Another sign of an amateure writer
We all know CP is not a wise old storyteller. Far from it, really. There are several signs of this, ones that we have pointed out:
- Every synonym of "said" being used
- "Lush" descriptions that really only detract from the novel.
- Thesaurus rape D:
There is one, though, that really irks me. As a writer, and a young one at that, I've already learned that the words I type are not gold. Perhaps, if I scrape and edit and polish for a few more years, the thing I'm writing will actually be worth reading. In the meanwhile, I've deleted a lot. Scraping the story to its bones, basically. Overall, I've calculated that I've deleted almost 100k*, which is more than I've written.
The thing is, a real writer knows that his/her prose is not set in stone. Things can change, and things can be deleted. If a scene doesn't help the plot move along, or at least show another side of a character or something relatively useful for the story, it shouldn't be there. We don't want 800 pages of people running around, apparently achieving nothing.
To quote from Eldest:
" ...whenever I need to talk about a problem with the story or characters and for giving me the courage to throw out twelve pages** and rewrite Eragon's entrance into Ellesmera (painful)." (Eldest, paperback edition, pg. 677, owned by Christopher Paolini)
Wow. Twelve pages. Unparalleled, that is.
Is that really the only scene he's rewritten? In my novel (sorry for comparing) every scene has been rewritten two, three times, and then edited and picked apart until it's completely different from before. Until it's what I think it should be. If CP didn't do all that...most of his book is essentially a rough draft.
Makes sense.
* I never really delete stuff. It's all on another document. Who knows if it will ever come in handy?
** Twelve pages basically is 3500-4000 words on a word processor, depending on the font size and type, etc. Not that much, is it?
- Every synonym of "said" being used
- "Lush" descriptions that really only detract from the novel.
- Thesaurus rape D:
There is one, though, that really irks me. As a writer, and a young one at that, I've already learned that the words I type are not gold. Perhaps, if I scrape and edit and polish for a few more years, the thing I'm writing will actually be worth reading. In the meanwhile, I've deleted a lot. Scraping the story to its bones, basically. Overall, I've calculated that I've deleted almost 100k*, which is more than I've written.
The thing is, a real writer knows that his/her prose is not set in stone. Things can change, and things can be deleted. If a scene doesn't help the plot move along, or at least show another side of a character or something relatively useful for the story, it shouldn't be there. We don't want 800 pages of people running around, apparently achieving nothing.
To quote from Eldest:
" ...whenever I need to talk about a problem with the story or characters and for giving me the courage to throw out twelve pages** and rewrite Eragon's entrance into Ellesmera (painful)." (Eldest, paperback edition, pg. 677, owned by Christopher Paolini)
Wow. Twelve pages. Unparalleled, that is.
Is that really the only scene he's rewritten? In my novel (sorry for comparing) every scene has been rewritten two, three times, and then edited and picked apart until it's completely different from before. Until it's what I think it should be. If CP didn't do all that...most of his book is essentially a rough draft.
Makes sense.
* I never really delete stuff. It's all on another document. Who knows if it will ever come in handy?
** Twelve pages basically is 3500-4000 words on a word processor, depending on the font size and type, etc. Not that much, is it?