Describe... or not

Being a visual person, I tend to over-describe in my writing. As my friend AbFab said, 'You see everything like a movie, and you want the reader to see what you see.'
'You're exactly right,' I told her.
She then proceeded with some terrific advice. I'd been told before - mostly by her - but this time it really hit home. She said, 'Don't put in description for description's sake. Only put it in if it moves the story along.'

Of course, I thought. I knew she was right. I had sent her my 2nd chapter, you see. I'd polished it and was quite pleased with myself. It was 22 pages long. In this chapter, the hero and heroine meet again after 18 years apart. The chapter is a chronicle of the evening's events before they reach that moment. I switch between their POVs, in increasingly smaller sections. I thought this would heighten tension, make the reader want to reach the point where they come face to face.

She e-mailed back a lukewarm response, and suggested I cut out what was unnecessary. In her opinion, my 'stringing' out their meeting for so long actually dissipated tension. She said she found herself 'skimming' the writing to get to the vital point. My reply must have sounded so disheartened that she was on the phone in a few minutes. We talked for over two hours, going through what she thought was superfluous.

Now you might be wondering why on earth I would let someone tell me to slash a quarter of my chapter, but it's easy. Her writing is absolutely fabulous, and I trust her judgement. So I got off the phone at about eleven at night, and couldn't go to bed without fixing my ailing chapter. I finished making the changes after midnight and sent them off to her. My chapter reads much better. Paragraphs of description that weren't central to the characters or plot are now a sentence - and some that were completely irrelevant are gone altogether.

As I said, I'd been told this before, but Saturday night, I really GOT IT. Now I tackle my chapter 3 with renewed focus. No more waffling, useless description. As AbFab said, it diffuses tension rather than increasing it. And the big question is: can I stick to it, or will I fall back into my old ways?

SCRIBBLY'S PROGRESS

My dream of having a romance novel published is still that... a dream. I have two great writing friends (one of whom has been a close friend for years and was a work colleague in a previous life) who are striving ahead beautifully. The old friend has had a full manuscript requested by Harlequin and is frantically keeping her fingers crossed. No need to be so nervous, I tell her. Her writing is absolutely wonderful. I wish I could write that well. And the other friend, the newer writing buddy has also had a manuscript requested. Her writing is very powerfully evocative, so much so that when I'm reading encounters between the hero and heroine, I feel weak in the knees - as if I was there. Her request for a full manuscript came about as part of finalling in a writing competition, not through submission, which shows there are several ways to 'get there'.

Either way, their journey has begun in earnest, and I hope to soon join them. Every day, when I check out my letterbox, I expect to see the Harlequin letter sitting there. It's giving me mail anxiety, let me tell you! And it's hard to believe it could be good news, but a dream doesn't stay alive without positive thinking.

Still, positive thinking doesn't write books. At the moment I'm writing the third chapter of my current manuscript. I've veered off the track of my usual Harlequin line: Harlequin Romance (Sweet, here in Australia), by tackling a new line: Harlequin Everlasting Love. These novels are slightly longer than the usual 55,000 word Sweets, and follow the 'history' of a romance - think 'The Notebook'. This manuscript is my first novel ever written, which I just kind of shelved. I knew I didn't have the experience and skill to tell the story the way it ought to be told. It's amazing coming back to it now, after three years and finding half of it is redundant. There is so much that isn't central to the story, or to be more precise, so much that doesn't move the story along. There are minor characters that wouldn't be missed if cut, so of course I've cut them, along with the subplots that would do well in a long-running soapie, but have no place in a 75,000 word novel.

So, I take heart in what I've learned and keep at it. Amazingly, my desire to write has only grown. The pleasure I take in it is quite addictive. Most nights I sit at my laptop fiddling - or scribbling - to my heart's content.

Tonight I have to fix the part where my hero and heroine meet again (after 18 years). I have to approach the scene with more courage. When I first wrote it, a couple of nights ago, I just had my heroine running away! She just ran out of the crowded room (an art gallery exhibition) into the night. Imagine that! I am such a coward. It was only later that I realised how I was dodging the conflict that makes novels great. Of course they have to talk, I told myself. But what are they going to say to each other? What can they say after all that time? Their history wasn't a happy one (they had a teenage love affair with dire consequences), so they both would like to avoid stirring up the broken pieces they left behind. So much to convey, and so difficult to do it just the right way...