Writing: Mastering the Balance


Photo credit: Digitalnative on Flickr

I received an e-mail the other day asking about how an author can balance having a voice, giving her novel a tone, and allowing her characters to have separate personalities. I’m pretty sure I read the question at least half a dozen times before I had any semblance of an answer.

Balance is one of those things in writing that takes a while to really get down—I’m still working on fine-tuning the balance in my writing myself. Our prose should have voice—but not so much that it drowns out our characters. We need to include detail—but don’t want to bombard our readers with too much. We need a good plot—but a well-formed plot means nothing if our characters are flat.

Balance.

I don’t know about you guys, but my first drafts are rarely balanced. Thinking back to the first draft of my current WIP, I had a lot of plot and action and barely any voice. My love-interest was as cardboard as it gets and my antagonist… well he had potential, but some of his dialogue was embarrassing in retrospect and his motivations were shaky, at best.

Finding balance the first time around in your writing is really hard, and I don’t think most of us get it right immediately. And that’s ok.

Balance doesn’t often flow naturally—it takes some tweaking. Think about anything you’ve ever done that required balance—balancing a soda can on its edge, for example. Chances are, unless you have some ridiculous ninja-like balancing skills, you didn’t just set the can on its edge and walk away—you held onto it and tweaked it until it felt like it might stay, then you let go.

Writing is the same way. Nine out of ten times, the first thing you throw onto paper isn’t going to be perfectly balanced. It’ll take revisions—a round where you focus on getting the voice right, a round where you get the details pitch perfect, another where you focus on dialogue and so on and so forth. In my experience, anyway, balance doesn’t come right away—you tweak your manuscript in every which way until— aha!— you get it right.

It’s not an easy thing to master, but no one ever said writing was easy.

Have you had trouble finding balance in your WIP? Tell us your experience!

12 comments:

Jennifer Bennett said...

I agree it all about writing and rewriting until balance is achieved!

Ava Jae said...

It usually takes a lot of work, but it's SO worth it.

Aliza Scheiner said...

Love the post, Ava, thanks for the two-pronged response!

I'd always thought of editing as just rewriting the previous draft, but I like your idea of focusing on specific aspects during different revisions.
It makes editing more bite-sized and manageable.

Ava Jae said...

It's really difficult (although not impossible) to tackle the manuscript rewrite at once. I've always found it helpful to take on one problem (or chapter) at a time so that I don't get overwhelmed with the immensity of the project.

Susankayequinn said...

Definitely not easy. I usually have to look at "balancing out" a certain aspect - pacing, voice, motivation - in any given draft. This is why multiple drafts are so important!

Great post!

Ava Jae said...

Agreed--multiple drafts are SO useful for balancing out all of those little details.

Laurapauling said...

That's the biggest focus of my rewrites this month. Finding the balance between the humor and the thriller aspect of my novel. It's not easy!

Ava Jae said...

I wish you the best! It's certainly not easy, but definitely worth the effort. 

Angela said...

Proportion has always been my biggest enemy--how much, how little. Voice, characterization, description, plot clues, internal thoughts...it's all a struggle to find that perfect balance. Great post!

Ava Jae said...

It's certainly not an easy thing to achieve. If you break it down into chunks though, it becomes much more manageable.

Francesca Zappia said...

I don't know if I ever had trouble with that in the manuscript itself (okay let's not lie, I probably did and I just didn't realize it) but I DEFINITELY have trouble with finding the balance in queries. I always just feel like there's SO MUCH to fit into one page.

Ava Jae said...

Oh geez, query letter writing is so difficult to get right. Trying to find the balance between personalizations, some summary (without saying too much), credentials, information about the WIP...it's definitely hard to balance. 

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...