Ep. 201: How Do You Know When You’re Overcomplicating Your Book?

Bonus mini-episode, brought to you by my Patrons at the $5+ levels! 

Including: 

• Will I lose the humor in my dark comedy if I move to thriller? 
• How should I sensitively write dialect? 
• How can I know when I’m overcomplicating my book? 

Join now! http://patreon.com/rachael

Transcript

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

 [00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode # 201 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. So glad you’re here today for this mini episode in which I will be answering the questions from patrons, like you, who subscribed at the $5 a month and up level, you get to use me for all of your questions, whatever they are.

[00:00:36] So let’s jump into it. I’ve got a couple of longer questions from Johanna here and I’m really excited to answer them. So, the first one is, I am about to embark on the sixth draft of my novel Social Debt, which is a contemporary dark comedy, about a snarky barmaid who has to find out how long she can stay dead on the internet when she’s alive in real life. Aside to say, I want to read this when it comes out, because that is such a great premise. I love it. Okay. Going on. I’m part of a writer’s group and have also had recently had two really helpful one-on-ones with agents. A common piece of feedback I’ve had is that some of the action in the book felt too out of place, too horrific and strong to be in what is essentially a comic story, albeit a dark one, having resisted this at first, I am now in agreement and as such, I’ve been doing some rethinking and reworking of my plot. I’ve come up with a new storyline, but before I get to the long business of rewriting, I’m hoping for a second opinion or about whether this new plot has overcome the problem of essentially trying to squash two genres into a book or have I now in fact, just crossed over into a straight thriller. So Johanna sent me her two different ideas, the way it was and the way she’s thinking about doing it.

[00:01:55] And I won’t go into those because that is her book and we talked about it a little bit on email. However, my- the reason I’m reading this on air is that my opinion is, Johanna that you could not possibly write a straight thriller without the comic snarky darkness. And I don’t think you have to worry about that. Yes, you are writing something darker and more horrifying. Because, and I was just talking about this with somebody yesterday, when we introduce a terrible element, a dark, terrible element, the reader has to be prepared for that. We make a social contract with them when we start our books, if we are writing light, bright, light, bright, funny, funny, funny, funny. And then at the dark moment, there is a horrific murder, and there has been no evidence or thought of violence before this, the reader is going to be mighty put out. And that’s why thrillers worked so well. We’re kind of gearing them up the whole way through. It’s getting darker and darker and more and more fraught with tension. It sounds like you are going towards the more fraught with tension, which I think works really well for what you were talking about. However, you are such an automatically funny person who thinks in a funny way, and I am cheerfully jealous of that. I wish that I could do that. I think in a funny way, and I think in a dark way, and they don’t often overlap and I wish they did.

[00:03:23] I think that is a really wonderful superpower that you have. So no matter what, you are not going to cross over into a straight thriller, and I just wanted to reassure you about that. No matter what thriller you write, no matter how dark it is, it would still be darkly comedic. So embrace that hold onto it and absolutely lean into exactly that. So there are some more questions here. And she says, okay, so I’m feeling a bit paralyzed at the moment with the book as I have this big decision to make about which way to take the plot as per my original question. I’ve been fiddling about with early chapters and doing some research to help with one of the main characters, but I’m hesitant to get going properly on the next draft without making a decision, but it feels hard to decide without having done some writing.

[00:04:13] I know you said in your how to revise a novel webinar, that you should always do rewrites in order, but I wondered what you might think of writing a rough draft of a chapter from the middle, ie: one of the key scenes that would change to see how it feels. And if it seems promising, going back to those early chapters and working forward again until I reached that new chapter. I suspect the answer will be yes, go for it as the rules are, but there are no rules, but I thought it might be something too interesting to discuss on the podcast. Big things here. The rules are, there are no rules. However, there are very strong suggestions and in revision, one of my strong, very, very strong suggestions, is to not go back and re-revise during a draft. What happens if we do that as we get there is potential, there’s great potential. I see it happen hundreds of times that people go back to re-revise to try to make it exactly perfect with this new direction they’re taking it in and they never get out of that whirlpool because they don’t quite make it into what they want on that attempt. So then they start second guessing what they were trying to do. So they try to come up with a better new idea and then go back to those chapters and re-revise them again. But it’s not perfect because nothing is ever perfect. So they try to come up with a better idea again and I say this from not only watching many students do this, but from doing it myself.

[00:05:47] And that is why I believe in the multiple passes of revision from beginning to end and every time you get a great brand new idea, if no one’s ever heard me say this, well, listen up. If you’re moving through your book through a revision and you- you’re moving forward, always forward, you have a great idea that you wish you would have done and that you would like to try, make a post-it about it. That’s a great new idea, make a post-it, keep it with all your other posts-it of your great ideas that you’re reading all the time to refresh your memory about what’s there and then make yourself a note in the manuscript. I like to use all caps so I remember what I’m doing and I say, gosh, I wish I had done this in the last three chapters, I am moving forward from here as if I did. Then I know where I started and I pretend that I’ve already revised those chapters. What it means is that if this idea doesn’t work, I don’t have to go back and undo all the work I did. If I’d gone backwards to fix it. And I keep moving forward and I have a post-it, just there waiting for me that I will go in on the next draft and fix quickly all the way up to the point where I made the decision to move forward as if I had already done all the work behind it. If you have to listen to that again, to make sense of it, I don’t blame you, but it works. And Johanna, I already have very, very high hopes for you. And I know that you can do this because I think you said you’re on your sixth draft. Is that right? That already means that you know how to go through a draft and you know how to complete one.

[00:07:19] So to have a great idea, start where you are and start working with it and moving forward to the end. Means that you’re already confident that you will go back and do the seventh draft and catch yourself up to that idea that you had. I would encourage you trying that again, not a rule, but in my experience, this is a way that gets people through drafts faster. With more confidence. You’re actually moving forward with less clarity, which is okay. But it gets you to clarity faster by actually trying it and not going back and back and back and trying to fix it and I will also say people who are not in revision. This is how I write first drafts. I write a first draft, I have a great new idea, it changes the entire book. I pretend that the book has rewritten that way up until now I make a post-it, I make a note in the manuscript where I start a fresh as if everything behind me is perfect in the way that I want it to be now. And I move forward and that is how I get to the end of a crappy first draft. It means that I am Frankenstein creating a monster and nothing fits together. And there’s arms coming out of the eyebrow and legs sprouting out of the rib cage. And that’s all fixable. That’s actually really, really fun to fix. So that is what I suggest. Okay. 

[00:08:35] So another question from Johanna, and actually, as I write another question occurs to me. I currently have two characters in the book who have accents, at least traces of accents, which are not mine. So I’m just going to skim ahead here. We have a new castle Jordy accent the Jordy only comes out when he’s angry. Which given who he is fairly often and then there’s another character who is British Jamaican. Parents were Jamaican and came to English and came to England on the wind rush. This character was brought up in South London and he tosses around a lot of British Jamaican slang. So that was a paraphrase. Now, going back, what is your opinion of writers trying to write in dialects that aren’t theirs?

[00:09:15] I’ve done various bits of research, watching YouTube clips and TV shows or listening to audio books where people have those accents or use that sign. And sometimes I think it’s working well, other times I think I’m kidding myself and should just another way to make these voices distinct. Plus, of course, there’s the delicate issue of trying to write a book, which is truly representative of multicultural London, whilst- I just like, I just like the fact that I got to say whilst; whilst also not committing cultural appropriation. What are your thoughts and or tips? Fantastic question. And a very important question. And there’s a very simple solution that many, many authors use and I subscribed to it and basically it goes like this.

[00:09:57] When those characters are introduced, let us hear their accent in one or two sentences, and then remind us of that accent, every two to three chapters with a word or two. If you introduce the characters to us with the accent using, you know, the apostrophe to show dropped vowels or alternate spellings to show different pronunciations, we will remember those characters and our reader’s brains can hold. That this guy always speaks in a Jordy accent. I don’t even know if I’m saying the word Jordy, right? Honestly. But this person will have the Jordy accent. This person will have the British Jamaican slang and an accent. We will remember that. And then you don’t have to do the hard work of trying to put it into a phonetic dialect, which can be offensive, which can read as offensive. Also it can tire out the reader. We get tired of deciphering transcribed, dialects. The brain just doesn’t want to do it. So show it to us and then hint at it with one or two words. Every two to three chapters, I think is a good ratio. So the reader is re-reminded, but otherwise just write in straight up anglicized English and the reader will imbue that accent in their own head when they’re reading and you don’t risk offending anybody by doing it wrong. Make sure that those first sentences are really good, strong, and non-offensive random via sensitivity reader. If you’re not British Jamaican that is what I meant, but then otherwise let your reader do all the work. So you don’t have to, it’s a, it’s a wonderful answer and it works really, really well. 

[00:11:43] So I think that that is all your questions. So I’m going to scoot over and we’ve got one more question from Mel. Thank you for this, Mel. I’m getting questions from all over. I’ve gone from the UK. Now I’m going down to New Zealand. Where is the line between over-complicating things in a story and adding depth, richness, and good complexity? This makes an assumption that the latter is a good thing and adds value to the reader experience asking myself this question can occur in outlining drafting or in revision stages or all three. Oh yes. I love this question. So where’s the line between over-complicating and adding depth, richness and good complexity. So you are correct. The depth, the richness, and the good complexity is something that people love. Not all writers write with it. Not all writers have to write with it. However, if you’re drawn to writing with it, then you love it. And it should be in your books. That line between over-complicating though, and adding richness is something that is so easily blurred and stepped over. Especially in our first few books, there tends to be this thing that happens where we panic a little bit, that perhaps our conflict isn’t as conflicting as we would like it to be. So we think about throwing in a little twist or a surprise or a plot point that we didn’t see coming or, a thematic element that hasn’t been in this book before in order to bolster it, to make it stronger. And this is where the danger lies. I did this, I know in my second through fourth or fifth book, I know this because my editor and my agent would always send my books back to me saying, you know, take out some plot, take out some plot, take out some plot.

[00:13:29] You have too many things going on. While books can hold a whole hell of a lot, the book still has to be cohesive. It needs to cohere to this theme that you have in your book. If you are writing a first draft or even a second draft, and you don’t know what your theme is yet, that’s fine. It will come. But at some point you need to know what your theme is and what you’re actually arguing for in this book. And that includes novels that especially includes novels. You, no one wants to write or read a book that is about the power of the mother-daughter relationship plus the right for all men to bear arms plus the idea that war is a mockery of the gods plus define- exploring true communication and compatibility between people who are very different. You are doing too much with this book now, and those are the books I kind of, I used to write, I would put in a little dash of everything, hoping that the conflict then would seem richer because I had so much going on.

[00:14:45] But really what I wanted to tell was the story of a person finding her chosen family. And that is a story that I come back to over and over again. And I can’t throw in all of those other things I can throw in touches of things, but it can’t be the main point. So, but I’ll pull back on that and, and say, if you’re writing a first draft, throw in everything. Throw in the proverbial kitchen sink. You don’t know what’s going to stick and you don’t know what this book wants to be yet. So don’t hold back in the first draft. Just know that in that big, huge revision, the second draft where you pull your book apart and put it back together again, which is necessary for every good book. That’s the point at which you’re going to say, gosh, I was trying to do a little bit too much here and I was hoping I would get away with it and we never get away with it, people. Whenever I try to get away with something in a book, that is what the editor always points out and says, Oh, you don’t get to get away with that.

[00:15:43] And I would like to also say to everyone listening, you will have an editor. You will have an editor at some point, whether. You go the traditional route and you find an agent who then sells your book to an editor, and then that person will edit your book and help you make it as strong as it can be. Or if you hire an editor, I recommend through Reedsy.com. Because I have great editors there, in order to sell, publish, your editor will be helping you with a lot of these things. So there is this difficulty, Mel, and I know you might be feeling it that how can I tell when I’m stepping over that line of over-complicating versus adding depth. Sometimes we can’t tell. Sometimes, especially in our first few books, we need somebody else to say, all right, this is all beautiful and organically fits together. And where did this come from? This is a spear, you just tried to stick into a blender. And those two things don’t go together. But now the images in my mind and I’m enjoying it, and that’s what an editor’s for. And you’ll all have an editor. As you move forward. So trust in that, it’s nice to let the editor do her job.

[00:16:51] She has a job. You don’t want to hand her a perfect book. No one’s ever done that in the history of the world. So play card, do the best you can. None of us are writing perfect books. There’s no such thing as a perfect book, especially before an editor has seen it. So take heart. You’re doing exactly right. I love that you asked the question. And, all of you, thank you for listening. Or watching this mini episode, I really enjoy doing them. Please, if you are a patron at the $5, and up level, I run out of questions. This is all I have. This is why I haven’t done them in a while because I’ve been trying to save them. You all, aren’t utilizing me enough. Give me some more, throw me a challenge. I would love to have a question where I just say, I don’t know. I’m pretty bad at saying, I don’t know. And I would probably do some Googling, but, I’m also pretty good at saying, I didn’t know. So, or, and I’m also very good at saying that is beyond my capabilities. So don’t throw like legal questions at me or tax questions. I’m not gonna answer those, everything else, lay it on me. Thank you so much for listening. I really, really appreciate your patronage and I appreciate every single listener here. I hope that you are doing well and that you are happy and safe and that you are getting some of your own writing down. Okay. We’ll talk soon.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.