I’ve been a news journalist and editor then a non-fiction book editor for a very long time. This might explain why I rebel against concision in my fiction. Among my sins are overwriting and over-plotting. Enough about me, here’s are the screw-ups that never made it to their nascency. Rather than forget them, I thought I’d let all of you highly cultured, incredibly literate people judge me. Have fun now!
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Barleycorn Buildings
The first few chapters of a novel that ever had the chance to end about family, ego, homelessness and hubris.
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The Assumption
A novel that never quite made it. It was about love, hope, self-image and memory’s false constructions.
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The Little Man
Nobody he knew would have dared to steal Keith Kinsey’s car. Like his house, his holiday villa on the south coast, his children, his wife, his space at the greyhound track, even his seat at West Ham, that car as sacrosanct. Do not touch. On pain of death, or at least torture. Kinsey stood and
Writing, fiction, novels, short stories and poetry that never quite made it… and Why
A little mentioned problem with writing fiction (and poetry) is writing too much and editing too little. Cutting often feels like a savage act of filicide. This is what this section of the site is all about: the work that didn’t beat the cut.
I screw up a lot when writing fiction. I overwrite because there’s no word count to adhere to. I introduce too many things. This means that I lose sight of the plot and subplots. Some characters end up being so much like other characters that there are no clear motivations for any of them (even I find them hard to discriminate between).
Therefore I benefit from editing by a third-party because that third-party is first and foremost a reader. A good editor will always make sure that the reader gets as much out of the writing as the self-indulgent fiction writer his or herself.
However, some things never get as far as an editor. I won’t let them out of the house. Some pieces of writing are so nearly bordering on ‘just right’, so close to ‘it’ that it takes a few out loud readings before I realise that instead of flying high, they just fall off a cliff.
Editing those slabs of text is not going to work. The editor is not a re-writer.
So, here’s an important lesson I’ve learned from 40 years of professional and personal writing: Adding more bits (characters, interactions, locations) rarely helps achieve clear plot and compelling characters. They can actually muddy the backbone plot, the main event.
Bad poetry (a side-eye view)
(When it comes to poetry, the same is true: too many adjectives, adverbs, similes, metaphors all combine to overgrow clarity. There’s little worse writing in the world than bad poetry – like a sharp clawed lion in the warm red glove of a fragile nightfall, it can take your face off or at least make you run from the savannah of poetry…. see?)