The good news: for a first draft it was quite good. My immediate concern was, was this a first draft? If it wasn’t then I had bad news to convey.
Upon asking him, this wasn’t the first draft and he did a considerable amount of revisions on it.
Drat, I said under my breath.
The bad news: “The manuscript was not written with the reader in mind.” I said.
Explaining what I mean to someone who doesn’t understand writing techniques was very difficult.
I told him, “as I read, I couldn’t get close to the characters, to know what was going on, what they were seeing, feeling or thinking. It didn’t make any sense to me. I was hovering over the situation not in it, and it was so annoying.” I couldn’t even get through the Prologue, and it was the beginning. Of course I didn’t tell him that.
I tried to explain a few more things about writing techniques and possible better ways to write it but he just looked at me. I could feel his confusion and disappointment.
Oh gosh, the last thing I wanted to do was critiquing his novel under the table so much that he would stop writing all together. Honestly his writing wasn’t bad. It had great ideas and his tone was extremely well done. However the execution of the writing was lacking.
How do I proceed here? I asked my friend if he had taken any writing classes. He shook his head. That explained a lot. In order to understand how to make the most of your writing you/ the writer, need to understand how to write. And believe me its not just putting pretty words on a page. It involved technique.
My first manuscript I didn’t have any clue how to write. And it shows. I read it to my girlfriend, who is a writer and a good one, and got some feedback that baffled me. I tried to explain my thinking and she just told me it didn’t work. I was so perplexed at the whole thing I just didn’t know what to do.
“Start reading books on writing.” She said. Like that was the answer to all. I was so overwhelmed I didn’t even know where to start.
“I started with The Fiction Writers Workshop book.” She said. We were talking over the phone. The name of the book was familiar to me. I looked on my bookshelf and guess what I saw. The Fiction Writer Workshop book. It was one of the first books I bought on writing. In reality I thought I didn’t need it. But being so overwhelmed I decided to go through the books and do the exercises.
So back to my friend: I explained to him, when I started writing I had no clue either. But the more I read books on writing techniques the better I understood what I was doing wrong.
So my advice to him was to start classes or reading books on how to write.
To be honest I’m not sure how he took my critique or my advice. My only hope is that he doesn’t stop writing because of it. He did tell me that he sent out seventeen query letters to agents and received nothing back, just rejection letter.
If there was any kind of potential on the manuscript he would have received some kind of hand written message on the rejection letter. He didn’t.
I told him if he kept writing the way he was without knowing how to write it would take three times as long to get his writing where he wanted it to be.
If writing is your passion, please get some kind of education on it. Either by taking classes or reading books on the art of writing. There are many really good ones out there. Please remember that to achieve something takes time, passion, talent and practice. Do you think a violist, or athletes or anyone achieves success without blood, sweat and tears. It is the same with writing. So write and do it because you love it.
Until next time.
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