovenly, careless effort. During the completion stage, you must fine tune what is there. You must pay attention to detail at this stage. It can be a “slow, meticulous, often plodding process,” says Ms. de Salvo. Yet it is necessary. “Finishing strong is something great athletes learn… Finishing strong is something writers also must learn.”

Strong Writers Do This

Published on by Kristi Holl

During the past two years I’ve done more novel critiques than usual. Some have been so-so, some were very good, and a few have already sold.

What made the difference between the “very good” stories and the manuscripts that sold? In my opinion, it was the overall strength of the novels.

Often the “very good” book manuscript was strong except for just one area. Maybe there was no felt emotional connection with the main character, or all the dialogue voices sounded like the author’s voice. Perhaps the one weak area was lack of suspense despite beautiful prose, or poorly researched historical facts, or terrible mechanics.

Oops!

Often when I mentioned the trouble I saw, the writer emailed me back and said, “I suspected that was a problem. I guess I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.” It’s better to listen to your gut feeling and assume if you know there’s a problem, others will see it too.

“Hoping an editor won’t notice” isn’t a solid marketing plan. Even if they had the time (which they don’t), editors aren’t in the business of fixing the story for you or teaching you how to write. That’s up to you–but what can you do?

Back to School

“Unless you’re working with an expert instructor, you need to be designing your own writing improvement program,” says James Scott Bell in The Art of War for Writers. “Work out a systematic plan to overcome your weak areas by setting up self-study programs.”

We all hope our novel’s strengths will over-ride the weaknesses, but you want your novel to be healthy overall, not just mostly healthy with one or two weak areas. If your physique were great except for flabby underarms, you would target that flapping fat with exercises and a program designed specifically for upper arms. In the same way, if your novel is weak in one or two areas, you need a specific exercise program to strengthen that area.

Make a Plan

For example, if your problem is dialogue that all sounds like the same flat voice, you might need a self-study program called “Creating Distinctive Voices.” Your study question might be: How can I create distinctive voices for each character, so distinctive that I can tell who’s speaking without any identification?

Here’s one plan, and you can adapt it for any area you want to improve:

  1. Make a list of novels where you remember the characters coming through in their dialogue as distinctive. (accent, regional speech, slang, choppy vs. languid speech, hip vs. old-fashioned, formal vs. grammatically incorrect, straightforward vs. flowery speech, etc.)
  2. Choose several of these novels and re-read them specifically for the dialogue. Keep your study question in mind as you read. Underline passages that do the job and then write a few scenes where you try to accomplish the same thing through dialogue. Don’t copy their words, but try to copy the technique used.
  3. Buy some books on the particular writing problem you have and study them. There are good writing books available on every area of craft you can imagine. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel, nor do you have to submit stories that are weak in one or two areas.

In today’s economy, your stories need to be the cream that rises to the top. Ensuring that your novel is strong in every area is one way to do that.