How To Write

This is a sample of the editorial feedback a student would receive.

This is an interesting and affecting piece of writing. You give a tremendous sense of your characters’ emotional states, drawing the reader into their lives with language that is simple and evocative.

The depiction of your main character, Molly, is particularly striking. Her feelings of loss and concern about her future as she attempts to create a new life following the death of her partner are convincing and moving, creating an intimate portrayal written without sentimentality or cliché. Frank only appears briefly in the sample chapters, but her encounter with him and its repercussions are intriguing and surprising. You make good use of dialogue and hints at their feelings about each other as a way in which to develop their characters. Allowing your characters to, literally, speak for themselves is a far more effective and interesting way in which to develop and portray them than informing the reader what they are like and what to think about them. This is an approach I recommend you maintain throughout your writing, allowing and enabling the reader to form his or her own opinions about your characters instead of informing them what to think.

Molly’s brother, John, is entertaining and pithy. His lighthearted take on his own and other people’s relationships enhances the narrative by providing it with a great deal of humour. His position as a minister and occasional musings on the place of Christianity in contemporary America suggest he is going to be used to convey themes of religion and spirituality that you wish to explore. If so, ensure that they are worked into the narrative as natural components of his character. Don’t labour the point by, for example, making him repeatedly attempt to proselytise or lecture those he encounters. Themes need to be an almost incidental part of a narrative, there for the reader to discover rather than as instructions on what the book is about.

The plot, based on the sample chapters, is well paced and the way in which you switch between points of view and location works well. Once you have established the location of each of your characters, it isn’t necessary to insert it at the beginning of each chapter. For example, the reader knows John lives in Miami so, unless his location changes, you don’t need to keep informing us where he is. Telling the same story from different points of view can work well as an alternative to the more common first or third person narration from the same character because it creates an interesting dynamic amongst the characters and between the reader and characters. The reader is privy to all the details, attitudes, and information, while the characters know only their own experience of events. As with any literary technique, you do need to ensure that each point of view contributes to the narrative and serves a purpose. Excessive repetition of the same events – albeit from different points of view – is likely to bore the reader and will slow the movement of a plot that has the potential to be absorbing and intriguing.

Your dialogue is very well written. It is realistic, revealing, and interesting. As a reflection of the way in which people actually speak, it works very well. You haven’t attempted to neatly explain plot points through contrived conversation and, as with conversation outside of fiction, conflicts are not resolved nor opinions expressed in neat, uninterrupted speeches. Appropriately, the dialogue is informal, showing evidence of time spent listening to speech patterns and language used in everyday conversation, written to be heard rather than read. You’ve avoided excessive use of adverbs, letting the words convey the way in which they are spoken instead of interrupting the flow with unnecessary descriptions.

There are some areas you could work on that would improve the piece.
While your depictions of your characters’ inner states are excellent, your descriptions of their appearance and the setting are weaker. You have a tendency to overwrite and to use too many words. The result is that your descriptions and plot become crowded with unnecessary information and detail.
As an example, your “phosphorescent moon casting its luminous glow over her already luminescent face, cast their shadows into stark relief” is more likely to confuse the reader than enable them to imagine the encounter between the characters.
It is important to bear in mind that, though descriptions may make perfect sense to you, they may not be so clear to the reader. You don’t need to spell everything out – in fact, it is better to let the reader do some of the work for you – but you should always remember that the purpose is to convey a narrative to the reader. Remember that more words do not necessarily mean better writing.
You also need to consider your use of similes. Similes do have a place in writing, but they need to be used for specific purpose and with restraint. At present, you use them excessively. It isn’t necessary for something to be like something else for a description to work. Just describe it instead of crowding the description with the image of something else to which it is compared.
You have an occasional tendency to lapse into cliché when describing your characters’ appearance. Describing Molly’s sister, Anne, as “a feisty redhead if ever he saw one” and Anne’s husband, Jack, as having “a jawline and swagger that exuded masculinity” tells the reader very little about the characters and makes them sound like parodies rather than people. Be creative in the physical attributes you use to depict your characters. While physical attributes do not a character make, they can be used to enhance the depiction. Be succinct in your description and choose aspects of the characters’ appearances that add to their uniqueness and convey something about them that will intrigue the reader. Having red hair alone doesn’t make a woman feisty and a man cannot express masculinity through his jawline.

Your insights into your characters’ emotional states and experiences such as grief are remarkable and create the potential for a fascinating study of the lives and interactions of a group of people. Don’t let weak descriptions of appearance detract from that.

It is a slightly confusing rule, but “it’s” is the abbreviation of “it is” and “its” is for the possessive. You’ve made it frequently throughout the manuscript, suggesting it is a misunderstanding of the rule rather than a spelling mistake.

I think you should make slightly less use of quotation in your writing. Providing a list of the quotes John has on the walls of his office gives some insight into his character by informing the reader about the types of books he likes to read and the parts that have particular appeal to him. Their choice of reading matter can reveal a great deal about an individual. However, you are relying too heavily on the words of other writers to do the work necessary for the development of a character. By all means, include some quotation and reference to the books your characters enjoy reading in your work, but you need to provide your writing with meaning, build the characters and convey their feelings using your own language. The poets and novelists quoted on John’s walls achieved such acclaim, largely, through their originality. As a writer, you might be inspired by other authors, but I would encourage you to use your imagination and intelligence in order to create work that is original and entirely your own.

Best of luck with your writing.