I received my first rejection from an agent this weekend. They put a hand written note on the bottom of my original letter. One of the things they said was that the novel was 'over written'. What does this mean exactly?
They also made a comment about the pace which I couldn't even read because the hand-writing was so bad. A couple of people I asked couldn't read it either. I may scan it in and link to it here to see if any of you can decipher it!

Remember this is just one opinion.

Anyway, although it's about science fiction, I thought you might find this link helpful:

http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/fivemistakes.shtml

"The most obvious error we encounter in fiction is overwriting," say Anthony Brown and Darrin English of Stickman Review. "Young writers, full of energy, throw everything and the kitchen sink into their work to impress editors."

I'm really sorry to hear about the rejection but good luck with the rest of your submissions.

Luisa

It is possible the agent was referring to what would otherwise be called 'purple prose': an over abundance of adjectives, 'long' words and cliches, which act to slow down the pace of the story.
Alternatively, it may simply be there is too much description or introspection, which, again will slow down the pace.
It is not all bad news, however, since a lot of this can be edited out. Obviously the agent saw something in the work which they liked - a good storyline - otherwise they would just have sent a standard rejection letter rather than a handwritten tip on how to improve the work.

Probably best if you post an extract on WW to guage the responses of a variety of readers.

- NaomiM

I guess as you get used to editing your own work you will automatically stop over-writing, or at least I did. Using ten words where two will do is over-writing, as is what Naomi just mentioned, using lots of long descriptive sentences stuffed with adverbs (they take away the impact of a sentence like you wouldn't believe). It's just about paring down a novel until you only have the words you truly need. I think it comes with practice?
If it's only the first rejection you've got time to improve on this and there are loads more potential agents out there. Sure it will be fine.

Sorry about the rejection, but it's good news that they liked it enough to say something personal. It is only one opinion, of course. What you do about it depends on whether it does actually chime with something that you didn't know you thought, until now. What someone called the 'Aha!' moment.

I think everyone's summed it up very well. I think it's probably the most common thing I say about new writers' work. It happens because as writers we very properly get drunk on words all too easily, and can't resist their clamour to be used. It can be very instructive to go through, not thinking, 'Do I want this word?' but 'Do I have to have it, or can I possibly do without it?'. Another way to interrogate your words is to ask each one, 'Are you earning your keep? Are you doing something more than describing an object or action? Are you also adding to the ideas/characterisation/themes/sounds/rhythm of the writing? In a perfect world, every word in a novel is doing at least two jobs. Reading aloud can make it come to you fresh, as can putting it away for a while, and help you to answer these questions.

I would guess that if they feel you're over-writing, the comment you can't read (how incredibly frustrating!) is about how that slows down the pace. If you set to and go through every word, to decide which the novel absolutely can't do without, then it should help to solve this problem. It's not that everything should whizz past, with no space for rich descriptions or moments of stillness. It's about judging when these are right for the novel, and when things need to move swiftly on. If you work on those judgements then the reader won't feel swamped with words and they'll go with you in the ebb and flow of the pace: in other words, you maintain the narrative drive while keeping up with what has been called the tense-and-relax pattern of all storytelling.

Emma

I don't know whether you've heard the expression 'kill your darlings' Ladysarah, but it can be a useful measure of whether something is over written if you have a lot of beautifully crafted phrases in your prose which you are loath to delete. Come the editing and redrafting stage these are the phrases you will do anything to keep, to the point where the rest of the 'ordinary' prose becomes skewed around them until they stick out like a sore thumb - yes, I have them too.
Screw up your courage and delete them! You'll find the rest of the prose falls into place, and you'll hardly miss them.

And kill those adverbs!
I'm thinking of setting up the ARSE Society of Great Britain
(Adverbs Really Shouldn't Exist)

I don't kill adverbs and adjectives, I round them up and put them in preventive detention, because every now and then one turns out to be essential, and gets let back out of the gate on a promise of good behaviour. Its reward is that it has far more impact than when it had all its weaker fellows clustering round it.

But murdering darlings is terribly important. It's the ones you keep coming back to and puzzling over that need to go. Things that really do deserve to stay won't bother you, and things that obviously need to go are easy to get rid of. What tells you it's a darling is the subconscious tug-of-war that nags because something that at one level you know it doesn't belong, but it cost you a lot of work or pain, or expresses something you personally love or hate. I have a file called 'dump' for these things, and tell myself I can always use it elsewhere. I never do, but I've got over it by then...

Emma

Thanks for the sympathy but I wasn't at all put off by the rejection, I wouldn't have expected anything else. I suppose it's an important milestone really.

I'm surprised it came accross as over-written because I hate too many adverbs and adjectives and over-flowery descriptions. If anything I worry the writing is too 'bare'. Interesting advice though and I'm glad to get some advice like that from a professional!

Thanks for your help here guys.

Sorry to hear about the rejection but a friend once said to me that now she had received her first rejection she really thought she could call herself a writer! I must say well done for having something ready to submit! I just haven't got the confidence to even try.

I think "over-written" is a very subjective call. One man's "over-written" maybe another man's "richly textured prose".

It can also be quite a fine line between something that feels a tad over-written and something that feels just right. Best bet is to leave it on one side for long enough to forget you ever wrote it... You won't get total objectivity but there may be times when you think "now why did I write that?" or "whatever did I meant by that?" That certainly has happened to me.



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For instance, I am now reading my post after leaving it on one side for three seconds, and already I am wondering why I wrote "whatever did I meant by that?" Of course, that's not over-written, particularly. Just shoddily written.

I think "over-written" is a very subjective call. One man's "over-written" maybe another man's "richly textured prose".

I think this is very true. I know I'm pretty intolerant of over-writing - it has to be amazing prose before I can stomach it - and I've thought things over-written which others loved.

In the context of rejections, I guess it's perhaps one to wait and see what others think - when lots are saying it, it's time to do something.

Emma

I agree it's very subjective. Personally, I love adverbs and sprinkle 'em about like pepper.

I suspect it's a matter of taste on the agent's part - and on your part, a case of finding your own voice, with which you are comfortable, like a skin. Once that happens (and it may already have - this person could perfectly well be wrong), your writing will have a natural flow and won't feel 'overwritten'.

Rosy

I'm surprised it came accross as over-written because I hate too many adverbs and adjectives and over-flowery descriptions. If anything I worry the writing is too 'bare'.

Me too, Ladysarah, so I was very surprised to be told by my mum that a couple of my stories were 'over-written', and it took me a while to work out what she meant by it.
I concluded it was the 'tone' of the pieces - childrens fairytales - which I had been attempting to write in a 'read aloud' format, but which had far too many connecting words and over-long sentences and came across as quite an old fashioned style of prose.
No idea how to change it, but at least I knew what I'd done 'wrong'. Although saying that, others liked the style, so as they say, 'One man's meat is another man's poison'.

- NaomiM

Oh I'm purple as hell and I just don't care. Why use one word when you can use fifty? Why call a spade a spade when you can call it a metallic square object with a long wooden shaft and a chubby handle?

Ok, I'm ruthless and cruel to my darlings during editing and this seems to sort my problem out. My 200,000 word novel Unrequited became a piffling 90,000 by the time it was published. It gets easier, but it used to be a real struggle to part with certain words. I guess verbal diarrhoea is just the natural way I write, but I find the more clay I have to work with, the better the result. The joy of the thing is in splurging the story out - tidying up and regimental polishing always comes later for me.

JB