Writer mentorship group task

I keep banging that same drum – what drum? – the edit, edit, edit, revise, revise, revise, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite drum.

Are you bored with it yet? I know I am.

Let me put it all into a different perspective then.

If you keep going over the same story time after time, you’re going to get bored – I totally get that and I agree!

The problem is, if you get bored after re-working it once then you can be absolutely certain your audience will be bored too.

If you cannot bear to re-read your story, why would anyone else want to?

Remember that point when you need to get stuck in to your edits. You are the only one that can do your story justice. Do not let it down, it’s counting on you!

Please don’t drop it off at your Editor as soon as you finish writing and type The End - it’s not fair on your Editor, your story or your pocket. Trust me, if you give that first draft to your editor, they will rub their hands together with the prospect of taking your money – and they will have earned it!

If you want to publish your work (and why wouldn’t you? It’s a great story!) you really do NEED to go back over your work - as a reader – to make sure everything flows and captures the audience. As I said, if it’s boring already, make it NOT boring! This is the chance to do just that!

Plot holes – like potholes, they can damage the wheels of the car that is your story.

For example, if your protagonist speaks to another character in the beginning of the book, you cannot then have that character arrive as a stranger to the protagonist.

Watch out for name changes too. I’ve changed the name of a couple of characters in my book and then confused the hell out of myself when the original name crops up unexpectedly.

Your story must be absolutely consistent before it goes out to your eagerly-awaiting audience, your readership. The term fine-tooth comb was invented just for this eventuality.*

Unless your story is played out in one room, you may want to give the readers an idea of where the story, characters and action is. Personally, I (often) place my characters in places I’ve visited so that I can give detailed and accurate description of the where everything happens.

Know your characters. Get to know their personalities – just like you would with any new person you’ve just been introduced to. I don’t go into great detail about their physical description unless it’s absolutely imperative to the story – Red has red hair, Erzebet has dark, almost black hair and is diminutive, petite – but that’s as far as it goes for MY characters. Yours may be different, it may be important to describe the vivid scar down one cheek, or the missing left hand…

Round-out your characters so they have things that make them smile, laugh, cry. Give your readers reason to like/dislike your character and they will follow them to the ends of the earth – or at least to the end of the story. Once you hook the readers, you can ramp up the excitement and lead them headlong into the story without fear of them dropping the book (or launching it) in frustration or boredom.

Feedback. Ask people to read your work – I do! Get someone who writers stories that you admire and ask if they’d like a feedback partner – give and take, one hand washes the other.

Post snippets of your work on your blog and ask your ‘live’ audience if it works, if anything stands out as not working, if there’s anything they really hate. Then work with that feedback.

If one person tells you something isn’t working, but five people love it, take a look to see why that one didn’t like it.

I enjoy the comments that say they love my work, it’s wonderful, I’m brilliant at what I do – of course that’s nice, but the one that says, “Actually, that doesn’t work for me,” is more useful to me because it makes me improve my writing.

I have a task for you.

I’d like you to join in with this if you can/want to.

I have a book filled with ’Things that never were.’ It’s a dog-eared book, I’ve had it ages and I love it. Give me a page number and I’ll try to write a story about it.

The second part of this task is:

Grab one of your favourite books and use the page numbers in reply to this post as your own subject prompt.

Use the Story-mentor tag and ‘story prompt – page numbers’ in the title (or first line, so I can spot it) and I’ll take a look.

One more thing, just so I know you’ve actually read my post, if you don’t give me a number, I’ll assume you’re just fishing for upvotes.

*Disclaimer – I write fiction, sometimes I blatantly lie… try to keep up.