Change Susan, or approaches to the second draft

The cutting process that followed my first draft readthrough didn’t reduce the novel to a few pages, as I’d feared. In fact, my second draft grew, because I couldn’t snip out a chunk and leave things there. Often a new scene was needed, or at least an additional paragraph, to deliver the impact the cut section had lacked.

Sometimes I needed to increase the tension, alter the pace, escalate the plot or develop the characters—occasionally all of these—in a way the excised scenes had failed to do. And if nothing else, the new scene was necessary to soften any jagged edges the cut scene had left behind.

It can be disconcerting to make a cut or a change which generates a knock-on effect for later sections of your novel. But never be afraid to alter or delete a scene on page 32 which subsequently disturbs a passage on page 109. Because when you rejig page 109, you might produce a brilliant scene which wouldn’t have existed without all your astute modifications and excisions. And it will emerge as the result of a new, improved knowledge and understanding of your novel.

Here's an invented example:

Page 32, first draft: ‘When Susan moved back into Richard’s house, he said they should take it one day at a time. She wasn’t sure how else it could be taken. How did other people ‘take it’? She felt as if she were on probation, but said nothing. She agreed that she shouldn’t unpack. He made space for her suitcase in a cupboard on the landing and she went there every morning to fetch her toothbrush and select her clothes for the day. At night she went back there to put her washing in a plastic bag. She didn’t touch his coffee grinder, his dimmer switches, his remote control. She waited patiently for the day her suitcase would emerge and her belongings would actually belong.’

During my initial readthrough, I might decide that Susan needs to be a less passive character:

Page 32, second draft: ‘When Susan moved back into Richard’s house, she insisted on unpacking. 'One day at a time’ shouldn’t curtail access to everyday essentials. Even so, she didn’t allow her possessions to encroach on his: her hairbrush lived on the corner of the chest-of-drawers, not beside his, in case the bristles might touch. Likewise her toothbrush, the head angled away from his in the mug on the bathroom sill. She bought a jute drawstring bag for her laundry, rather than use the flimsy carrier he’d provided. She kept most of her books on the shelf he had cleared for her, but had to wedge her Muriel Sparks on top of his Proust. Her economy tub of hand cream didn’t fit in the bathroom cabinet and was not allowed to sit on the corner of the bath. It had to stay in her suitcase. Not a defeat, but a single compromise.’

After making these changes, I would check all Susan’s scenes to ensure she was a little more active and spirited.

For example:

Page 109, first draft: ‘When she moved out, it didn’t take Susan long to pack. It took her no time at all. Only her hairbrush and pyjamas had eventually emerged on a permanent basis. The pyjamas would smell of this house. Last night she had extracted hair from his brush and wound it through her own. She thought about throwing them in his bin. In the end, she packed them. She might not want the memories, but maybe she needed the reminders.’

Page 109, second draft: ‘When she moved out, Susan packed her suitcase, then immediately unpacked it. She pushed her hairbrush and Richard’s together, interlocking the bristles—likewise their toothbrushes—and left them cradled in his washbasin. She inserted her books between his. She liberated her gigantic tub of hand cream and put it on his bedside table with the lid off. She left her clothes strewn under his bed. All she packed was his remote control. It would be of no use to her, and no use to him. Not a memory, but a reminder.’

I’m not suggesting these are good scenes, nor that the second drafts have improved them, but they are examples of how straightforward it can be to make alterations in small sections, taking account of other scenes which will need modifying as a result.

The best tip I can give for maintaining control of this modification process is to flag all the necessary changes in your novel plan first, rather than diving straight into the manuscript. I will talk about how I made my plan in a later post, but it might be helpful to mention here that when I was at the first draft stage, I made a note on the plan whenever I deviated from it. This meant I had an accurate summary of all the action and character development. When it was time to make cuts and alterations, I could see at a glance which sections, both earlier and later, those changes would affect. I highlighted them in the plan, then used this a reference guide to ensure no scenes were missed.

First draft - cutting a path through the forest

It took five months to write the first draft of Instructions for the Working Day. I edited constantly to keep the manuscript reasonably tidy. If I leave gaps to fill in later, or scenes left unfinished, or notes-to-self, I can’t look at it again.

I don’t mean it was perfect in terms of plotting, pacing, character development or narrative tension. Far from it. I knew there would be plenty of issues to confront.

I printed out and read this first draft in a few sittings without making ANY alterations to the text or annotations in the margins.

At this stage, it wasn’t about fiddling with sentences. It was all about feeling the rhythm and pacing, the throbbing heart of the story. Tweaking a single word here and there would have led to other small distractions and the point of this first draft readthrough would have been lost. I wouldn't have detected large-scale plot problems or major issues with character development.

All I did was jot down the odd note on a separate piece of paper. These notes were brief and intimidating, such as: whole chapter horribly overwritten.

After this readthrough, the next stage for the first draft was CUTTING. Cutting all the unnecessary words, every bloated paragraph and inconsequential scene. The best advice I can give is CUT AND FORGET. You won’t regret it.

As well as the obvious horrors, I also removed some sentences I really liked. If they were not serving the novel, or were causing narrative clutter, or simply there to sound nice, rather than actually earning their keep within the story, they had to go.

Here is an invented example of how I might cut a paragraph:

‘John walked all the way down the grassy slope to the neglected pond at the end of the long, terraced garden. The surface of the water was clogged with old autumn leaves. The white plastic chair he’d bought in the sale at the garden centre and sat on all last summer had fallen on its side. It must have been blown over by the strong winds they’d had in November. Susan had left her russet cardigan down here in late August, which was the very last time she came. Now it was floating about on the water, almost indistinguishable from the leaves clustering round it. She always wore autumn colours; bronze, copper, burgundy, orange. It was drifting here and there with its sleeves stretched out in supplication, or as if it had finally given up waiting to be rescued.’

I might have changed this to:

‘John walked down the slope to the pond, its surface clogged with old leaves. The plastic chair he’d sat on last summer lay on its side, blown over by the wind. Susan had left her cardigan here the last time she came. Now it floated among the leaves, sleeves stretched out in supplication, or surrender.’

This paragraph is now half the length and has a more striking rhythm. I have shed the narrative clutter, which was guilty of diluting the melancholy atmosphere of John’s loneliness without Susan. The mood is is in starker relief now, which enhances the slightly disturbing image of the floating cardigan. Cutting has—hopefully—given the paragraph more tension and pace, greater clarity and vigour.

There is something satisfying about cutting. It’s a way of sharpening individual scenes and, most importantly, re-establishing the theme, or big picture, which can easily become muddied during construction of the first draft. The cutting process clarifies the way ahead, like clearing a path through a forest.

Where do ideas come from?

I am sometimes asked where I find ideas for my writing: where do they come from and how are they accessed?I would say that I don’t really have ideas for stories. There isn’t a particular reality which I choose to write about. But I do have feelings, or a sensitivity to suffering; in Instructions for the Working Day, for example, my characters experience the persistent pain of the past and the burden of guilt.

From these feelings, the characters gradually emerge. I may well have a setting in mind by this stage, but the storyline is always rooted in emotions.

So where do these feelings come from? There are two sources for me and the first is memory. I can never be sure how accurate these memories are, but it doesn’t matter. It only matters that they keep surfacing. They don’t need to be recollections of major events. They can be scraps and splinters, residual moments, casualties of a long-forgotten time. Insignificant then, but valuable now. I take notice of them, mulling them over constantly, sometimes for years. There has to be a reason why they stayed.

For this novel, one of the childhood memories was from 1972, on a car trip in Austria, when my father gave a lift to a desperate man in a Tyrolean hat. He said he had left his wife up a mountain. He was loud and constantly gesticulating. My mother squeezed into the back with my brother and me, while he sat in the front and gave frantic directions. His presence filled the car. He suddenly recognised the mountain and my father had to brake hard. We never knew his full story, but what has remained is the sense of our day shifting, our quiet car-world now invaded, our horror at my father’s impulsiveness, the hot squash of our bodies in the sun-baked back seat, the fear of strangers.

The other source is reading: fiction, non-fiction, articles, interviews, messages. I read very closely and carefully. It takes a long time. I re-read anything which particularly holds my attention, whether it’s a phrase, sentence, paragraph or whole page. Sometimes I re-read it multiple times to discover why it appeals to me, why it has captured my attention. Usually, the reason is behind the words. Something isn’t being said. Something is loose and drifting.

Often, it is the final page of a story which inspires me the most. For example, the novel which made me want to become a writer is The Prevailing Wind by Joan Lingard. I borrowed it from the library in 1973 and, shamefully, have never taken it back. At the end, a postcard of Paris is sent from one friend to another with an ambiguous message, a pinprick puncturing the top of the Eiffel Tower and the beautiful line: I am journeying slowly eastwards.

I still wonder whether the ambiguity is there because the character is enigmatic throughout the book and the author is staying faithful to the puzzle of him, or because the author trusts the reader to decide the outcome for themselves. And the great thing is that a decision never has to be made. There is no need for finality. Only possibilities.

And infinite possibilities are where ideas really come from. They come when you loosen your mind from the finite and the expected. This is why reading helps: because of all that is unexplained, all that is drifting, all that is waiting for a writer to catch it.