Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing

Yesterday, I embarked on a project, which I have been putting off. The cutting back of Dragon Wine, what I think is my best project ever. I started Dragon Wine in 2005, back when my published author friends were writing big door stoppers. I sent the first 25,000 words off to Varuna and it made the long list in the MS development awards. That gave me an incentive to keep writing, which I did. I submitted another sample the next year, getting the MS to 60,000 words. Again it made the long list for the same award. I kept on then until I finished the draft and then made it to the short list. A year later it made the short list that went to Harper Collins. And it wasn’t chosen. I remember telling Peter Bishop, the creative director at Varuna Writers House, that the novel would not have been written without the encouragement of the award. I was then on a fellowship, a lovely two weeks at Varuna, also awarded for Dragon Wine.

When you get rejections it is often hard to stay focused and to believe in your work. I have had three top editors look at Dragon Wine, one has looked at it twice. Last year, I was able to chat to one of the editors and get some insight into what the issues might be. This feedback also matched some comments I received from an agent and some writer friends, who also had a look for me.

Basically times change. The story is fine, but there is a tad too much detail getting in the way of the action. The agent recommend I cut it back to about 120,000 words. That’s a big ask for an MS that’s at 167,000 words. I’ve toyed with splitting it, but I think I have a fundamental problem of too much verbage.

I’ve playing with this MS for so long now. I’ve looked at rhythm and flow and embroidered the world to fill it out and make it real. But I think in doing that I’ve over set the balance and, also, as I said the world has moved on. Now, there’s a demand for more action, tension and pace. Sure there are those that still like rich worlds and vast epics…but that’s a lot harder to crack as a new writer. So I’m here now cutting away.

So I will periodically update progress.
My start word count was 167, 200 currently at 164, 158 .

Last night I ripped out the prologue. The agent gave me a wonderful crit of that. ‘A piece of shite that info dumps all over the shop and makes me not care’, is my paraphrase.

I think I wrote that prologue to address an issue in the first chapter that someone else raised, instead of addressing the issue directly. Woe is me.

So I wrote a very short prologue that I can live without. I will go back to it, maybe delete it when I’m through.

I cut a substantial part of the opening, getting rid of any smidgen of back story, instead weaving in a bit of setting and context for the opening. This was a very good move I think. That lost me about 3000 words.

Today I am fileting the text. You could say I’m deleting every second line. You’d be surprised how close to reality that is. I look at the paragraph and then I think, if you lose that sentence what will that do to the meaning. Why nothing. Snip. I’ve also deleted a few paragraphs that I think I can live without and if I can’t I can put them back in as I do have the original.

A few months back, I thought up a small plot change that gets my character moving much more quickly and addresses a motivation issue which I referred to earlier. That will require a bit more cutting and reworking and I’m quite looking forward to that.

Another bad habit, I guess you could call it is, using a whole chapter when introducing or moving to a new character point of view. All I’ve managed to do is add more detail, so I can go back and trim these and not make them chapters at all but scene breaks. I still keep the character and their point of view, but I’m not stretching it out to fill up space and make it a whole chapter.

As for any other insights, other than trimming detail, I don’t know until I get there. However, I should be in a good position to work on the sequel, which is already at 158,000 words (and not quite finished). I already know I have an excess of dead bodies in the opening scenes. Chaff I say. Burn it. Get rid of it.