Journal Entry #51October 15, 2009
My 2010 Alex Benedict novel is due in November. In looking at the second draft, Maureen and I discovered some areas where the logic gave way. But most painful of all were a series of missed opportunities. In the biggest of these, there’s a breakdown in the relationship between Chase and Alex. And I was literally stunned at how I’d mismanaged it. I spent yesterday and today not simply rewriting the critical sections. That wouldn’t have been enough. I started from scratch.
There are times when you can slide into automatic and not realize it. That’s what happened here. It’s why you need someone to look at an early version of the novel and alert you if things have gone astray. There are other sections of the novel which also needed serious work. Having to fix things isn’t uncommon. But the lack of imagination in some of the key sequences surprised me. Fortunately, we caught it early.
My experience has always been that the first draft is unintelligible. Nobody gets to see it, not even Maureen. The second draft should put all the pieces in place, so my wife’s job is not to look for grammatical breakdowns or bad spelling or any of that. That’s the easy part. She’s charged with determining whether the narrative makes sense, whether the book’s engine has enough drive, whether the characters live.
The third draft is normally the one in which the thing takes on a professional aspect. It’s where sentences get shortened, made more compact. Where more concrete gets added. (Think in terms of making sure the reader knows where he is, that he can feel the heat from the fireplace, hear the rain on the roof, watch a gull sail in over the trees. It doesn’t take much, just enough to provide a sense of place. Put a couple of books on a shelf, and place a certificate of achievement on the wall, add a mahogany desk, and the reader does the rest.)
Usually I need four drafts. But that may not be enough. It won’t be in this case. A number of years ago, when I was working on Omega, I lost count after passing fifteen. And that is not an exaggeration.
Another problem developed when I discovered that four different novels over the past few years, and one game, carried the name Harbinger. That meant, of course, I had to change the title again. The new one, the final one, I sincerely hope, has shown up at last. It will be Echo.
By the way, when I was teaching, students often complained about description in novels. Who cares if it’s snowing? Or if the wallpaper is yellow?
I’ve done a number of fiction workshops, and when I ask what the writer’s objective is, I hear, almost invariably, to tell a story. But the reality is that if you’re at a party and someone starts telling a story, most of us excuse ourselves politely at the first opportunity, and head for another corner of the room.
The writer’s objective is far more than telling a story. The idea is to create an experience, to get the reader out of his armchair, and put him on a cliff overlooking the sea with the lover of a lifetime. Or with someone who wants to take his life. And make him live through it. To forget he (or she) is at home, but instead to send the reader sailing through a set of planetary rings, to race alongside a comet, to know what it feels like to come down on a beach where nothing before has ever walked. Anything the writer does to remind the reader that he’s really at home in that chair, detracts from the experience. Do enough of it, and no one will read what you write. You’ll have to go to parties instead and corner people.