Don’t Forget to Completely Paint the Wall, a Post by R. Clint Peters

The following are some thoughts I posted on my personal blog, http://rclintpeters.wordpress.com on September 9, 2012.  Some of the thoughts are relevant to what I am doing as an author today.  Other thoughts have been changed to protect the innocent.

Four weeks ago, someone suggested a book for me to read, Self Editing for Fiction Writers, or How to Edit Yourself into Print.  After a trip to the library, I had it in my possession.

I am not going to review the book.  Rather, I am going to report that the contents reassured me I was doing some things right in my writing.  I understood most of the things I read and I could see what the authors were talking about.

I call that concept Recognition – I actually recognized the concepts I had learned in previous studies of what I was doing.

So, I want to thank several people for what they have done for me as a writer.  Joan Adamak — for telling me to find a good book about writing to learn from.  B Kent – who was the first to tell me I didn’t know what I was doing.  Finally, the authors of Self Editing for Fiction Writers, or How to Edit Yourself into Print – for giving me a little more insight into what I am doing as a writer.

At the time I posted this blog, I was performing the final editing of A Question for Kelly, a Klete Wilkins novel.  Alas, the book has been relegated to my “To Be Edited Someday” list.

Why?  Because I painfully discovered from one of my friends that the book was not as good as I thought it was.  I had, unfortunately, been leaving important things out of the story.  Yes, brevity is something to strive for, but big gaps in the flow of a novel is something to stay away from.

During my perusal of the Internet looking for answers to my question of how to write better, I read the following:

“Everyone can build a wall.  All that is needed are some boards, some nails, some sheetrock, some screws, and the ability to hammer in a nail or screw in a screw, and the ability to saw a board.  The only difference between the wall built by an amateur and a professional is the how the boards are connected, how the sheet rock is finished, and how the wall is painted.

“And everyone can write a book.  All that is needed are some words.  The only difference between an amateur author and a professional author is the way the words are connected and how the pages of the book are painted.”

In A Question For Kelly, I seem to have gone from putting too much paint on the wall (telling the story) to not putting enough paint on the wall (trying to show, but failing miserably.)  Which translates to Don’t Forget to Completely Paint the Wall.

As I look back on what I posted in 2012 and what I have written in A Question For Kelly, I can see now what I was doing wrong.

First, the #1 writing rule I learned from Joan Adamak was to Show, Don’t Tell.  Telling is like smearing the same color of paint all over your wall in several layers.  Yes, there might be texture because of the drips, but the wall is B-O-R-I-N-G.  The reader walks into the room and falls asleep on the nearest sofa.

What is needed to build a proper wall?  And how does that wall translate to my novel?

First, all the boards need to be the right length, and they need to be correctly nailed together.  I think that translates to the plot of the book and the intricacies of that plot.

Second, the sheetrock needs to be properly affixed to the wall boards, either with sheetrock screws or sheetrock nails.  Because the sheetrock holds the wall together, the sheetrock can be considered the book’s characters.  Of course, there is the occasional ding from a bent nail or a screw not properly seated.  In my novel, those dings are some of the unsavory characters I have introduced.

Third, the sheetrock needs to be taped, compound needs to be applied and then sanded, so there is a smooth transition between the wall boards.  In A Question For Kelly, the transitions between the events in the novel were abrupt, forcing the reader to go back several pages to try to figure out how Character A slipped into the book.  Even the author was confused.

Finally, the wall needs to be painted.  But not a drab mono-coat that leaves the reader wondering when they had their last nap.  The wall needs to be vibrant, colorful, spectacular.  It needs to grab the reader by the hand and pull them into the novel.  We all have the capability to build a wall.  The key to success is to not forget to paint it.

#RClintPeters #TheAuthorsClub