Faking yourself

How often do you fake yourself? The job interview or any scenario which requires you to fit someone else's mould. It's the same with writing. The book has to meet a certain criteria before it will be accepted for publication. That can be anything from the way it's written to how the characters are presented, to the storyline. My protagonist, Alan, had to be changed to fit the criteria of a hero. I had to make him bolder in some scenarios where I'd made him falter, yet I still had to make him believable and real. Sometimes, when the book was returned from editing, there'd be comments in the margin saying, 'What a wimp!' I couldn't make Alan completely flawless. He goes under a lot of strain in the book. It would be unrealistic for him not to crack up. Without giving the ending away, when I first submitted the plot for appraisal, I was told the ending was too sad. I had to change it to satisfy the reader. Then again, one of the lessons I learned while writing is that you are not writing to please yourself, you are writing to entertain an audience.

I was mentored while writing 'Beneath the Perfect World' and I ended up writing to a formula. Don't get me wrong, the end product was a hell of a lot better than it would have been had I kept to my own writing style. I experimented with metaphors, thinking to gain respectability I had to be Thomas Hardy. It came out far too contrived and then a critique pointed out, Hardy wouldn't be published if he submitted his work today. One thing my editor told me was that I need to let my own voice come through more. I would have thought after all the scrutiny the book went through, I would have got it right by now. Like many pop bands, the second album is usually better than the first. Not always the case, but it's more polished, the band fuse better. The songs are more catchy. The third album just about sustains it then the band reinvent themselves.

True with writing. You perfect your style when you write the first book then polish it for the second. Pressure to meet a deadline for a publisher can mean subsequent books are not as well crafted as early novels. What the hell, the writer has earned an international reputation.

My next book will be more how I want it to be. Not that I've earned an international reputation. I want the protagonist to be flawed and work hard to win the respect of the reader. He's going to do some dodgy things but I think this will make him more interesting. There won't be a happy ending, but that doesn't mean the reader isn't satisfied. This is the prequel, though, to 'Beneath the Perfect World'.