Taking it on board

I’ve got to the stage of my next novel where I am going through it trying to be as objective as possible, not just spotting mistakes and errors, and trying to ‘see’ missing punctuation, confusing pronouns, repetitions, and all the other annoyances. I am trying to check that it makes sense as a narrative – I know what’s happening and why, but is it clear to my readers? Have I given them sufficient clues so that the denouement makes sense, but not so many that they guess what is going to happen?

I like my characters but I don’t want to love them so much that I’m too indulgent and they become annoying. In real life, if he really existed, I think Thomas Radwinter could become a bit irritating… I want my readers to see that, but I don’t want them to be irritated by him otherwise they won’t want to follow his story. he can be very repetitive, worrying about things and over-thinking things – I need to hint at that, not follow all his over-thinks and worries!

I always say that I welcome kindly criticism, not only welcome it but try and act upon it, to take on board the comments people make. My cousin told me that parts of one of my books were boring so she just skipped over them… I looked back, and yes, she’s right! I get enthusiastic about things I find out and want to include every last detail of some research – well, fascinating it might be to me, but jolly boring for most other people! So in this book I have taken care just to include snippets – enough for readers to understand and be informed, but not so much they skip whole chunks. Last night I cut 1,000 words straight out; Thomas had become fascinated by an old cookery book… I didn’t need to include 1,000 words of fascination!

Back to work…