Before embarking on writing the actual draft of “The Songsman”, I had a big interest in the craft side of writing. However, I did not understand the full scope of what to learn. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I didn’t know what I needed to know. I just knew what everyone else told me I needed to know. It’s a subtle difference and not one I could understand until I embarked on the journey of actually writing a book. It was like being a kid charging into the house for cookies, but finding out the cold reality of the sliding glass door.

A year later I understand more about what I actually need to know. All the easily searched and widely available knowledge is a great first step. Questions like ‘What is show don’t tell?’ and “What makes a good character?”, are all great things to answer when first getting started. However, writing a first draft and encountering things myself, caused several questions that are more focused, more specific, to my weaknesses as a writer. The sorts of thing that are out of scope for all those beginner-oriented information sources.

The following are a few big questions I had after writing my first draft, as well as things I’ve discovered along the way during a few revision passes and additional research.

How to make a PoV Shine

How do great authors handle writing through a character’s view while in third person limited? I understand the basics and I did a really good job with a few characters. However, I want to knock it out of the park and make sure my PoV diction is strong and really makes the reader feel like they are in the head of a vibrant character that they will fall in love with.

I can say, that after a few revision passes I have applied one lesson I learned from a few recent book reads. That lesson is to describe things in the setting through the lens of the character. For example, if there is a table of ale mugs in an Inn, a cynical and hard-boiled character like Cael will notice something like the following:

“In the center of the common room sat a simple ale and pipe-smoke-infested table. A monument to sad souls drowning the last bits of their humanity in the fetid marsh of vice and painful conversation.”

While a more upbeat character like Delarin would see the following:

“In the center of the common room sat a sturdy, albeit rustic, table. Surrounded by the din of mirth and people lifting their spirits after a long day of work, it was a monument to the sense of community that laid over the Inn like the waters of a gentle lake.”

It’s the same table, only the lens of the PoV character is different and I’ve found I do this more naturally as my draft goes on, particularly with Thadren, Cael, and Kara. They have a fairly distinct lens which they view the world through, so that helps and is maybe another point to answering this question. Namely, if I’m having a hard time describing the world through the distinct lens of a character’s PoV, maybe it means my character isn’t distinct and needs more depth.

Setting Descriptions

On a read of “The Songsman” in revision, I really felt like my prose and general writing skills were making a noticeable improvement and I also felt my ‘style’ was starting to take shape. One thing I glossed over in the first draft was in-depth and flowery descriptions. I put them in where I knew I wanted them, but I didn’t focus on jamming in as many as I felt I needed based on my experience reading other authors.

Interestingly, during this re-read, I felt at peace with the level of description and metaphors, etc. that I had. Perhaps this is a part of my style, or modern writing in general. The books I grew up with would spend half a page on how frilly a dress was or how a room was decorated. I know I want to be more concise than all that and I feel comfortable with my level of description. This is something I will be very interested in feedback about, not just how I’m describing things or what flowery metaphors I use, but how often and if the scene is properly described so I don’t have ‘white room syndrome’ and the like. This is something I want to explore and perfect as I grow in my writing style.

Fight/Action Scenes

This was an unforeseen difficulty. As a kid of the ’80s and early ’90s, I grew up on the A-team and Ninja Turtles, which of course means I am an expert in fighting and action scenes (and yes I’m going to find a way to fit a sequence where the protagonists have to make an impromptu tank to survive, and make it work in a fantasy setting.) However, when I actually started writing fight scenes I quickly understood why people have trouble with them.

It can turn into a laundry list of tedium.

This is what I learned after really focusing on this in revision and studying. What makes a fight scene have more impact, is not the minutia of cool flip moves a character does, nor the hand motions a bad guy does to light something on fire. It’s all about emotional context. It’s Sun Tzu, ‘Win first, then fight.’ A great fight scene is written in the plot long before the characters even enter the room to beat each other to death. It’s the build-up of why and the foreshadowing of what happens if they lose, that makes the fight scene hit hard. It’s the stakes and it’s the difficulties.

The actual moves, while some detail is needed to get the reader’s mind going down the road you want them on, are not critical or even desirable. Physical descriptions are definitely ‘less is more’. Efficiency is key here. You’re pumping emotion into the reader and move-by-move descriptions, in reality, clog the pipe and limit the flow of what’s going to make the scene thrilling.

Character Arcs

Currently, I’m planning for my final big revision pass. The book, mostly, is really good in almost all arcs except for the main arc, Delarin’s. It’s good, but it lacks something and I’ve been struggling to put my finger on it until this final read-through. It lacks ‘narrative pressure’ and clear desire. Now, without giving away spoilers, this is not true, but it’s true for what the reader sees through a good part of the book. His arc has all the elements I need, so I did a good job laying the foundation, it’s just missing a few highlights with both plot and character growth, that bring out the movement and growth through this arc. We can think of it as adding salt to what seems like a bland dish of food. Salt merely brings out the flavor that is already there. I made a good dish, I just need to add salt here and there to make sure the flavor comes out for the reader until elements of his arc come in to take it to the end-zone.

Physical movement descriptions, nodding, etc.

This is more of a stylistic decision I need to explore. I find I add a lot of descriptions for characters’ physical queues during things like dialogue. Instead of saying “The character was surprised by his response.” I would write “The character’s eyebrows arched in shock.” I also have them smiling and nodding at each other perhaps too much. I think it’s the Robert Redford mountain man nodding meme playing over and over in my head that causes this. In my last revision pass, I focused on this and either toned it down or rewrote many such instances to make them less repetitive and that helped. I’m not sure about this, I think it’s good, but I will pay close attention and get feedback on this as well as pay attention next time I read a book to see what other authors do.

Conclusion

All in all, I am very pleased with “The Songsman” and have learned a ton so far. I think one more big revision and I’ll be to a point where I have done everything I can do on my own. Soon it will be time to enlist others to help me get it to a publishable state which is both exciting and scary. We’ll see what they say about these things. Either way, the feedback will be a big learning experience and help me along my journey as a writer even more than I’ve experienced so far on my own. Exciting times!