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but how do you know it's perfect? What's perfect for you might not be for someone else,
That's an unanswerable question, I'm afraid. It's why writers have to get used to rejections from agents and publishers. All you can do is write - then edit - to the best of your ability.
I do both, Dave. I can't move on if I know I've left glaring mistakes behind me. However, if you're on a roll and can't stop for breath, sometimes you have to wait for a lull in inspiration to go back and edit. This might be at the end of a huge chunk or just a paragraph. I think we all edit in different ways, but as long as it's all done at some point then it's fine to approach it in the way that suits you.
As for a 'final edit', I'm not sure that exists! You can go over and over a manuscript and keep finding things you might want to change...
I'm the same, I just can't seem to leave it when I know it's not right. I do have another question, I apologise for them all. Some web sites have said you need to get someone to read your draft so my genre being of a military background do you get someone who understands this side of things or someone who has never been exposed to it so they have no understanding whatsoever is that makes sense?
Both. With beta readers you want to try and get different groups of people. Avid readers, writers, military, non-military...no point having one understand if the rest don't. Plus if one person says something is wrong with the book, it's an opinion - if twenty people say the same thing then it may be something that needs addressing.
Not that i'm suggesting your family isn't literate - but they love you, and are usually not writers. My OH tells stories, he's a film editor, so I trust him for certain things, but still rely most heavily for real, strong crits from others.
We love questions! If you want to sell it to a mass audience, you need a non-military reader to be able to point out where what's obvious to you isn't clear to the layman. If you aren't sure about any of the military stuff, get a colleague to read those bits - they don't need to read it all - or just ask them the relevant questions. When you know it's not right, change it - what follows will depend on what went before. Perfection? Doesn't exist. As good as you can get it? That's what to aim for.
I'm going to stick my neck out and question some of the advice on offer. Never forget that you are on a writer's site. Writers love 'the writing'. Readers tend to be more interested in 'the people' and 'the story'.
I also believe publishing has changed. [IMHO] Your story should be 'In your own words' (worry about the grammar and the structure later, much later). Take a look at this.
You could see the blood. It was darker than you thought.
It was all on the ground outside Chicken Joe’s. It just felt crazy.
Jordan: ‘I’ll give you a million quid if you touch it.’
Me: ‘You don’t have a million.’
Jordan: ‘One quid then.’
You wanted to touch it but you couldn’t get close enough. There was a line in the way:
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
If you cross the line you’ll turn to dust.
We weren’t allowed to talk to the policeman, he had to concentrate for if the killer came back. I could see the chains hanging from his belt but I couldn’t see the gun.
The dead boy’s mamma was guarding the blood. She wanted it to stay, you could tell. The rain wanted to come and wash the blood away but she wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t even crying, she was just stiff and fierce like it was her job to scare the rain back up into the sky. A pigeon was looking for his chop. He walked right in the blood. He was even sad as well, you could tell where his eyes were all pink and dead.
* * *
The flowers were already bent. There were pictures of the dead boy wearing his school uniform. His jumper was green.
My jumper’s blue. My uniform’s better. The only bad thing about it is the tie, it’s too scratchy. I hate it when they’re scratchy like that.
There were bottles of beer instead of candles and the dead boy’s friends wrote messages to him. They all said he was a great friend. Some of the spelling was wrong but I didn’t mind. His football boots were on the railings tied up by their laces. They were nearly new Nikes, the studs were proper metal and everything.
Jordan: ‘Shall I t’ief them? He don’t need ’em no more.’
I just pretended I didn’t hear him. Jordan would never really steal them, they were a million times too big. They looked too empty just hanging there. I wanted to wear them but they’d never fit.
Me and the dead boy were only half friends, I didn’t see him very much because he was older and he didn’t go to my school. He could ride his bike with no hands and you never even wanted him to fall off. I said a prayer for him inside my head. It just said sorry. That’s all I could remember. I pretended like if I kept looking hard enough I could make the blood move and go back in the shape of a boy. I could bring him back alive that way. It happened before, where I used to live there was a chief who brought his son back like that. It was a long time ago, before I was born. Asweh, it was a miracle. It didn’t work this time.
I gave him my bouncy ball. I don’t need it anymore, I’ve got five more under my bed. Jordan only gave him a pebble he found on the floor.
Me: ‘That doesn’t count. It has to be something that belonged to you.’
Jordan: ‘I ain’t got nothing. I didn’t know we had to bring a present.’
I gave Jordan a strawberry Chewit to give to the dead boy, then I showed him how to make a cross. Both the two of us made a cross. We were very quiet. It even felt important. We ran all the way home. I beat Jordan easily. I can beat everybody, I’m the fastest in Year 7. I just wanted to get away before the dying caught us.
- On first reading you'd be convinced this wouldn't win any literary awards . . . It didn't, but it did make the Man Booker short list.
The writer asks two questions of the reader (1) I'm telling you I'm an 11 year-old immigrant, do you believe me? (2) Do you like me?
- Here, POV is everything. If you're telling the reader you were a grunt in the British Army but I write like I've got a Masters in Eng Lit, they're not going to believe you.
- In your story it's important to get across who YOU are. Another surprisingly account comes from an unlikely source. Listen to Tom Hanks narration of Forrest Gump's army days.
Good luck, and I'm not necessarily right about anything.
I totally agree with what you are saying, because I'm speaking my book there is inevitably a lot of military acronyms and swearing, nobody swears like a veteran British army soldier. Obviously this will need to be edited but your point is taken on board, my old platoon commander who goes by the name Chris Hunter wrote 8 lives down and extreme risk, when you read his book you can immediately tell two things, 1 he was a soldier and more importantly 2 he was an officer so you would expect his book to sound like it does if that makes any sense
This may sound silly but I keep struggling with present and past tense. I'm trying to tell a story from start to finish of how it happend in my eyes. Can you change between the two? I hope I'm explaining myself clearly lol
You can't change between the two, no, unless for instance, you are commenting on how you feel now about a situation you have just told us about in the past.
This may sound silly but I keep struggling with present and past tense. I'm trying to tell a story from start to finish of how it happend in my eyes. Can you change between the two? I hope I'm explaining myself clearly lol
For the time being I wouldn't worry about tense. It is likely your work is in past tense - leave it that way. You are telling of events that have happened in the past.
It's fine to switch between tenses but you've got understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. There are a lot of techniques and guidelines in novel writing, understanding these basics will make everything more clear.
e.g. Showing versus Telling.
If you understand this you may wish to 'tell' your transitions and 'show' your scenes. If this provides the basic framework for your story you may elect to write transitions in past tense and scenes in present.
e.g.
At 22-years-old I had not known real fear nor had I witnessed a man die. I believed I was indestructible, Mr Fearless. I can remember the moment life changed. Sniper fire was coming at us from every angle. "Fall back! Fall back!" Billy shouts. I look back. Everybody is running. "Everybody, fall back!" Billy's waving his arms. I hear the high-pitched whistle on the wind. "Incoming!" I am deafened and blinded by the blast. "Billy!" I call as I begin to run. "Billy!" I can't hear Billy because my ears are ringing. Billy couldn't hear me because Billy was road-kill.
- Not the best scene in the world but we've gone from past to present and back to past, simply for dynamic effect.
Ok that is exactly how mine flows so that's correct, right?
There's no correct way to tell a story - there is only your way. Books are not sold on technical merit. People like the story, and the way you tell it - or they don't.
TBH if you do that you'll get lots of opinions - possibly too many - and I still think, as valid as they might be, you need to bash out that first draft and not be swayed from telling your story. As MS says, there's no right or wrong way - just your way.
They don't contradict each other - they might rewrite it out in their own style, but any advice as to punctuation, tense etc. is all correct and helpful. So I don't quite agree, there.
Please bare in mind that this extract is in its basic form and has yet to be edited heavily! This is how I spoke it unto the dictaphone!
It was a good thing sometimes to have Iraqi drivers but you also had Iraqi drivers that, I don’t know, you just couldn’t trust them. That said you couldn’t trust any of them fully, but some you could more than others and Ali Namar was one of the ones that I felt I could trust. Everything had gone okay we were driving down Route Tampa and things were fine and we were turning right off at Blue 4, I was front vehicle and all of a sudden it just felt like the front of the vehicle had hit a concrete wall. When it stopped it didn’t stop gradually or skidded it was just ‘BOOM’ a big loud bang, lots of dust, lots of smoke and the vehicle just went from 120km an hour to a full hard stop. I was pretty shaken up and I couldn’t get my bearings at first, I just got straight on the radio and shouted contact, contact left hand side vehicle immobilised . I looked over at Ali shouting ‘are you alright, are you alright?’ I didn’t have a client to worry about because we had just dropped them off, it was just us. Ali didn’t say anything and whilst I am looking at him Bounty comes over the radio and said ‘On route on route' I knew exactly what he meant because of the vehicle drills that we had practised. I have got a contact situation that has happened on the left hand side. I am getting small arms fire bouncing off that side as well, so I knew that Bounty was going to come up along the right hand side because I was not going to get out on the left into a hail of bullets. He was going to come up and draw his rear door with my door. His driver is Iraqi so Bounty is going to get out and give covering fire whilst I get out and get into the vehicle and then he is going to get in and we are going to move off. The other vehicle is going to give covering fire from 100-200 metres away and so whilst Bounty is on the radio saying ‘On route – prepare to move, prepare to move’. I look over at Ali and he looks okay, he is just staring out of the windscreen, he is not moving but he looks alright, so I go to grab his body armour to drag him out of the vehicle and his head falls to right and basically the left hand side of his head is gone.
The vehicle had been heavily compromised on the left hand side, the IED had taken out his side of the car, the front end had gone, the engine was just a lump of metal on the floor and the armoured vehicle was slowly but surely being compromised even more because of the massive IED that had hit the vehicle.
There was nothing I could do for Ali now he was a good bloke, but he was dead. There was nothing I could do. Bounty’s pulls up alongside, I opened my door. His door is open, I drag Ali Namar out and I then had to throw a phosphorous grenade into the vehicle to destroy it because of the sensitive material that we have on board, there are maps that show routes, all the spot maps, there is the MTS, a grab bag that I forgot to pick up that had over 30 magazines for the M4, smoke grenades, all this could be useful to the insurgency, so it was a couple of phosphorous grenades thrown inside and Bounty got me the fuck out of there. He drove me up to the other vehicle that was giving covering fire and we turned around and headed back to the air station in Basrah and back to the KBR camp and assessed the damaged, regrouped. I let the Brit Mil know, they went down and they confirmed that the vehicle was destroyed and totally burnt out and that there was practically nothing left of it.
Personally I think crack on as you are. I like the "informal"* style - you're telling your tale as only you can tell it. Write the whole thing like that and worry about style changes when a publisher/agent brings them up.
*I don't really mean informal as a bad word, it's just the closest I can think of to describe what I mean.
Hey it's cool. I've never tried anything like this before so I'm enjoying the experience and my psychologist agrees that doing this book can only be a good thing. I have lots more detail to put in about the contact but was not sure if I write it as if it's happening now, as the book is talking about my time in Iraq that has been and gone.
It's all so hit and miss now with either. Thankfully it's a long way off before you have to think about it. Story finished then the worry, then the rejections, editing, pain pain pain, submit, rejections, cry, rejections, repeat...ahh, writing. Wonder why everyone doesn't give it a go :P
You're writing as if you're in the moment, Dave. It is raw and has impact. There are editing issues, but you can tidy those up at any point where you've hit a lull and don't know how to continue - or at the end. I agree that for now you should just get it all down as and when the ideas come.
I recently saw a publisher who was looking for true life stories for a new imprint. Might have been in WM/WN? I'll let you know if I come across it again.
This is where I am struggling, my story basically starts at the very beginning where I get a phone call from a friend I was in the regiment with, I'm telling it as it happened ie I arrived at the company offices in Knightsbridge, I wasn't looking forward to the 8hr flight to Kuwait etc etc. How do I switch from that to ' round were wizzing past my head and hitting the desert floor churning it up as they impacted, Farris screamed out man down man down, I ran over to him and blood was gushing from his abdominal wound, the bullet had ripped into his intestine and undigested food was seeping out into the cavity that all was left of his stomach! '
If your verbs end in -ed, then you are writing in the past, so yes, you're telling it as it happened then. In your longer extract, you mixed tenses a few times, e.g.
He was going to come up and draw his rear door with my door. His driver is Iraqi so Bounty is going to get out and give covering fire whilst I get out and get into the vehicle and then he is going to get in and we are going to move off.
Can you see here you used 'was' (past) then 'is' (present)?
That extract was amazing. Yes, raw - yes, unedited and with little punctuation, but it gripped me. Forget about the editing for now, Dave. As Bored Robots said:
Personally I think crack on as you are. I like the "informal"* style - you're telling your tale as only you can tell it. Write the whole thing like that and worry about style changes when a publisher/agent brings them up.
*I don't really mean informal as a bad word, it's just the closest I can think of to describe what I mean.
Agree with that wholeheartedly. Write (or dictate) your first draft first. The rest will come later. I think if you start thinking about the craft of writing too soon you will lose the immediacy and pace. Stop thinking about the craft and speak your thoughts as they come. It's so powerful in its current form, you might compromise the telling of your story if you start editing it too early.
p.s. I said I was 'loving this thread' because it's so interesting and because you've won peoples' hearts and it's great to see so much support.
Comments
All you can do is write - then edit - to the best of your ability.
I thoroughly recommend writing your first draft without editing.
I've recently finished my first draft and am giving it a few weeks, but I already know where some of my changes need to go, and so on.
http://www.writers-online.co.uk/talkback/#/discussion/184392/books-about-writing-what-have-you-read
My last comment is regarding a book about editing.
As for a 'final edit', I'm not sure that exists! You can go over and over a manuscript and keep finding things you might want to change...
If you want to sell it to a mass audience, you need a non-military reader to be able to point out where what's obvious to you isn't clear to the layman. If you aren't sure about any of the military stuff, get a colleague to read those bits - they don't need to read it all - or just ask them the relevant questions.
When you know it's not right, change it - what follows will depend on what went before.
Perfection? Doesn't exist. As good as you can get it? That's what to aim for.
I also believe publishing has changed. [IMHO] Your story should be 'In your own words' (worry about the grammar and the structure later, much later). Take a look at this.
You could see the blood. It was darker than you thought.
It was all on the ground outside Chicken Joe’s. It just felt crazy.
Jordan: ‘I’ll give you a million quid if you touch it.’
Me: ‘You don’t have a million.’
Jordan: ‘One quid then.’
You wanted to touch it but you couldn’t get close enough. There was a line in the way:
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
If you cross the line you’ll turn to dust.
We weren’t allowed to talk to the policeman, he had to concentrate for if the killer came back. I could see the chains hanging from his belt but I couldn’t see the gun.
The dead boy’s mamma was guarding the blood. She wanted it to stay, you could tell. The rain wanted to come and wash the blood away but she wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t even crying, she was just stiff and fierce like it was her job to scare the rain back up into the sky. A pigeon was looking for his chop. He walked right in the blood. He was even sad as well, you could tell where his eyes were all pink and dead.
* * *
The flowers were already bent. There were pictures of the dead boy wearing his school uniform. His jumper was green.
My jumper’s blue. My uniform’s better. The only bad thing about it is the tie, it’s too scratchy. I hate it when they’re scratchy like that.
There were bottles of beer instead of candles and the dead boy’s friends wrote messages to him. They all said he was a great friend. Some of the spelling was wrong but I didn’t mind. His football boots were on the railings tied up by their laces. They were nearly new Nikes, the studs were proper metal and everything.
Jordan: ‘Shall I t’ief them? He don’t need ’em no more.’
I just pretended I didn’t hear him. Jordan would never really steal them, they were a million times too big. They looked too empty just hanging there. I wanted to wear them but they’d never fit.
Me and the dead boy were only half friends, I didn’t see him very much because he was older and he didn’t go to my school. He could ride his bike with no hands and you never even wanted him to fall off. I said a prayer for him inside my head. It just said sorry. That’s all I could remember. I pretended like if I kept looking hard enough I could make the blood move and go back in the shape of a boy. I could bring him back alive that way. It happened before, where I used to live there was a chief who brought his son back like that. It was a long time ago, before I was born. Asweh, it was a miracle. It didn’t work this time.
I gave him my bouncy ball. I don’t need it anymore, I’ve got five more under my bed. Jordan only gave him a pebble he found on the floor.
Me: ‘That doesn’t count. It has to be something that belonged to you.’
Jordan: ‘I ain’t got nothing. I didn’t know we had to bring a present.’
I gave Jordan a strawberry Chewit to give to the dead boy, then I showed him how to make a cross. Both the two of us made a cross. We were very quiet. It even felt important. We ran all the way home. I beat Jordan easily. I can beat everybody, I’m the fastest in Year 7. I just wanted to get away before the dying caught us.
- On first reading you'd be convinced this wouldn't win any literary awards . . . It didn't, but it did make the Man Booker short list.
The writer asks two questions of the reader (1) I'm telling you I'm an 11 year-old immigrant, do you believe me? (2) Do you like me?
- Here, POV is everything. If you're telling the reader you were a grunt in the British Army but I write like I've got a Masters in Eng Lit, they're not going to believe you.
- In your story it's important to get across who YOU are. Another surprisingly account comes from an unlikely source. Listen to Tom Hanks narration of Forrest Gump's army days.
Good luck, and I'm not necessarily right about anything.
Take the verb 'lie', as in the meaning to lie in a horizontal position.
I lie (present tense) l lay (past) have lain (present perfect).
It's fine to switch between tenses but you've got understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. There are a lot of techniques and guidelines in novel writing, understanding these basics will make everything more clear.
e.g. Showing versus Telling.
If you understand this you may wish to 'tell' your transitions and 'show' your scenes. If this provides the basic framework for your story you may elect to write transitions in past tense and scenes in present.
e.g.
At 22-years-old I had not known real fear nor had I witnessed a man die. I believed I was indestructible, Mr Fearless. I can remember the moment life changed. Sniper fire was coming at us from every angle.
"Fall back! Fall back!" Billy shouts.
I look back. Everybody is running.
"Everybody, fall back!" Billy's waving his arms.
I hear the high-pitched whistle on the wind. "Incoming!" I am deafened and blinded by the blast. "Billy!" I call as I begin to run. "Billy!" I can't hear Billy because my ears are ringing.
Billy couldn't hear me because Billy was road-kill.
- Not the best scene in the world but we've gone from past to present and back to past, simply for dynamic effect.
Or are you brave, but not that brave?!
Sorry, guys but I have noticed a lot of "this is how I'd write it" on this forum when someone posts a sentence for help.
It was a good thing sometimes to have Iraqi drivers but you also had Iraqi drivers that, I don’t know, you just couldn’t trust them. That said you couldn’t trust any of them fully, but some you could more than others and Ali Namar was one of the ones that I felt I could trust. Everything had gone okay we were driving down Route Tampa and things were fine and we were turning right off at Blue 4, I was front vehicle and all of a sudden it just felt like the front of the vehicle had hit a concrete wall. When it stopped it didn’t stop gradually or skidded it was just ‘BOOM’ a big loud bang, lots of dust, lots of smoke and the vehicle just went from 120km an hour to a full hard stop. I was pretty shaken up and I couldn’t get my bearings at first, I just got straight on the radio and shouted contact, contact left hand side vehicle immobilised . I looked over at Ali shouting ‘are you alright, are you alright?’ I didn’t have a client to worry about because we had just dropped them off, it was just us. Ali didn’t say anything and whilst I am looking at him Bounty comes over the radio and said ‘On route on route' I knew exactly what he meant because of the vehicle drills that we had practised. I have got a contact situation that has happened on the left hand side. I am getting small arms fire bouncing off that side as well, so I knew that Bounty was going to come up along the right hand side because I was not going to get out on the left into a hail of bullets. He was going to come up and draw his rear door with my door. His driver is Iraqi so Bounty is going to get out and give covering fire whilst I get out and get into the vehicle and then he is going to get in and we are going to move off. The other vehicle is going to give covering fire from 100-200 metres away and so whilst Bounty is on the radio saying ‘On route – prepare to move, prepare to move’. I look over at Ali and he looks okay, he is just staring out of the windscreen, he is not moving but he looks alright, so I go to grab his body armour to drag him out of the vehicle and his head falls to right and basically the left hand side of his head is gone.
The vehicle had been heavily compromised on the left hand side, the IED had taken out his side of the car, the front end had gone, the engine was just a lump of metal on the floor and the armoured vehicle was slowly but surely being compromised even more because of the massive IED that had hit the vehicle.
There was nothing I could do for Ali now he was a good bloke, but he was dead. There was nothing I could do. Bounty’s pulls up alongside, I opened my door. His door is open, I drag Ali Namar out and I then had to throw a phosphorous grenade into the vehicle to destroy it because of the sensitive material that we have on board, there are maps that show routes, all the spot maps, there is the MTS, a grab bag that I forgot to pick up that had over 30 magazines for the M4, smoke grenades, all this could be useful to the insurgency, so it was a couple of phosphorous grenades thrown inside and Bounty got me the fuck out of there. He drove me up to the other vehicle that was giving covering fire and we turned around and headed back to the air station in Basrah and back to the KBR camp and assessed the damaged, regrouped. I let the Brit Mil know, they went down and they confirmed that the vehicle was destroyed and totally burnt out and that there was practically nothing left of it.
*I don't really mean informal as a bad word, it's just the closest I can think of to describe what I mean.
I recently saw a publisher who was looking for true life stories for a new imprint. Might have been in WM/WN? I'll let you know if I come across it again.
Is this in the same tense?
He was going to come up and draw his rear door with my door. His driver is Iraqi so Bounty is going to get out and give covering fire whilst I get out and get into the vehicle and then he is going to get in and we are going to move off.
Can you see here you used 'was' (past) then 'is' (present)?
Forget about the editing for now, Dave. As Bored Robots said: Agree with that wholeheartedly. Write (or dictate) your first draft first. The rest will come later. I think if you start thinking about the craft of writing too soon you will lose the immediacy and pace.
Stop thinking about the craft and speak your thoughts as they come. It's so powerful in its current form, you might compromise the telling of your story if you start editing it too early.
p.s. I said I was 'loving this thread' because it's so interesting and because you've won peoples' hearts and it's great to see so much support.