Stephen King suggests that you should have an ideal reader, IR, in mind when you write. I use my husband, who can be even more impatient than me as a reader. As King says, is your IR going to feel `there's too much pointless talk' in this place or that, that you've `underexplained a certain situation' or overexplained it? I think I'm guilty of both. I know the plot so well, when a reader challenges something, I think: isn't it obvious? Well, no, it's not. As for overexplanation, I just have to imagine my husband wrinkling his nose and saying, `I get it, already!' The IR will also help you if you've forgotten to `resolve some important plot point'. (He cites Raymond Chandler who was once asked about the murdered chauffeur in The Big Sleep and allegedly said, `Oh him. You know, I forgot all about him.')
An important way to increase the pace of your book is to be quite severe with cutting (`kill your darlings'). He says he got a note from an editor back in his senior year at High School, who said: `Not bad but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd draft=1st draft - 10%. Good luck.'
Thanks to a combination of studying Stephen King, attending talks and workshops and meeting up with fellow writers to discuss extracts of our manuscripts, I have just had two agents ask to see my full manuscript. I immediately felt the need to go through it one last time and delete all the adverbs, the over explanations and excessive descriptions and `stage directions'. I averaged 5 pages an hour so it took a while, but I finally managed to cut another 6,000 words (though not 10%, as the total is now 114,000).
As a reward for my progress so far, I'm taking myself off to the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in July with a great series of talks such as `Domestic Suspense- The Killer Behind the Front Door' and lots of my favourite crime writers like Val McDermid, Peter James and Mark Billingham. I've also signed up for the Creative Thursday workshops, including the scary 2 minute Dragon's Den style pitch!
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