What I Have Learned About How I Write…..And What it Has Done to My Writing

What I Have Learned About How I Write…..And What it Has Done to My Writing

Several months ago, I submitted one of my books to be syndicated on a blog.  Oh, I was proud of that book.  It was my fifth novel.  I thought I had the writing business all figured out.  It should have easy for the blog to just copy and paste my novel into the syndication files.

I do not suppose you can imagine my reaction when I got an evaluation back from the blog.  My wonderful award-winning novel had a few problems.  I spent about four days feeling depressed.  When the depression subsided, I took a long look at the editing that had been done on my novel.

The first thing I noticed was an affirmation of what I had been hearing from my family.  I had asked several family members to read my first novel, The Pendergast Prerogatives.  All had said they liked what I had written, but they didn’t understand most of it.

The novel I submitted for syndication was The Alberta Connection, a Ryce Dalton novel.  The second paragraph of the edited segment of my manuscript contained the answer to why they had not understood.  I was writing in the same manner that I was thinking, and, according to family members, talking.   I think in 60-80 word concepts, very often with three or four ideas contained in those concepts.  Unfortunately, my thoughts also seem to jump around.

Midway through the first page was the following sentence:  The dirt road leading to the cabin was crossed by a stream several times, mostly with large corrugated steel pipes, although the last crossing required getting wet

The editor provided the following:

This sentence is ambiguous and says nothing while saying too much.  “The dirt road leading to the cabin was crossed by a stream several times.  The stream flowed under the dirt road in large, corrugated steel pipes.  The last pipe, however, was damaged, allowing the stream to flow across the road.  To Ryce, this meant getting wet.”

Using the recommendations I had received, the final rewrite became:

The dirt road leading to the cabin was crossed by a stream several times.  The stream flowed under the dirt road in large corrugated steel pipes.  The last pipe, however, was damaged, allowing the stream to flow across the road.  If Ryce needed to get closer to the cabin, he would get wet.   The glacier-fed lake was less than a mile away.  It would be a very cold wet.

As you can see, I used what the editor suggested, and added a couple things that I think helped.

I spent a lot of time on the blog site, looking for answers to why my sentence was edited as it was.  The answer was soon very clear.  The sentence I wrote was twenty-seven words.  To make that sentence clearer, I could have easily expanded it to over fifty words.

What I got from my research was simple.  People don’t like to read more than twenty words at one time.  Like my family members, they get lost.  The results from the editor were sentences of 14, 12, 14, and 6 words.  That is a total of 46 words, but the reader more easily digests them.  I added sentences of 13, 9, and 6 words.  I think they all flow better.

Using one basic rule, KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid), I re-wrote The Alberta Connection, a Ryce Dalton novel.  It took three months.  Unfortunately, I have not yet found the courage to resubmit the manuscript.

The second big revelation was do not bore the reader with endless pages of back-story.  Try to make the back-story a small segment of the natural activities of the novel.  In The Pendergast Prerogatives, I had a foreword followed by almost seven pages of back-story.  Of course my family had trouble understanding it.  I had troubles understanding it, and I wrote it.

I completely rewrote The Alberta Connection, a Ryce Dalton novel, followed by a complete rewrite of A Question for Kelly, a Klete Wilkins novel.  Both of those novels are available for review.   Take a look at http://rclintpeters.wordpress.com.

So, what have I learned?

#1) No sentence should exceed 20 words.  I spend an inordinate amount of time clicking on Tools>Word Count in my word processor.  I strive for 20 words or fewer, but sometimes over-shoot, and hit 22.  Then, it is time to see if I can cut that sentence into two parts.

#2) Do not bore my readers with back-story.  I do not need to write two pages explaining why my character did what he/she did.  It is actually easier to create dialogue to explain it.  I have my characters working off of each other to provide the back-story.  Moreover, they tell it a lot better than I do.

#3) Pay attention to the sentence composition. I have found that I have been putting the subject of the sentence in the wrong place.  The subject needs to be at the front of the sentence.  I don’t have an illustration handy, but sometimes, my sentences sounded a little like Yoda.

I am in the midst of rewriting The Pendergast Prerogatives.  It was my first novel.  I am amazed at the mistakes I made, not because I made mistakes, but because they are so easily fixed.  When I get Prerogatives finished, I only have four more novels to edit.

I have included samples of The Alberta Connection and A Question for Kelly on my blog.  Take a look and see if they are novels that you would like to review.  My genre, I think, is adventure.  I do include a little computer and Internet technical information.  However, I try not to overwhelm the reader with stuff they are not interested in.

I have purposely omitted the name of the blog that did so much for my writing.  If you would like to know more, check on my blog, listed above.  Or send me an email.

Note: A reviewer mentioned recently that they would never publish a review unless they considered the book to deserve a 4 or 5 star review.  I think that only 4 or 5-star reviews are not honest reviews.  If I had gotten only a 5-star review for The Pendergast Prerogatives or The Alberta Connection, they would never get better.  I think it is productive to review a novel using the format of a book review (available on my blog).  Then, add why you didn’t like the novel.  If the procedures required to write the novel are correct, but you didn’t like the subject, the novel might still be good.

#RClintPeters