When your writing lacks life

September 30, 2009 by Mohana Rajakumar (Writing Development Director)
Filed under: Writing Advice 

Mohana RajakumarWhile reading a friend’s manuscript, I realised it suffered from the same problem as several previous drafts of my novel: the writing was dead.

I don’t mean that it wasn’t grammatically correct or it didn’t evoke some spontaneous laughter. Rather the writer behind the words on the page was distant. As a reader I couldn’t sense her emotions; the story never went beyond the safe boundaries of expression. To put it another way, there was nothing at stake for the writer – she wasn’t taking any risks. And therefore I as a reader was likely to put the manuscript down.

How does material end up lifeless?

  • First, it has likely been overworked too many times in a short period of time. The writer is going over the text word by word, and such constant editing can squeeze out vivid language or hamper forward momentum in the manuscript. The best remedy for this is to leave the text alone for a period; sometimes a few days or even a few months. Coming back to it with a fresh mind will help eliminate some of the punitive eye.
  • The second most common difficulty is that the writer is afraid of taking risks either because of political, religious, or social boundaries they are unwilling to cross, or because of the pressure of putting one’s name next to a text which will live in perpetuity. The simple fact is, the stories that resonate with us are those which take us to places we have not yet been. Think of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, which traced so much within the course of the main character’s coming of age and discovery of family secrets.

Now you don’t have to give your main character such complexity in order to take a few risks in your manuscript. It can be as simple as giving him/her a secret that no one else knows but you as the author. This will colour dramatic moments in a way that they may be currently lacking.

Another simple technique is to ask yourself in each scene what is at stake for the various characters involved. If there is no great danger: either of someone’s long buried secret being revealed, or fortune, life, or honour being lost, then there is little motivation for the reader to keep on.

Ask yourself: What is at risk? And then when you are ready, what else?

The most effective stories have something everyone can lose. I discovered this the hard way in writing my own first novel. In early drafts the story revolved around the break-up of the main character with her college boyfriend.

While people praised the writing, one very helpful reader early on said, ‘It doesn’t feel like it goes far enough.’ I put the manuscript away for eight months because it was more than I could bear to think of reworking it. But this spring when I dusted it off, those words reverberated with me. So I introduced another character, a second boyfriend. But he wasn’t the right one either, I discovered. Now the central character goes through three romances, one conversion, and then – oh wait, I shouldn’t tell you – the fun really begins.

Mohana Rajakumar

(writer & publishing director for a new Bloomsbury venture)

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Comments

10 Comments on When your writing lacks life

  1. barnesdavid on Sep 30, 2009 at 11:53am

    2. I was recently on an excellent writing weekend led by Salley Vickers who spoke about releasing the child in us as part of finding our voice as individual writers.

    I think one of the most challenging things to achieve is to find an authentic and compelling voice which is free to engage the reader.

  2. kat on Oct 2, 2009 at 00:51am

    3. I used to worry this was happening to my novels.

    Then I started messing with a non-novel project that required me putting work up quickly, with little revision — and found out I’d been right to worry.

    Don’t get me wrong — a lot of the unrevised stuff is clunky, clumsy, or just plain bad (and would be ten times work if I hadn’t spent the previous eight years beating my stuff to death with the Good Writing Stick.) But it’s got a lot of life, enough that I can read through a year later and find myself liking it… not something I can say for my longer works. It’s also a project I wasn’t taking seriously, in the sense that I don’t expect it to be published, so I took risks I wouldn’t have when novel-writing.

    There’s a middle ground in there somewhere. Next project will have to be finding it.

  3. Ravi Bedi on Oct 2, 2009 at 04:05am

    4. Mohana,

    I get your point about constant editing; I suffer from the same phenomenon. I end up deleting interesting episodes and passages that do not directly relate to the plot. The solution, as you said very rightly, is to forget about the damn thing for a couple of months. More often than not, however, I start rewriting the whole thing and wonder if I should have devoted my time brushing up my golf swing, or painting instead.

    Thank you for sharing.

  4. Mohana on Oct 3, 2009 at 19:24pm

    5. It’s true that finding the middle ground is tough. Sometimes this can only come from experience with your own craft. For me the first rush through can be the freshest which slowly looses vibrancy as I let the editor creep in.

    This weekend I helped a friend work on her plot and realized that while there is a time for talking through ideas, the messy work of letting a story run off the rails is what often captures the emotional center. And this is what keeps us hooked as readers.

    Ravi’s right: sometimes we would be better off working on a golf swing or exercising to lose a few pounds and coming back. By rewriting everything? I sense a perfectionist… There are too many projects I want to do for me to have that kind of precision. But more power to you!

  5. Brian A. on Oct 7, 2009 at 17:55pm

    6. I’m not sure that I am that comfortable about someone blogging about how an unnamed friend’s work is not cutting the ice. Since you say you’re a publishing director, I do hope you are more professional at work than you have been on here. This is meant to be a site to support writers, not to allude to ‘friends’ of yours who don’t have the supposed insight that you do. Poor form.

  6. ravibedi on Oct 8, 2009 at 15:54pm

    7. Thanks a ton, Mohana. By the way, I weighed 62 Pounds in 1962, and still weigh about the same at five-feet-ten, so no need to lose weight. And yes, I need that power.

  7. Laura K on Oct 11, 2009 at 00:07am

    8. Really??!!! Pounds??!!! Gosh.

  8. Sabin on Oct 17, 2009 at 06:06am

    9. Mohana,

    I think what you said it right. I just left my debut manuscript for about six months untouched–fed up with doubts and more self doubts. I picked it up yesterday, and began working on it with more life and love!

    Thanks,

    Sabin

  9. ravibedi on Oct 19, 2009 at 14:01pm

    10. Laura, sorry. It’s Kgs. I’d be at the bottomof the Arebian Sea with all those pounds!

  10. Laura K on Oct 19, 2009 at 16:44pm

    11. Ha ha, I did wonder! Though I think at 62 pounds you’d weigh about the same as a small child?!! I had an image of a bean pole!

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