Andrew Norriss
Andrew Norriss: 1. Achieving balance
There’s a man running a creative writing course in America who calls his opening lesson ‘Finishing that Awful First Draft.’ My first draft invariably qualifies as awful, but experience has taught me to resist the urge to throw the whole thing away and instead to go through it looking first at the overall balance of my story. Does it have a proper beginning, an even development through the middle, and a satisfying end? If not, where does it seem to go off the rails?
I will have planned my story before I started, with a couple of sides of A4 detailing what will be in each chapter, but always find that big chunks of the story don’t work as I’d expected. And it’s only when you read through the thing at one sweep that you notice which sections need beefing up and how others want slimming down.
Some sections may need a complete rethink. However carefully I’ve planned, I inevitably find parts of the story that ‘feel’ wrong. In the book I’m working on at the moment I’ve just removed an entire sub-plot because it didn’t ‘fit’, and the smooth flow of the story is my first priority. Making sure that it moves from one event to the next, building to a climax, with proper surprises along the way… all the things I’d like to find in a good book myself.
After reading through the first draft, I determinedly shake off my depression, go through the notes I’ve made on what needs to be changed in each chapter, make a new plan, and then sit down and start writing the whole thing again…
Andrew Norriss
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