What To Do When a Book's Not Working
Taking time out to diagnose a story's maladies BEFORE diving into revisions
As a writing teacher to elementary school students, I made the same claim every year: Revision is the most important part of the writing process.
This declaration was often met with sighs, grumbles, and a few insistent voices that claimed, “I don’t need to revise. My work is perfect the way it is.”
Not only is revision the most essential part of the writing process, it’s also the most difficult. This makes it a hard sell to young kids (and even adults sometimes). But anyone who has written anything of length or significance knows the reality: revision is where the magic happens. It’s where we discover what the story is and how it wants to be told.
Diving into revision and figuring out how to approach it differs with every piece of work. Sometimes it’s intuitive: you, the writer, have a keen sense of your story’s weaknesses and, after writing the ending, know exactly where you need to tighten things up. But sometimes you write yourself to an ending and have no clue where to begin the process. Something is not working, but that something is undefinable. You have only a sense that the story’s not right yet.
This was my experience with a novel I’ve been sitting on for nearly two years.
The idea for this novel arrived like a lightning bolt, fully formed and utterly compelling. I wrote a skinny outline, trusting my instincts to follow the story where it needed to go, and got to work drafting. Nine months later, I stared at the 80,000+ words in front of me with a pervasive sense of blankness. I felt neither victorious nor satisfied. The book was OK. A solid C (I’m forever grading things). But what next? I knew I hadn’t written the book the story deserved.
Diagnosing a story’s maladies is tricky and subjective work. I haven’t been writing fiction long enough to claim expertise, but my own experience has made me aware of a few common issues:
Problem #1: You don’t have the skills to write the story. Underlying my dissatisfaction with my draft was the feeling I had somehow failed the story. The story I was trying to write dealt with weighty and consequential themes - race, hypocrisy, personal ethics - and I recognized that writing a book that evoked the thinking I hoped it would, required a skill and thoughtfulness that was currently absent from the page. In simplest terms, I wasn’t ready to write this particular story.
This is a frustrating problem because the only solutions are time and hard work. For me, it meant writing more fiction first. Figuring out what I do well as a writer and what I still need to learn. Letting these characters live in my head a little longer, drawing them outside of simple tropes, and painting them with a more refined brush. Reading other novels that have achieved the same goals has also been instrumental (thanks to SMALL MERCIES by Dennis Lehane for a fabulous craft study).
Problem #2: You need beta readers. Just as you shouldn’t diagnose a medical condition without a qualified physician, it’s unwise to diagnose a draft without outside readers. It’s way too easy to let your own ideas of what’s not working spin inside your brain, warping your sense of direction (here I imagine being blindfolded and trying to pin a tail on a donkey). The right beta readers can share specific feedback to orient your next steps. But instead of asking a beta reader what’s not working, you might ask:
What was most compelling to you in these pages? What did you want more of?
Which characters felt most believable?
Where did you feel the most emotionally invested?
How would you describe this book to someone else?
I appreciate the vulnerability in allowing anyone to read pages you, the writer, identify as problematic, but it’s simply too valuable to pass up.
Problem #3: There are too many voices in your head. Before you move forward with reaching out to those beta readers, a caveat: make sure they’re voices you trust. Whatever book you’re trying to write isn’t a book for everyone. It’s a book for a specific type of reader - a reader who enjoys the kind of stories you’re trying to write. While there is immense value in gathering feedback from a diverse range of readers, when plotting out revisions, I advise going to the readers most apt to connect with your goals for this particular project. Otherwise, you leave yourself open to a confusing set of feedback, some of which may be overly prescriptive or misaligned with your personal goals. Your job is to write the book you’re meant to write - not a book that fulfills every random person’s wish list.
Problem #4: You haven’t defined what your story is really about. Novels are rarely about one thing, of course. That’s what makes them so exciting to read and write. You go in with one idea, an underlying theme perhaps, that grows branches across the course of the story, leading you to prod additional themes and topics. At the end of the day, however, a story can’t be about everything. And naming the most salient themes or messages is essential in keeping a story on track. Decide, how do you want your readers to feel after finishing your book? What do you want them to be thinking about? Here are some examples of salient messages:
This is a story about enduring friendship.
This is a story about defining right from wrong.
This is a story about keeping one’s word, even when it comes at a cost.
Without diagnosing a story’s shortcomings, revision can become an endless exercise in tinkering. Personally, I’d rather take the time to put my draft under the microscope before diving into the process. Here is where our shared lessons can act as a gift to fellow writers.
Comment below, what has worked well for you in the revision process? What do you wish you’d known earlier that you know now?
It is so hard to diagnose your own illness and your own book's problems. We live the stories we write. First, they are formed in our brains and we try to get the words on paper or a computer screen but they don't always match with our mind's eye. I find it valuable to get other's to read my work. I find it challenging to get those real honest opinions. I want someone to discect it and tell me what is not working and what is and where I need to add more and where I need to delete. I think so many of us struggle with this aspect. Keep writing and thinking!