J C GALE

Each day I’m editing. As a quick updated I’m now pretty close to the middle of Balance and a little further behind on Impatience. Overall I’m actually pretty happy with the progress. In some of the more complicated sections a single page can take up to an hour to tweak. Of course in many other sections, specifically dialogue, I can burn through a page in maybe ten minutes.

It’s hard going and I’m struggling at present to find time to focus on blogging. I’ve heard plenty of podcasts and read on many blogs how editing is a tough grind. I certainly have to agree. It doesn’t come naturally to focus on corrections when, for so long now, I’ve been focused on the creative task of writing.

I could pay an editor to do the work however I’m simply too much of a control freak. I’m also processing all the feedback I’ve received from many proof readers. There’s no way an external editor could do this as well.

I have to do it, I have to push through and work both into the best they can be.

And my grammar thing is getting betterer but.

At least my humour is still there. Back to the grind

One of the hardest things I’m trying to learn is correct pacing. As a writer I want the reader to have that I can’t put this down feeling I have often experienced with good novels.

One of the first books I ever read was Magician by Raymond Feist. This large book is an amazing saga across two worlds. There are small snippets of action throughout the first few chapters however mostly this section introduces the reader to one of these worlds and importantly a number of solid characters. Suddenly the story takes off and finds its pace. By this time I had developed a very solid interest in the key characters and literally couldn’t stop reading it.

Most things I write seem to hit their full speed from the middle and gain a racing feel to the climactic conclusion. Often this is followed by a relatively short wind down, a chance for the reader to catch their breath as the story leads to a natural end. Importantly the pace of the end five percent is slow compared to the first ninety five.

On the flip side new stories require a lot of complicated structuring in the first few chapters. I need to introduce the main characters as they are just as important as having a fantastic idea for the plot. They must be at least partially relatable and usually likeable at the same time. I have to introduce these new people into the readers psyche in a very believably, realistic and charismatic way.

I also have to paint the scenario, the specifics. The information has to be sufficient enough to spark interest but not so much the book feels weighed down. I think it is usually best to simply have the characters performing natural actions which introduce the context.

For example, the start of Impatience covers a few things at once. Simon’s routine feeding of the animals shows us he is a practical, good natured boy. His interaction, albeit short with his father Gary are easy going and again natural. Gary’s phone call with his friend is realistic as farmers really do talk all the time about rain, especially as most of Australia has been in drought for so long. The homeliness of their farm life is a critical element to the decision making process for these main characters. It is what binds them at the start of the story.

Some people argue a good book should start at the action. Drop the reader in the middle and you can always fill out the details later. My issue with this is I simply don’t care enough yet to worry about character X who is in some perilous situation. It might be exciting but I want my readers to have already developed an emotional connection to the characters before I go and put them through hell

To summarise, stories usually start relatively slowly, due to the level of detail and character introductions however fast enough to spark interest. The middle must maintain this interest and fuel it somehow drawing the reader to the exciting resolution. The end should be a relatively relaxing phase and tidy up all the loose ends.

Easy huh!

I love all my characters, even the bad ones! That’s not to say I necessarily support or agree with everything that they all do. Actually when I think of the events in Balance I most certainly do not. I enjoy writing them all as they bring life to a story and without life a book is dead, ahh yeah that makes sense I guess.

Recently I was aggressively asked why I killed off a specific character (no spoiler specifics!). The proof reader was quite passionate about this event as if I had actually done something wrong. The venom surprised me and I was taken aback:

It’s a character in a book, chill and umm put down those scissors (joke).

If I can evoke that level of reaction then cool I must be doing something right.

Likewise I received other feedback that certain character actions don’t ring true. This is great feedback, very useful indeed. When I delve deeper into the specific characters I found a few small things here or there which I might have got wrong. For example, I had the 11 year old boy Simon in Impatience making tea and coffee for adults.

My 11 year old daughter possibly could do this however it is a bit of a stretch and most parents probably don’t want children handling boiling water. To be honest I doubt all 11 years olds could safely do this and to presume so might raise some doubts.

Who makes the hot drinks is completely irrelevant to the specific scene. Every character action or explained thought shapes the mental image the reader formulates. To that end in my editing I have changed this minor detail. An easy fix!

The important thing here is plausibility. If a character reacts to a situation in a way that contradicts the understanding I have spent many pages formulating then well, my bad!

Characters must remain consistently plausible for the reader to keep faith in them. I think this is an important part of the author and reader contract when the reader purchases my product, well one day!

Each and every day I’m steadily editing. Sometimes if I get enough time I get to work on both books. I’m not too fussed if its only the one as every bit helps. I’m just happy to be making progress and to know the end is in sight.

I’m getting a lot of support from proof readers too which rocks!

I added an extract of each book today on the Writing Page

If you’ve got some time go check them out. I’d appreciate the feedback

As I mentioned in the last blog I usually have Google open when I write. This can be a great help and also a major distraction. You see when I research something that I need to move a story along, I can lose hours delving into the flood of close but no cigar information that I come across.

I sometimes get the feeling the Internet might be sentient. I know, sounds ridiculous. I reckon it knows exactly what I’m after and returns just enough partially relevant information to keep me looking. Often I see something interesting and end up researching some completely unrelated however really interesting topic.

I guess I’ve begun to realise what might be interesting to me doesn’t always work with my characters or move the plot along in any helpful way. Harrumph, I’ve had to look at these few instances in terms of relevancy. I mean how cool are Bailey bridges? A portable bridge that is strong enough to drive tanks across. I’m no engineer but even I have to admit, that’s pretty cool!

When I was researching these I found out they are used extensively in China and did you know they can be extended longer than the usual maximum two hundred foot length with floating, yes you heard right floating pontoons. You can have this really long bridge with only fixed mounting points at either end. Oh yeah in World War II Bailey bridges were…. ahh you get the picture…

After sulking for a while, I usually remove the superfluous content by calling on the all powerful delete key.

Such is life…

I’m received heaps of feedback of late, specifically on Impatience, which is quite valuable to me and greatly appreciated! Something I didn’t expect are the number of diverse reactions to a variety of situations which occur throughout the story (being careful here – no spoilers). A few friends swear they occasionally shed a tear.

Wow, I must be doing something right. I’m managing to effectively communicating relatable and likeable characters, awesome

As a writer I try to produce something I myself would like to read. One of the cool things about editing and let’s face it I’m talking here about a long haul tiresome slog which feels like its never ending, is the realisation each page I work through is that little bit better. To know I’m trimming the fat and producing an improved, tighter read is immensely rewarding.

I find I’m also tweaking the characters a little here and there. I’m enjoying the characters even more and this goes for both books. I could potentially dream up the most amazing story of all however if my characters are wooden, flatly boring and or non-realistic (is that a word?) I can’t expect a reader to really derive much enjoyment?

When someone reads something into what I wrote I hadn’t intended or innocently suggested, perhaps without a lot of depth to it (ok I’ll be honest one of these in particular I didn’t even mean to do!) I just nod sagely and pretend I meant it while listening to them and hoping they don’t notice or possibly read my blog. Oops.

Another thing which keeps happening of late is I’m being hit with exactly the same question (it’s a bit freaky) ‘How did you do this?’ with a look of awe and amazement on their faces.

This question usually comes about when they finish the story. The reader is asking out of curiosity how did I actually write it.

Well, I started at Page 1 and finished at the last page and that’s the simple truth. Of course during this process I refined a few, not many, sections along the way however I simply wrote it in MS Word with Google and Google Earth (what a resource that is!) open in the background, always at hand.

I wrote Impatience in two parts:

Part 1 took 9 weeks.

I took a break for a while. Hey it was Christmas time after all.

Part 2 took just short of five months.

Yes I know, considerably longer than part 1 however it is twice the size and a lot more complex (I think I had over a dozen Google searches running for some parts – Google is my friend!).

I raced through one super fast full read through, on second thoughts this should have been more thorough and then ran off lots of copies to shove at family and friends. That’s it, very little jumping around it was scene 1 followed by scene 2 and then scene 3, you get the picture.

Gosh, another long post, time for me to go… cheerio!

Listening to various podcasts lately I keep hearing the same concept, know your market. This is such a strange concept to me as I write from inspiration and in simple terms where ever my mind wanders, within reason, I go with it. I try to tie these ideas into a central theme and package it to some extent. Actually a more precise statement is, I try to direct my ideas to be around the central theme at least having some relevancy and then boom, my brain floods. Of course not every idea holds merit and plenty get discarded. That’s okay because there’s always more arriving right behind it!

The consumer (reader), meaning someone who would pay money for a story, is a distant concept in the writing process. Quite honestly I have so many diverse people reading Impatience right now, I can’t pigeonhole any one demographic as a potential consumer of this novel as a finished product. I quite like this. I didn’t expect it and I’m pleased to know the story might have universal appeal, that’s pretty cool. I had no idea of this as I wrote the story, it simply didn’t seem relevant at the time.

Contrary to Impatience, I’m starting to understand Balance it is a lot more of a niche story and has a narrower appeal. Just as surprising, I have discovered this novel is more male orientated, as I’m yet to find a female who is into it. The reason I’m surprised is two of the main characters are female. I’m fine with the limited demographic. The story rocks and absolutely does it for me. Presumably, with a lot of polish, it will do it for others out there that are like me

During the writing process, if anything, I’m a bit cruel to my wonderful proof readers as I tend to give them dribs and drabs and quiz them mercilessly. The reader or end consumer is the last thing on my mind. I’m simply too busy getting it all down to have any capacity to think of the consumer.

I also keep hearing how most published books are written to a formula. There are rules such as don’t go over this many words, don’t do this or that! Writing is a creative process where I really need to focus on the creating part and worrying about limiting rules would be counter productive.

Producing a product, a publishable novel is completely different to writing! As an Author I can’t limit the creative part because I’m worried about my word count, that wouldn’t be fair to the plot and the characters. Word count is something to worry about at the end, if at all.

The consumer is supposed to be well understood by a publisher. They are the business experts who know the market segments, do the market research and have the expertise in marketing. They should be able to tell the Author all about the genre specific consumers their masterpiece appeals to. The business realities of producing a paper book are complicated and as I am rapidly discovering, full of plenty of hassles!

No wonder so many writers are now self publishing across the various ‘e’ formats…

I’m beginning to think the easiest thing to achieve when writing is the impossible. Make a character arrive someplace before they left wherever they started from. Make them leave in the morning travel all day to arrive at lunchtime… huh? This is so easy to write and not so easy to notice when my attention is elsewhere.

If there’s any chance to mix up a time, distance or something or another then I’m your man

In the case of my writing the reason this happens so frequently is on a first pass, okay maybe even on a second draft read through, I’m usually focused on how a character deals with a challenging situation. My attention might be on the emotion or another element of the plot that is currently rattling around in my brain. Perhaps the character could be injured somehow or emotionally distraught. If this happens I then have to factor that into what they do in the scene.

The characters are hugely important. If a reader cannot relate to a character then the story alone is not enough to satisfy them. As I focus on my characters, it’s often the details of an event which catch me out.

I only raise this today as a close friend discovered and diligently reported back to me, two continuity errors within the first quarter of Impatience which I have already fully proofed, or thought I had.

Thank god for proof readers and the ability to edit!

I have at present eleven copies of Impatience out there with family and friends…

About half have finished it and even those still reading are offering forth many suggestions.

This feedback is really helping to fine tune all the little details making what I believe is a much more polished final product.

I should also give thanks to the number of people who continuously give me supportive comments. This is an amazing help and keeps my motivation strong.

Never underestimate the impact of encouragement, it fuels the creative fires!

Thanks everyone. Now, back to the editing…

As I’m currently reworking Impatience, I’ve found a few small pockets of time to myself here and there. Mostly I’ve been using this to write away at Book 2 of the trilogy. I’ve made a decent start, perhaps a third of book 2 is down in draft and all things considered I’m happy with this progress. As I’m now getting into the depth of the book I’m having to re-familiarise myself with some of the intricacies of Balance, in particular the character details.

I haven’t touched Balance for over a year. I can now see so many grammatical errors and things I should simply redo, that I think this book is going to consume a lot of my time. What’s surprising with this is I actually enjoy the rework. When I have finished changing a scene I usually give it a complete read through which is quite satisfying.

I’m not changing the story just the way it reads. The dialogue, the sentence structure and the overall feel of the scene. By doing this I’m improving my ability to polish. I think that’s a highly valuable skill to have and will help me fine tune Impatience.

It’s all good