As the weary first draft battle continues on, I’ve already learnt a few things about my new book that I’ll need to address when I’m finished…

Retrospect is a cruel thing. And overthinking is even crueller. They’re both my bedfellows at the moment. Especially when it comes to this new book, You Can Hear Chopin from the Attic. As I mentioned in previous posts, including my latest update, writing my new World War II thriller has been a labour of love. At one point I considered starting the whole thing from scratch, despite reaching the 100,000-word mark.

The key takeaway with any first draft is to just get it down on paper. Don’t look to please your beta readers or whoever you turn to for feedback. It’s highly unlikely they’re going to say it’s perfect. Your characters will be inconsistent, and your plots will have holes in them. However, it’s good to be mindful of these possible issues. Here are five from my own work-in-progress.

1. We may be following the wrong protagonist

I took you through my main characters in my new book more than once, so I won’t do it again. Least of all because the hierarchy might shift in the re-drafting process!

The main storyline in You Can Hear Chopin concerns Heinrich Oeunhausen, the owner of the hotel where most of the action takes place, and his wife Sofie. As a schizophrenia sufferer, Sofie would be considered ‘unworthy of life’, or words to that effect, under the Nazi regime. And so, to protect her, Heinrich conceals her existence from all but a few close allies, yet hides her in plain sight in his own hotel. He exploits the trust of his family friend Standartenführer Upfauer to keep the hotel’s Nazi clientele from throwing their weight around. In essence, keeping Sofie relatively safe.

However, the emotional and developmental journey I’m taking Heinrich on might not be that interesting or thrilling when told through his eyes. Like my other books, there’s more than one point-of-view character in You Can Hear Chopin. Heinrich and the other major protagonist Cordelia Knesebeck make up the bulk of them. But the one character that observes their actions and decisions the most is the concierge, Alois. A character I happen to enjoy writing a great deal. Not least because he serves as an outlet to satirise even present-day attitudes towards hospitality workers. He says and thinks all the things I would have loved to have said to customers in my hotel days! I have half a mind to rework the story and tell it all through Alois’ eyes, which will (hopefully) add more suspense and mystery. Undecided yet, but there’s a good chance I’ll give it a go.

2. This new book is too long

Can imagine looks of horror and astonishment when I say the plan for this new book is, currently, 73 pages long. That includes all the notes I made during my research, links to relevant articles and so on; a list of dishes that could potentially make up menus for the hotel, plus whatever cocktails and other drinks were available; extensive character bios, and, most notably, an in-depth treatment for plot and character for each of the 110 chapters.

Yes, you read that correctly. 110.

BUT!

I have already decided that what I considered the final quarter of the novel can be cut. Not necessarily forever. It would comprise a courtroom drama, prison turmoil for certain characters, and missing crucial evidence with a ticking clock to find it. Arguably the most thrilling part of the book. But it’d take place two years after the main action. Half the major characters wouldn’t be involved. In my opinion, it would serve just as well as a potential sequel.

3. Repetition, repetition, repetition…

As we don’t change settings all that much in the course of the story, I often find myself repeating phrases and words. Even some that, when I first used them, seemed quite fresh and clever. There’ll be three questions I’ll ask myself when I do my editing and redrafting in these cases. A) Can I shift the action elsewhere, to a different setting? B) Can I touch on another storyline in between and break this up? Or C) Can some of these scenes in the same setting be condensed down into one?

Plus, I keep a trusty list of unusual or uncommon words in my phone that’s proven useful in the past. We’ll turn to that again in due course.

4. Some characters need more attention

I came into this new book with a very clear idea of which characters are major and which are minor. But over the course of writing, some have proven much nicer to write than others. And indeed others just haven’t featured as much in the story as they should. It’ll be one of the first things I make a note of in my re-drafting process. Where could we pick these characters’ threads up earlier or more often?

5. Some characters seem familiar

This one actually came from a follower off the back of another post. A truly invaluable bit of feedback. It was pointed out that the character of Heinrich seemed to bear similarities to another character from one of my other books! Namely, George Whitlocke, butler to Lady Vyrrington in Lust & Liberty and Sin & Secrecy. And while I can’t confirm or deny whether or not it’s correct yet, it definitely had me wondering. How many of my other You Can Hear Chopin characters have the same voices and personalities as the Berylford cast? Is Standartenführer Upfauer a National Socialist analogue for Abel Stirkwhistle? Could Mrs Urmstone have been reincarnated in Cordelia Knesebeck by accident?

I like to think I’ve created enough of a disparity between them. But at the same time, on paper, maybe there are dangerous similarities! It’s something I never thought to look at before. A cracking piece of feedback, and sincerest thanks go to that follower.

Thank you for reading. Let me know what you think. And if you want to know more about my new book, leave a comment or follow my Facebook and Instagram pages. And read further posts out more about this novel. 

How do you turn your first drafts into passable prose? Watching out for writing rules that, no matter how hard you protest, you really shouldn’t break if you can help it. And when you’re first starting out, you may not be able to help it at all…

I’m going to come out and say it from the off: your first book will probably not be very good. That is, the first ever story you put fingers to keyboard over. Because, for the most part, this is untamed, uncured material, in which you’ve probably broken a load of laws and rules of the art. And that is totally fine; it’s part of the process. I have defied a number of writing rules myself; sometimes knowingly, other times, not so much. Indeed, even now, there are a fair few things I’d like to change about the work that I’ve since published.

I have always clashed with people who are quick to tear a first draft to shreds, as if it’s meant to be perfect first time around. The maxim I follow for the first draft process is: write with your heart, not your head. Get the story down on the page, and sort it out properly in the re-drafting process. I’ve often found those who don’t do it this way often kill their stories off before they’ve given it a proper chance.

All the same, it never hurts to alert you to some of the common, important writing rules that you may break even without meaning to. I have pinpointed five for the purposes of this article:

FACT DUMPING

Exposition is one of the chief elements of narrative. To give readers information necessary to understanding the characters and the story. However, especially in today’s literature, it ought to be given in moderation. Allow your readers to work more stuff out for themselves than just handing it to them on a platter (which we’ll discuss more further down). Massive blocks of backstory and description can put the modern reader off. There’s not much sense in delivering a lengthy chapter about the main character’s family history if there’s nothing really relevant in it. And if it is crucial to the story, think of another way to deliver the information. Spread it out across a number of smaller scenes, maybe via dialogue or action, for example.

USING ADVERBS

I have highlighted the use of adverbs on this blog before. There are occasions in which to use them is acceptable. If you’re describing the way a character has said something, but there is no specific verb of its own to illustrate it properly, then you have little choice. This is one of the writing rules I have tended to break continually (see — I just did it again). It is a crutch on which writers can lean on in the course of their drafting process. You can always find more interesting verbs or stronger ways to describe speech and action when it comes to editing.

SHOW, DON’T TELL

Prior to doing my Masters in Creative Writing, I used to think the Show, Don’t Tell rule was another one of those pretentious rules that reading addicts created and posted on the Internet to justify why they didn’t like something they read. It turns out this is actually the accepted approach in modern writing. Rather than tell your readers something or other about a character, make them do or say something in order for your readers to analyse it and come to the conclusion themselves. It creates new challenges for you as a writer, but also may open up new avenues in terms of narrative. Your story may go in a different direction to what you had planned.

CHANGING POINT-OF-VIEW / FOCALISER MID-SCENE

Another one I’m guilty of. And while I don’t justify it, I will say, when you read a lot of 18th and 19th century literature, as I do, there are a lot of scenes in which the character whose point-of-view you’re following changes. Sometimes for no significant reason. I’m currently reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime & Punishment, and I can tell you it happens quite often in that book. At times, it’s a minor, background character, whose perspective we view for a matter of sentences, for no especial reason. Because I was given to understand this as a bad habit, these days, I make sure I have designated a focaliser (or focalisers) for each chapter, and, when I make the switch, I make sure it’s as significant as a chapter break, so that the reader can follow it. Fans of the A Song of Ice and Fire books will know that George R.R. Martin takes it one step further and names the Point-of-View character for each chapter.

In short, try to follow one character’s perspective in a chapter. And if you must have more than one POV, make the switch make sense. When you come to read through your work, you’ll find you may have changed the focaliser without even realising. It’s something to watch out for.

OVERDESCRIBING AND OVEREXPOSING

This calls back to the first point about Fact Dumping. Many of my readers have commended me on my skills in descriptive writing. And it’s true, I do like a rich description for my characters and settings. But even I look back on The Berylford Scandals and recognise that I spent far too long in the opening chapters talking about how the Stirkwhistles looked and acted, instead of letting the narrative do that for me. So, in learning my lesson, for You Can Hear Chopin from the Attic, the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of the characters get revealed more gradually as the story goes on. Meanwhile, the initial descriptions are more to-the-point and (hopefully) don’t give too much away. I advise other writers to observe a similar approach. No one needs three adjectives per body part and item of clothing. If you must describe all this from the off, make sure it’s worth the reader’s effort. Otherwise you’re just going to bore them.

 WHAT OTHER WRITING RULES ARE OUT THERE?

Do you know any other rules or laws of writing that get broken, even by total accident? Let me know your pet peeves in the comments section.