Paul Whybrow
Full Member
For the last month, I've been weeding out filler words from the manuscript of my first novel The Perfect Murderer. This editing was prompted by the 43 Words You Should Cut From Your Writing Immediately link that Carol Rose posted. When I started this exercise, I thought it would take a couple of days, but after noticing about 25 other words and phrases to remove I am still plugging away. My manuscript is now 9,000 words shorter.
The latest hunt has been for hyphens - words that need them, and those that don't. This is time consuming to do, and is very boring too with none of the joy of creative writing. It set me to thinking about how differently I've felt about my novel at different stages of writing it, then doing multiple edits, while trying to interest literary agents and publishers in it.
I'm a pantser as a writer, plotting loosely while still having a firm idea of what the overall themes will be. In making outline notes for the novel, I did more sketching of the natures of my characters than making a detailed plot. My protagonists direct the story as much as me. This stage felt a bit like drawing a rough diagram of a building on a scrap of paper, something that I would inhabit with fictional people who would construct the walls for me.
Actually writing the novel, I felt both involved and removed from the process. My characters sometimes did things that I hadn't anticipated, but which were true to their natures. Writing a psychological thriller means strewing red herrings all over the place, as people try to work out what's going on, so I didn't worry too much about any mazes and dead-end corridors that appeared. All the same, I felt a bit like I was directing the building of my house/novel from a distance. I'd read back through it at the end of the day, to see if it made sense, like trying to learn the layout of a new building.
Once I was finished, the editing began. This felt like being a building inspector, correcting features of my story-house - moving an illuminating window from one chapter to another, to reveal details that made my murderer act the way that he did. Overall, I thought that my story worked, but as with a newly-built house I knew there'd be plenty of bedding-in to come, with further adjustments needed.
Trying to flog the novel to literary agents, through queries and submissions of a writing sample from my novel, required so much polishing and hard work for so little response, that I felt like the world's worst double-glazing salesman. While trying to ingratiate myself with these gatekeepers, my story house sat neglected and empty with no visitors. I didn't read it anymore, and though I was proud of my creation, it also felt a bit like a museum to old thoughts. I wanted to make something new.
The recent round of intense scrutiny of my manuscript feels more like examining each and every brick for integrity in a forensic way. I've become numb to whether the story works as a story, as I pick sentences and individual words apart with tweezers and scalpel.
So, my novel has gone from a rough sketch, to a building project followed by a second-fixing, correction, mop-up exercise, onto being a product that I hawked from door to door, and now I'm micro-managing the elements that I used to construct my monster like some neurotic Doctor Frankenstein.
Have any of the Colonists gone through similar shifts of attitude to their work?
The latest hunt has been for hyphens - words that need them, and those that don't. This is time consuming to do, and is very boring too with none of the joy of creative writing. It set me to thinking about how differently I've felt about my novel at different stages of writing it, then doing multiple edits, while trying to interest literary agents and publishers in it.
I'm a pantser as a writer, plotting loosely while still having a firm idea of what the overall themes will be. In making outline notes for the novel, I did more sketching of the natures of my characters than making a detailed plot. My protagonists direct the story as much as me. This stage felt a bit like drawing a rough diagram of a building on a scrap of paper, something that I would inhabit with fictional people who would construct the walls for me.
Actually writing the novel, I felt both involved and removed from the process. My characters sometimes did things that I hadn't anticipated, but which were true to their natures. Writing a psychological thriller means strewing red herrings all over the place, as people try to work out what's going on, so I didn't worry too much about any mazes and dead-end corridors that appeared. All the same, I felt a bit like I was directing the building of my house/novel from a distance. I'd read back through it at the end of the day, to see if it made sense, like trying to learn the layout of a new building.
Once I was finished, the editing began. This felt like being a building inspector, correcting features of my story-house - moving an illuminating window from one chapter to another, to reveal details that made my murderer act the way that he did. Overall, I thought that my story worked, but as with a newly-built house I knew there'd be plenty of bedding-in to come, with further adjustments needed.
Trying to flog the novel to literary agents, through queries and submissions of a writing sample from my novel, required so much polishing and hard work for so little response, that I felt like the world's worst double-glazing salesman. While trying to ingratiate myself with these gatekeepers, my story house sat neglected and empty with no visitors. I didn't read it anymore, and though I was proud of my creation, it also felt a bit like a museum to old thoughts. I wanted to make something new.
The recent round of intense scrutiny of my manuscript feels more like examining each and every brick for integrity in a forensic way. I've become numb to whether the story works as a story, as I pick sentences and individual words apart with tweezers and scalpel.
So, my novel has gone from a rough sketch, to a building project followed by a second-fixing, correction, mop-up exercise, onto being a product that I hawked from door to door, and now I'm micro-managing the elements that I used to construct my monster like some neurotic Doctor Frankenstein.
Have any of the Colonists gone through similar shifts of attitude to their work?
And I STILL edit that puppy what feels like a million times before sending it off.
) 
