Sunday afternoon: Thoughts on the novel revision…
Lying in bed, nursing my baby, it occurs to me—perhaps something I thought I already knew. The emotional weight and understanding of a line of prose depends so much upon the experience the reader brings to it. Now that I’m a mother, a character saying something that once would have seemed a very simple statement to me: “because he is my son” now carries so much more meaning. There’s a depth to that statement—everything it means to be a mother to a child—that really can’t be expressed in words. “He is my son” carries with it—for a parent—the weight of fierce, profound love. For a reader who is not a parent, it simply cannot convey that level of meaning.
Likewise, when I write: “when her father died,” as the daughter of a father who died young, I understand it in a very different way than the lucky son or daughter whose father is still around.
So the question then becomes, How do I, as a writer, convey the emotions and meanings I want my reader to understand, given the wide variety of experience my readers will bring to the page? It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? That one would need to be aware of this? And yet…I think this has been one of the stumbling blocks in the sale of my novel—that not every reader felt the emotional impact of the protagonistÂ’s story. Emotional cues that I understand as the daughter of a dead father simply were not picked up by those whose fathers lived to see them into adulthood. I need to present it in a way that’s more universally grasped. Something I need to think about as I move forward with this revisionÂ…
Emotions are so hard to write correctly–not least because of the “show, don’t tell” rule. Is the bereaved widow manically cleaning the house because she’s upset? Because she’s bereft? Because she’s in shock and not feeling anything at all? Because she just likes things to be tidy?
But I think that all fiction has a certain amount of “you can’t understand this unless you’ve been there.” Losing a parent. Losing a job. Losing your house. Some writers are more successful at explaining just WHY suddenly being bereft of all possessions is such a trauma. Others do just as well by focusing on the actions of the character and leave the reader to fill in the blanks of “why” themselves. “Well, I wouldn’t act that way,” or “I entirely understand.” Because that’s what fiction is FOR–no one person is ever going to experience all the trials and tribulations of fictional characters (especially if you write mysteries or sci-fi!) but still, the emotional wallop of seeing a realistic character deal with some overwhelming emotion can give some tiny bit of forewarning, of guidance, to the reader in case they ever experience it themselves.
Besides, there’s no way to know the reader’s emotional maturity level, age, experience . . . any of that. All you can do is put it as best you can so that it makes sense FOR your character, for your story.
My entire life, I’ve had the same problem when I read biographies–I’m fascinated up through my own current age, and maybe a decade or so beyond, but the experiences of the people as they become elderly and therefore too far beyond my personal experience just ends up boring me. It always has–the only saving grace is that, as I get older, that “bore” spot keeps moving. But still–that doesn’t mean that I didn’t take away useful facts and ideas that came in handy later, when I got older . . . just, we’re all limited in our experience. The only thing all readers have in common is that they were born, and grew to learn to read . . . and how much of a story is that?
And, um, of course, you may have meant this as a rhetorical question, but, um . . .
Posted by: –Deb
Everything Deb said. The book will have it’s own life beyond what you could possibly expect, coerce or lead a reader to understand because each person will bring their own personality, life, experience, point of reference to it. And that’s the wonder and excitement of reading and being drawn into a book that’s well written.
Posted by: Alison
Emotions are so hard to write correctly–not least because of the “show, don’t tell” rule. Is the bereaved widow manically cleaning the house because she’s upset? Because she’s bereft? Because she’s in shock and not feeling anything at all? Because she just likes things to be tidy?
But I think that all fiction has a certain amount of “you can’t understand this unless you’ve been there.” Losing a parent. Losing a job. Losing your house. Some writers are more successful at explaining just WHY suddenly being bereft of all possessions is such a trauma. Others do just as well by focusing on the actions of the character and leave the reader to fill in the blanks of “why” themselves. “Well, I wouldn’t act that way,” or “I entirely understand.” Because that’s what fiction is FOR–no one person is ever going to experience all the trials and tribulations of fictional characters (especially if you write mysteries or sci-fi!) but still, the emotional wallop of seeing a realistic character deal with some overwhelming emotion can give some tiny bit of forewarning, of guidance, to the reader in case they ever experience it themselves.
Besides, there’s no way to know the reader’s emotional maturity level, age, experience . . . any of that. All you can do is put it as best you can so that it makes sense FOR your character, for your story.
My entire life, I’ve had the same problem when I read biographies–I’m fascinated up through my own current age, and maybe a decade or so beyond, but the experiences of the people as they become elderly and therefore too far beyond my personal experience just ends up boring me. It always has–the only saving grace is that, as I get older, that “bore” spot keeps moving. But still–that doesn’t mean that I didn’t take away useful facts and ideas that came in handy later, when I got older . . . just, we’re all limited in our experience. The only thing all readers have in common is that they were born, and grew to learn to read . . . and how much of a story is that?
And, um, of course, you may have meant this as a rhetorical question, but, um . . .
Posted by: –Deb
Everything Deb said. The book will have it’s own life beyond what you could possibly expect, coerce or lead a reader to understand because each person will bring their own personality, life, experience, point of reference to it. And that’s the wonder and excitement of reading and being drawn into a book that’s well written.
Posted by: Alison
I’m sure you’ve had the experience of reading a book for the second time and getting so much more out of it because of the experiences you’ve had since you first read it. Yet the book was still enjoyable the first time around.
Posted by: LaurieM
Technically this is a part of “reading theory”–that is, how people read and understand. I learned it as part of a graduate degree, but here’s the debate, in a blog comment:
How much personal experience do people bring to and read into the text? 50%? 0%? Some theorists argue that the reason why people see things so differently is because perhaps 50% of what they are reading or imagining is what they bring to the novel, rather than what is actually there. Others feel that no, personal experience should not have this much of an impact. I veer towards the 50% model, but it’s hard to know.
As a writer, I’ve certainly received upsetting feedback from people who are reading something into a text that is not there. I re-read my article over and over, trying to understand why they thought (or didn’t feel) X,Y or Z, but sometimes I cannot figure it out.
One question I’d ask, and I haven’t read all your blog, so I don’t know this, is –have you submitted your novel to lots and lots of editors? Have any offered constructive feedback? I’ve been stunned by the varied reactions I get to the same piece of writing. Remember, this is subjective, this rejection stuff. Don’t revise everything unless you think it actually needs revision! That said, I can’t tell you how many revisions my manuscripts go through before they are sold. A lot.
Good luck. I wish I could help more!
Posted by: Joanne
hey cari, good thoughts–and they made me think of the communication model (one of my latest readings..) in which rather than looking at it as sender to receiver (speaker to listener), it includes the sender considering the experience, knowledge, etc of the listener….
but as for fiction, well..i think all you can do is show us how it feels to have lost a dad at a young age, assuming we don’t know. if we do know, then reading it is a revelation that we aren’t the only ones who’ve felt that way or maybe the writing makes us understand the previous experience we also had in a different way.
good thoughts you posted.
Posted by: k
Mm. I’m so beneath your commenters educationally. But in life experience, who knows. My thoughts as I read your post were about how mature we think we are when we’re young. And then we grow older. And realize we knew nothing. Life has a way of continuing to develop you as a person. Sounds so simple and easy to understand. But you never really fully understand it (it = what you thought you fully understood in your youth) until you’re MUCH older.
I’m enjoying watching and learning and observing, through your blog, your enjoyment of motherhood and getting to know the Cari who is continuing to develop as a person. Obviously it will enrich your writing.
Seeing how I don’t have a college education I never thought of writing as so much theory and form and plan. We think music just appears from the spirit and soul of the composer in some way but no. It’s just as much theory and form and plan as your novel. It’s all incredible to me. It’s so easy to pick up a book or listen to a song and say “wow, that was so moving!” without ever realizing the education and theory and form and plan that was involved in its creation.
Posted by: Laura
All people have some emotional experience. We all know what it is like to be more or less happy, or sad, or frustrated, or desperate. To me, the best writers are the ones who take my experienced feelings, the ones I know, and enlarge them so that I can understand the feelings of the characters in the novel. Sometimes I am completely exhausted after a reading experience because it feels like I’ve been through so much, even if I’ve never been close in real life.
The hardest thing must to communicate must be extreme love, or extreme desperation, if the reader has never been there herself. Some people are so lucky, or unlucky, that they never have to dig up those feelings inside them, but I believe they are inside all of us for when we need them. The challenge for the writer is to bring them out “just” to read a novel.
Posted by: roro
I understand what you are getting at, but surely you know how difficult this is to achieve. People may have told you how you would feel when you became a parent, but did they REALLY make you understand how you would feel?
We adopted our daughter, and shortly after we returned home from China I remember rocking her to sleep and thinking, Why didn’t anyone TELL me how all-consuming and profound a feeling this would be? Of course, they probably had told me, but hearing it and experiencing it are two different things.
You apparently feel the same way, which is why you’re feeling frustrated with your ability to convey such depth of emotion in your writing. It may not be possible to truly achieve.
I just was listening to a book on tape (which I bailed on shortly into it) but the protagonist was saying that when she picked her children up at school, all the other children became background scenery. And I had to agree; to me, all other children pale drastically in comparison to my own daughter and in the chaos at the end of the school day, she’s the only child I notice.
I’m not so sure that this was a profound piece of writing or just important to me because very few people vocalize feeling this way about their children above all others. Plus, in writing terms, it was a show-don’t-tell moment that didn’t come out and say, “She loved her children so much she would gladly die for them,” or other such dreck. (Actually, I think the book did have some lines like that, which is probably why I bailed on it.)
I don’t know that you were actually looking for advice but if you were I’d say (a) you’re asking a lot of your writing, but then writing is all about evoking emotions in readers, and (b) I think it is possible to convey some emotion that people can experience through your writing even if they haven’t experienced it themselves in real life. And by the way (c) this mothering thing is pretty amazing, isn’t it?
Posted by: jessie
Two things
I know what you mean, and it’s hard – but novels will always speak more powerfully to some than to others, and we need to discover books at different times in our lives (something profound for me today may leave me relatively unmoved in 20 years time, and vice versa).
Also – I loved the first line, and am sorry you think you may have to lose it. The tattoo was a beautiful gesture though- love it.
Posted by: jo
I’m sure you’ve had the experience of reading a book for the second time and getting so much more out of it because of the experiences you’ve had since you first read it. Yet the book was still enjoyable the first time around.
Posted by: LaurieM
Technically this is a part of “reading theory”–that is, how people read and understand. I learned it as part of a graduate degree, but here’s the debate, in a blog comment:
How much personal experience do people bring to and read into the text? 50%? 0%? Some theorists argue that the reason why people see things so differently is because perhaps 50% of what they are reading or imagining is what they bring to the novel, rather than what is actually there. Others feel that no, personal experience should not have this much of an impact. I veer towards the 50% model, but it’s hard to know.
As a writer, I’ve certainly received upsetting feedback from people who are reading something into a text that is not there. I re-read my article over and over, trying to understand why they thought (or didn’t feel) X,Y or Z, but sometimes I cannot figure it out.
One question I’d ask, and I haven’t read all your blog, so I don’t know this, is –have you submitted your novel to lots and lots of editors? Have any offered constructive feedback? I’ve been stunned by the varied reactions I get to the same piece of writing. Remember, this is subjective, this rejection stuff. Don’t revise everything unless you think it actually needs revision! That said, I can’t tell you how many revisions my manuscripts go through before they are sold. A lot.
Good luck. I wish I could help more!
Posted by: Joanne
hey cari, good thoughts–and they made me think of the communication model (one of my latest readings..) in which rather than looking at it as sender to receiver (speaker to listener), it includes the sender considering the experience, knowledge, etc of the listener….
but as for fiction, well..i think all you can do is show us how it feels to have lost a dad at a young age, assuming we don’t know. if we do know, then reading it is a revelation that we aren’t the only ones who’ve felt that way or maybe the writing makes us understand the previous experience we also had in a different way.
good thoughts you posted.
Posted by: k
Mm. I’m so beneath your commenters educationally. But in life experience, who knows. My thoughts as I read your post were about how mature we think we are when we’re young. And then we grow older. And realize we knew nothing. Life has a way of continuing to develop you as a person. Sounds so simple and easy to understand. But you never really fully understand it (it = what you thought you fully understood in your youth) until you’re MUCH older.
I’m enjoying watching and learning and observing, through your blog, your enjoyment of motherhood and getting to know the Cari who is continuing to develop as a person. Obviously it will enrich your writing.
Seeing how I don’t have a college education I never thought of writing as so much theory and form and plan. We think music just appears from the spirit and soul of the composer in some way but no. It’s just as much theory and form and plan as your novel. It’s all incredible to me. It’s so easy to pick up a book or listen to a song and say “wow, that was so moving!” without ever realizing the education and theory and form and plan that was involved in its creation.
Posted by: Laura
All people have some emotional experience. We all know what it is like to be more or less happy, or sad, or frustrated, or desperate. To me, the best writers are the ones who take my experienced feelings, the ones I know, and enlarge them so that I can understand the feelings of the characters in the novel. Sometimes I am completely exhausted after a reading experience because it feels like I’ve been through so much, even if I’ve never been close in real life.
The hardest thing must to communicate must be extreme love, or extreme desperation, if the reader has never been there herself. Some people are so lucky, or unlucky, that they never have to dig up those feelings inside them, but I believe they are inside all of us for when we need them. The challenge for the writer is to bring them out “just” to read a novel.
Posted by: roro
I understand what you are getting at, but surely you know how difficult this is to achieve. People may have told you how you would feel when you became a parent, but did they REALLY make you understand how you would feel?
We adopted our daughter, and shortly after we returned home from China I remember rocking her to sleep and thinking, Why didn’t anyone TELL me how all-consuming and profound a feeling this would be? Of course, they probably had told me, but hearing it and experiencing it are two different things.
You apparently feel the same way, which is why you’re feeling frustrated with your ability to convey such depth of emotion in your writing. It may not be possible to truly achieve.
I just was listening to a book on tape (which I bailed on shortly into it) but the protagonist was saying that when she picked her children up at school, all the other children became background scenery. And I had to agree; to me, all other children pale drastically in comparison to my own daughter and in the chaos at the end of the school day, she’s the only child I notice.
I’m not so sure that this was a profound piece of writing or just important to me because very few people vocalize feeling this way about their children above all others. Plus, in writing terms, it was a show-don’t-tell moment that didn’t come out and say, “She loved her children so much she would gladly die for them,” or other such dreck. (Actually, I think the book did have some lines like that, which is probably why I bailed on it.)
I don’t know that you were actually looking for advice but if you were I’d say (a) you’re asking a lot of your writing, but then writing is all about evoking emotions in readers, and (b) I think it is possible to convey some emotion that people can experience through your writing even if they haven’t experienced it themselves in real life. And by the way (c) this mothering thing is pretty amazing, isn’t it?
Posted by: jessie
Two things
I know what you mean, and it’s hard – but novels will always speak more powerfully to some than to others, and we need to discover books at different times in our lives (something profound for me today may leave me relatively unmoved in 20 years time, and vice versa).
Also – I loved the first line, and am sorry you think you may have to lose it. The tattoo was a beautiful gesture though- love it.
Posted by: jo
This is tricky – I think about having lost my grandfather (who was my only male father figure until I was 3, and still a major one thereafter) at 8, and being devastated, in an eight year old way. Then nothing until I was about 20. Thereafter I lost people almost every year for four years, and didn’t deal with it very well. The kind of emptiness that results from losing a loved one isn’t something that someone can understand until it happens to them. Empathy falls far short of the mark unless you’ve shared the experience. And sometimes I think that the distance we create from that kind of pain as time goes on as a coping mechanism also dilutes the response from someone who hasn’t had the experience recently. Most people (or at least, me) aren’t able to deal with the connection to that feeling at full force for very long. But considering that most everyone has lost someone, there has to be at least a shadow of a memory of the experience to tap.
I hope this makes sense (first cup of coffee only so far).
Posted by: Cassie
I really enjoy it when blog posts generate so much thought in myself and others. I’d like to share some of my thoughts, but I think I’ll come back later for that.
Posted by: Rachel H
I’m starting a Masters in Creative Writing in a few weeks and this is one of the many things I’m really worried about. I worry that if I write about what I know, which is what people have told me to do in the past, it will be boring because feel I don’t know much, and what I do know is not very interesting. Then I worry that if I try to write about things I don’t know, I’ll get it horribly wrong. For example, I’m unlikely to become a mother. Does that mean that I’ll never be able to write a convincing mother character? Sigh. Good luck with the revisions!
Posted by: weeza
You’ve gotten wonderful comments from your other readers. I’m not a writer, just a reader. For me, if a writer expresses an emotion or spiritual state well enough for me to resonate with it, it has everything to do with the character’s actions. My appreciation then does not rely on my own experience. Knowing a character fairly well, and then seeing them do (or not do) something can make me stop and catch my breath, or cry, or laugh with wonder. I especially think of the ending of A Farewell to Arms, when the lieutenant walks away into the rain. Something about his choice to walk into the rain in response to his grief speaks volumes to me, though I’ve never been in his situation.
Posted by: Lee
I lost my father when I was 13 to suicide – at 51, having lost a father is always there but as someone else said, because it was so long ago it’s certainly doesn’t hold the intensity it did then. I was widowed in 1998 and have since remarried. A girlfriend gave me a book title “Good Grief” by Lolly Winston that I never got around to reading until recently. I wished I had read it sometime during the year after my husband died, but it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book BUT I think it would have been helpful to me during that time when I so often thought I was losing it permanently!
I too loved that first line – so sad to lose it – maybe it can be included somewhere on the book jacket.
Posted by: robin
I dunno… I’m not a parent, but I absolutely “get” what you’re saying with “because he’s my son.” I might not feel it in my bones, but I get it. I see it from your POV too though – I couldn’t possibly understand loss until it happened to me. Whatever it is, I want to read whatever it is and take away what I can… and you write well. My DH would say you write something I can feel.
Posted by: DeltaDawn
This is tricky – I think about having lost my grandfather (who was my only male father figure until I was 3, and still a major one thereafter) at 8, and being devastated, in an eight year old way. Then nothing until I was about 20. Thereafter I lost people almost every year for four years, and didn’t deal with it very well. The kind of emptiness that results from losing a loved one isn’t something that someone can understand until it happens to them. Empathy falls far short of the mark unless you’ve shared the experience. And sometimes I think that the distance we create from that kind of pain as time goes on as a coping mechanism also dilutes the response from someone who hasn’t had the experience recently. Most people (or at least, me) aren’t able to deal with the connection to that feeling at full force for very long. But considering that most everyone has lost someone, there has to be at least a shadow of a memory of the experience to tap.
I hope this makes sense (first cup of coffee only so far).
Posted by: Cassie
I really enjoy it when blog posts generate so much thought in myself and others. I’d like to share some of my thoughts, but I think I’ll come back later for that.
Posted by: Rachel H
I’m starting a Masters in Creative Writing in a few weeks and this is one of the many things I’m really worried about. I worry that if I write about what I know, which is what people have told me to do in the past, it will be boring because feel I don’t know much, and what I do know is not very interesting. Then I worry that if I try to write about things I don’t know, I’ll get it horribly wrong. For example, I’m unlikely to become a mother. Does that mean that I’ll never be able to write a convincing mother character? Sigh. Good luck with the revisions!
Posted by: weeza
You’ve gotten wonderful comments from your other readers. I’m not a writer, just a reader. For me, if a writer expresses an emotion or spiritual state well enough for me to resonate with it, it has everything to do with the character’s actions. My appreciation then does not rely on my own experience. Knowing a character fairly well, and then seeing them do (or not do) something can make me stop and catch my breath, or cry, or laugh with wonder. I especially think of the ending of A Farewell to Arms, when the lieutenant walks away into the rain. Something about his choice to walk into the rain in response to his grief speaks volumes to me, though I’ve never been in his situation.
Posted by: Lee
I lost my father when I was 13 to suicide – at 51, having lost a father is always there but as someone else said, because it was so long ago it’s certainly doesn’t hold the intensity it did then. I was widowed in 1998 and have since remarried. A girlfriend gave me a book title “Good Grief” by Lolly Winston that I never got around to reading until recently. I wished I had read it sometime during the year after my husband died, but it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book BUT I think it would have been helpful to me during that time when I so often thought I was losing it permanently!
I too loved that first line – so sad to lose it – maybe it can be included somewhere on the book jacket.
Posted by: robin
I dunno… I’m not a parent, but I absolutely “get” what you’re saying with “because he’s my son.” I might not feel it in my bones, but I get it. I see it from your POV too though – I couldn’t possibly understand loss until it happened to me. Whatever it is, I want to read whatever it is and take away what I can… and you write well. My DH would say you write something I can feel.
Posted by: DeltaDawn