Tag Archives: Novel Tips for Novel Writers

In Treatment?

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Fellow Daisy Alpert Florin on when therapy scenes work in a novel, and why they often don’t—yet are still invaluable to the writing process.

In an early draft of Sheena Cook’s novel, A Tender Hate, Scottish detective Iris Larkin is ordered to go to therapy when her personal issues threaten her ability to do her job. If therapy was a way for Iris to work out her issues, it was also a way for Sheena to discover what those issues were.

“I was trying to work out on the page the secrets Iris wasn’t telling anybody, the secrets I didn’t even know,” Sheena, a BookEnds fellow, said.

There were seven therapy scenes in the draft Sheena submitted to her mentor, Meg Wolitzer, at the end of 2018. At Meg’s suggestion, she cut them down to three. But when the book went on submission, one editor suggested cutting the scenes altogether.

“She told me the scenes did not move the plot forward,” Sheena said. “It was a surprise, and I was sad to take them out.”

When I heard Sheena’s story, I was well into a revision of my own novel, which included scenes where my main character, Isabel, goes to therapy in the aftermath of a sexual assault. At the time, I considered whether or not to cut the scenes but, in the end, decided to keep them.

The scenes remained in my draft throughout my BookEnds year and were still there when the book went on submission. It was only when my editor, Caroline Zancan at Henry Holt, did a close edit that she suggested I remove the scenes. 

“I think you needed to write those scenes to get insight into Isabel’s character and motivations,” Caroline wrote, “but you don’t need to spell out those motivations so neatly for us.”

Like Sheena, I was surprised, but when I looked closely at the scenes, I could see the novel didn’t need them. Aside from a few exchanges, which I reassigned to other characters, I scrapped the scenes entirely.

All of which got me thinking: do scenes of therapy in novels ever work? 

“Therapists work well in fiction when they are used to move the action along,” said Sandra Leong, a BookEnds fellow and practicing psychotherapist. “They work less well as a form of exposition about a character.”

Therapy is central to the plot of BookEnds fellow Jennifer Solheim’s novel Interstitial, about a rock band on the rise. When Nate, the band’s lead singer, passes out on stage during a performance, he goes to therapy to understand what is happening to him. His therapist, Kathleen, is a former musician and working with Nate brings up issues for her about her lost music career. Therapy works in Interstitial because it is crucial to the central question of the novel: it defines Kathleen as a person after she leaves music. She plays a pivotal role in the band’s story, but—as Sandra explained as crucial to the role of therapists in novels—she also has a fully developed storyline of her own.

Therapy can also work in fiction if it leads to an explosive revelation that causes change in the novel. In Pat Conroy’s 1986 bestseller The Prince of Tides, for example, what is revealed in therapy is a secret so dark and long buried, it clarifies what has happened to the characters up to that point.

But, Leong points out, those kinds of breakthroughs are rare in therapy and can feel contrived in fiction. “More often than not, therapy is a slow drip of information,” she said.

While sending your character to therapy can be a useful exercise, those scenes don’t always need to appear in the final work. When considering whether or not to use therapy in a piece of fiction, Caroline says it’s important to distinguish what you as the writer need to know about your character and what needs to be on the page.

“The things that often come up in therapy,” she said, “are often more powerful as the subtext rather than the text of the novel. It’s important for you to know these things, but let us see them at work in the characters’ actions and interactions.”

In the end, Sheena removed the therapy scenes from her novel, keeping only the most essential points, which she lets Iris muse on throughout the novel. But even though the scenes didn’t stay, she doesn’t regret writing them. 

“I learned so much about Iris by writing those scenes,” she said. “And besides, I love eavesdropping on other people’s secrets.”

Daisy Alpert Florin was a BookEnds fellow in 2019-2020. Her novel My Last Innocent Year will be published by Holt in 2023.

BookEnds Alumni Inaugural Speaker Event: Rebecca Makkai on Time in Endings 

Novel Tips for Novel Writers, , , ,

As part of our ongoing BookEnds community, the alumni group has started inviting authors to speak on different craft topics every other month. Fellow Daisy Alpert Florin reflects on our first invited author’s lecture, Rebecca Makkai’s “Closing Time: Chronological Shifts at the Story’s End.”  

As writers, we are taught to give a lot of thought to beginnings, to grab our reader with a compelling opening sentence, paragraph, page. We tend to place less emphasis on endings— although, as award-winning novelist Rebecca Makkai pointed out in her recent talk to the BookEnds alumni group, the ending of a novel or story is often where we find meaning.

The end of a piece, Makkai said, can be a moment of great opportunity when you, the writer, can break rules—including ones you’ve set for yourself—and experiment with dramatic shifts in tone, point of view or pacing. In her talk, Makkai focused on endings as they relate to time. Our relationship to time is heightened when we reach the end of a story or a novel, she said. We might be casting our mind back to what we’ve just read, soaking up our last moments in the world the author has created and also imagining what might come next, not just for the characters but for ourselves.

Makkai discussed different story and novel endings that experiment with time, dividing them into three categories: those that stay in the present, those that revisit the past and those that look ahead to the future. These temporal shifts are not necessarily connected to verb tense, although they can be; it’s more a question of where the energy lies, if it’s backward-looking or forward-looking, if it stays in the present moment or is some combination. The ending of a novel might flash back to a time earlier in the story, or even to a time before the story began as in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. An author might choose to end on a moment of reflection, as in The Catcher in the Rye, or in a “freeze frame” moment like Rick Moody does at the end of The Ice Storm. Many novels end by imagining characters at some point in the distant future using a technique called prolepsis, as in Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys. A writer might also create an ending that combines time periods. At the end of his short story “Joseph,” for example, Etgar Keret describes the moment just before a suicide bombing and simultaneously projects into the future to let us know who will be killed. The combination of present with future adds to the pathos of the story’s ending.

I decided to parse the ending of one of the novels that most influenced my own recent work—Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence—which ends with what Makkai would call a directed open ending, one in which a future outcome is strongly suggested but not explicitly described. In the last chapter, Wharton zips forward in time nearly thirty years, summing up decades of protagonist Newland’s life, those he has lived without his erstwhile lover Ellen—their relationship the central focus of the story—in just a few pages. By moving forward in this way, Wharton is telling us how life without Ellen has felt to Newland, colorless and drab; it is only when he has occasion to see her again that Wharton returns to scene level pacing. In the novel’s last scene, Newland, on a trip to Paris, sits for a long time on a bench beneath Ellen’s window. He sees a servant close Ellen’s shutters and, “as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel.” 

We don’t know for certain that he will never see Ellen again, but there is a strong suggestion that he won’t. It should be a disappointment. After the journey Wharton has taken us on, we desperately want Newland to reunite with the woman he loves, and as modern readers, we believe in the possibility of second acts. So why is the ending so satisfying? Because Wharton remains true to her characters and the world she has created. A novel about duty, honor and sacrifice could have no other ending.

Makkai concluded her talk by encouraging us to look closely at endings, both as readers and as writers, and ask ourselves what they are doing in relation to time and with what effect. She also acknowledged that while the possibilities are endless, you’re never locked in. “Let go of the idea that there are right or wrong decisions, right or wrong choices,” she said. “You don’t need to try everything. You just pick something and you see.”

Daisy Alpert Florin was a BookEnds fellow in 2019-2020. Her personal essays have appeared online in Full Grown People, Motherwell Magazine and Under the Gum Tree, among other publications. Her essay “Crash” was listed as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2016. Her novel My Last Innocent Year is represented by Margaret Riley King at William Morris Endeavor. 

 

Karen E. Bender on the revision process, sticking to a schedule, and what Michelangelo taught her about writing

Novel Tips for Novel Writers,

This month, we’re continuing our series of distinguished writer interviews with a Q&A with award-winning novelist and short story author Karen E. Bender. Karen’s story collection Refund was a Finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Story Prize and longlisted for the Story prize. Her most recent collection, The New Order, was also longlisted for the Story prize. She is currently the Visiting Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Hollins University, and is Faculty for the low-residency MFA program at Alma College; she is also a BookEnds mentor.

Read below to learn more about Karen’s insights on the writing process …

 

You’ve written both novels and collections of short stories. How does the writing process differ for each? Are there lessons from one genre you can apply to the other?

Writing a story is like jogging and seeing an endpoint in front of me; writing a novel is more like a marathon and the endpoint may not be visible for some time. Both require patience, but a novel requires tremendous, really Herculean patience. A memorable story should have the feeling of expansiveness beyond the borders of the story, and a good novel should have the particular detail essential to stories.

I began to rewrite parts of my first novel as individual stories, and it helped me figure out how to edit. The concision of a story, the importance of every line and scene in construction of the structure, really helps you see what is necessary for a narrative rather than what you just want to keep in. And the expansiveness of a novel can help you see ways to enlarge the scope of stories.

Otherwise—for both genres, you want to write something honest, urgent, new—something you want to say that hasn’t quite been said in the way that you know you want to say it.

 

What’s your advice for writers entering the revision process of their manuscript?

First: look for what’s working. What feels most alive to you, most honest, most original. Then don’t think about revision as fixing everything all at once; revision is a series of tasks that you can address one at a time. When writing a draft, you have to allow yourself to make a mess, to take risks, to create and not know. Revision, though, is a process of knowing. You’re still making a mess, but doing tasks in a more intentional way. I also love Michelangelo’s quote that a sculpture is already there in the marble; it already exists. I like to say that your story and novel already exists in its final form, and you just need to do the work to release it!

 

You are a proponent of committing to a writing schedule (something I personally find very hard to do!). What is your schedule? How did you figure out a schedule that works for you?

I do think schedules can be helpful, but it’s also important to learn to be flexible with them. We have to juggle writing around so many things-jobs, families, etc. If you can try to write something each day—whether it’s half an hour or a page or something that feels manageable—the writing grows. The world, with all its demands, conspires to keep us from writing. The idea is not to be hard on yourself if you miss a day, because we all do, but to commit to writing so that it is part of you, that you announce to yourself and others that it is important, and that you carve out some time and space so that you can do it.  

 

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given on writing?

A few bits of advice stay with me: Martha Graham’s advice to Agnes de Mille about choreography: “It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”

 Frank Conroy said that the bad writing leads to the good writing. I find that calming and true.

 

Bonus question: What do you love about working with budding novelists? 

I remember so clearly what it was like writing my first novel, what it was like struggling through the muck. There really is nothing like that first novel muck. I love being able to help the new novelist clear a path through the muck, see what is wonderful about their novel, see their work in a new way. And it’s thrilling to watch their work get better as they revise it, as they see their own place in the literary conversation.

 

We’d love to hear: Do you have a writing schedule? And how do you approach revisions?

If you’re interested in working with Karen, consider applying to BookEnds. Our hands-on mentored fellowship can help you take your novel to the next level.

 

Meg Wolitzer on getting unstuck, working with novelists, and the advice she would give her younger self

Novel Tips for Novel Writers,

It’s December, which means NaNoWriMo has officially come to an end. At this point, you may find yourself with the beginnings of a novel, or heck–even a completed first draft! Now is when the fun (or the challenge, depending on your viewpoint) truly begins: Where to go from here?

To help, we thought we’d seek out some pearls of wisdom from novelists who were once in your shoes. And who better to interview than Meg Wolitzer, the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Wife, and most recently, The Female Persuasion? Meg is also the co-founder and co-director of BookEnds, meaning she has plenty of experience helping emerging writers take their novels to the next level. Read below to hear her advice about the novel-writing process…

I’ve heard you have an “eighty percent rule.” Can you explain what that is? 

I think it was really an eighty-page rule, but that is very very loose. At eighty pages you can have a look at what you’ve done, and if it isn’t flying yet, you might consider putting it aside for now and saving some of it for another project that excites you more. Eighty is not so many pages that you’ll feel as if you’ve wasted your life. But if, at eighty pages, it looks pretty good to you, this might be a nice time to try to make a sort of outline, to plan ahead for the rest of the book, because finally there’s a bit of a “there” there, and you can plunge ahead feeling as if you’ve already really accomplished something. Eighty solid pages is a really good start.

What is the most common “mistake” you see in early or unfulfilled manuscripts?  

Hard to say. The so-called mushy middle is sometimes an issue… There can be a strong start without a way to take it through to the end. The excitement and energy sometimes get lost or wind down way too soon, and the writer can feel a bit deflated. 

What do you do when you get stuck? 

I read a great passage in a favorite book that I know the writer was excited about when he or she wrote it.

What advice do you wish you could give your younger self on the writing life, and on trying to make a career as a writer?  

To not worry so much about what other people think. 

Bonus question: What do you love about working with budding novelists? 

You can almost see the wheels turning as they make connections in their minds. It’s very exciting to witness.

Now it’s your turn: What do you do when you’re stuck? We’d love to hear! And when you think you can’t hone and revise your novel anymore, consider applying to BookEnds–we’re where novels go to become their very best selves.