I'm not sure how to ask this, and not sure whether anyone will be able to answer me, but here goes...

I sometimes like my writing and think it fresh and moving. Other times it comes out all banal. I don't think this is my perception - I think I really do veer between the good and the banal.

Obviously I try to rewrite the banal bits, and sometimes it works, but sometimes it seems to be the subject matter which seems to subconsciously steer me towards the banal approach and I find it so hard to dig out of that.

If you feel a particular scene is banal, and you know you can do better, does anyone have any tips on how to make it fresher and more literary?

Deb

Changing perspective can help; a new and interesting backdrop, or an unusual occupation played out while two characters have some necessary dialogue could work. Or if it's someone's thoughts, have another thread breaking in to add irony or emphasis or simply a bit of texture.

Plain backstory - and sometimes you do have to have passages in a novel where you just sit your reader down and tell them the past - are probably best rendered in vanilla prose anyway.

sometimes it seems to be the subject matter which seems to subconsciously steer me towards the banal approach and I find it so hard to dig out of that.

That's interesting. Perhaps you could elaborate?

I don't write literary but comedy so I probably can't help. But are you revealing new things (a way of looking at things) in the scenes? Is there stuff - however subtle going on under the scenes? Is there something YOU think is important that you have something to say about going on? Do you experiment with different ways of telling the thing, different angles, different methods, to keep it fresh. Are you bold?

As I say - I'm probably no use on this.

Snowbell,

Are you talking about books, sketches, sitcom?

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whoops, I meant to direct that question at Debbie.

If you feel a particular scene is banal, and you know you can do better, does anyone have any tips on how to make it fresher and more literary?

I don't think imposing literariness is usually possible (and trying to leads to disaster): more original and/or sophisticated ideas and language need to spring from what you're writing.

I'd agree with Lammi that changing the scenery can help, and I'd add exploring more of the physical and sensory details - aches, pains, smells, feels, temperature... Also what you might call camera angles: is everything in medium shot, mezzo-forte, medium-paced, andante? Try a wideangle lens, a birds-eye view, a close-up of what someone's hands are doing, a sudden deathly silence or race to the finish, or the Chandler technique: make a man walk in the door with a gun (or a surprise bouquet of flowers), and see what your characters do.

Also re-focussing on the characters' basics can really help: What does each of them want? What gets in the way? (specially if it's what the other one wants.) Then cut anything that doesn't build these up, make the conflict more imminent and more acute, and then set up the next scene.

Maybe the banality is because there's actually stuff which feels necessary backstory/scene-setting/choreography at the time, but actually isn't: cut to the chase. As Lammi says, if you really do need it, make it plain vanilla and get it across as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Emma

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And if, when you've done all this to your scene - turned it upside-down and inside-out, explored the sensory detail of every last dishcloth, re-written it from the point of view of the cat, the window-cleaner and the Buddha - your instinct tells you it's still not working, then the scene shouldn't be there. It's the wrong scene, and your characters are obligingly telling you that by refusing to be interesting.

Sibelius - to answer - a novel. But I've also written sketches and (whispers) a sitcom in the dim and distant past. Though I didn't do anything with that.

Sorry - back to Debac.

Still interested in your comment about subject-matter, Debac. Sounds like you aren't quite motivated enough by some of the scenes maybe? Maybe they are doing a job but not really about drama between characters or whatever and therefore they aren't exciting you sufficiently?

??

Quick answer for now (past my bedtime) to the question several of you have asked in different ways...

I don't mean the scene is dull and not moving things forward. These are crucial, central scenes. It's just that they come out in banal language, verging on cliche.

I have two main story threads: 3 viewpoint characters actually, but two are more closely connected, so two story threads which converge - crash - later on. One of the threads is working well - I like my writing. I'm portraying events in a fresh way.

The other story thread, however, seems to think it's in Mills and Boon, somehow. It's not romantic - it's not that. I just feel it comes out too hackneyed.

I think my plot is good - both parts of it. So I really don't understand why one part seems fresh and one seems far less fresh.

I tried reinventing the MC in the less good thread. Helped a bit but it's still not working.

The two vp characters I am managing to write are male, and the one which comes out banal is female. Perhaps I can't write women? Perhaps I make her thread too soppy? Eeek - I really don't know what the problem is!

Thanks for the suggestions all of you - I will look at your ideas in more detail tomorrow and give them serious thought. Just thought I would clarify what I meant before I go to bed.

Deb

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Not that I'm dissing anyone who writes M&B. Clearly it's a skill like any other writing genre. It's just that it's not usually a hotbed of the 'fresh'.

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Oh, and someone asked: it's a novel.

Hi Deb,

I don't have any advice for you on this but just an observation from reading. I find in novels I read there's the detail and then there's the big picture. To make a comparison with a painting, it's a bit like going in very close and admiring the individual brushstrokes or standing back and absorbing the effect of the whole picture where the detail fades into the mass. So I think it's possible that 'banal' or basic writing can add up to something more than the sum of its parts in the context of a novel just as vibrant, interesting detail might not contribute to the overall impact. Different writers are good at different things and will appeal to different readers.

Personally I'm a reader who likes the big-picture more than examining the minute detail stuff. As a reader I like it when sentences don't stand out or draw attention to themselves but as a writer I like to examine how writers achieved the effect they do have. Patricia Highsmith's sentences are individually very banal (deliberately, I'm sure) but when they come together they somehow make the atmosphere of her novels dark, oppressive and disturbing although it's impossible to find the exact point where it becomes that. Rohinton Mistry's sentences swing between lyrically wonderful and not so great (IMO, of course) but they all add up to an immense humanity that I love. Zadie Smith (although I've only read On Beauty) has wonderful sentences with fresh, exciting imagery but, for me, they add up to less than the sum of their parts. And John McGahern (who I'm always going on about) is a very humble writer at sentence level but is, in my opinion, a Great Writer.

Not sure what the point is of all this but it's just something that struck me as I read your question.

PS You're back, Snowbell! Welcome back.

I agree with much of what Emma and Kate have said, especially the suggestion to try a change of POV. It might be difficult in your novel, but have a think about it. In TWH I was having terrible trouble with one long scene where something nasty was happening to the MC. I worked on it and worked on it, but it just didn’t have any impact – supposed to be one of the most exciting points in the story and it read like he had indigestion. In desperation I changed it from his POV to that of the other main character, so that the reader sees what’s happening to him through her eyes, and of course it also added the extra layer of her reactions. Brought the whole scene to life.

Dee

It might, too, be that you don't know your character well enough to add all those little quirks that lift them from the slightly vague to the realistic-particular. When I began to write TBMH, the voice I had the most trouble with was the middle-aged mum, and I think it was because I didn't try as hard to bring her character into focus. Initially I was relying on the (erroneous) idea that I could just draw on myself.

Yes, I'd agree with Kate: if the writing seems banal but you're sure the plot's got enough drama and conflict, then it could be because you haven't really yet got this character into focus, with all their real peculiarities. When she is in focus you'll find you have a specific instead of generic sense of her. Generalising and generic-ness is so often (always?) the cause of dull writing, I think.

Thinking about you saying maybe you can't write women, Kate's got an excellent point: in some ways the things most familiar to the writer are the things we're most likely to fail to get across. Not because we can't, but because we have such a clear sense of them - need so little in the writing to trigger the full picture - that we don't realise other readers need more. A character who's further from ourselves - because of sex or age or whatever - we're more aware of having to invent from scratch and, if you like, our experience of them is more akin to the reader's experience. Time and time again I've found a good evocation in someone's writing of, say, Spain, but the town back home is just not there - and I'm sure it's because it's based on the writer's home town, and it's so clear in their mind's eye they don't see that it hasn't actually got onto the page.

Your instincts are obviously working better than that, because you've realised that character and her scenes aren't coming off the page. One reason I was suggesting focussing on details and senses and changing camera angle and so on is that doing that makes you have to think about how she would see/think about/express those more challenging PoVs (which sense would she notice? is she a close-up or a long-shot type?), and in doing so you'll develop her/find out more about her.

Emma

Thank you everyone. Just because I haven't responded to some of the individual points doesn't mean I haven't read and appreciated them. Everyone said has been really useful to me in trying to work this out.

Emma, I think you may have hit the nail on the head. The character I am struggling with is not a million miles from being like me, and her main concern is her childlessness, which is something I experienced several years ago. I had wondered if that was why I couldn't write her very well and your comment backs up my original hunch, so it seems very likely that's the problem.

I have given her a distinct personality with quirks etc, so it's not that I haven't developed her, but I think what's causing me to resort to the cliched writing is probably that I can't bring myself to dig deeper into her. It's too close to me, and thus was a stupid plotline to choose.

I chose it because it fits so well into the other, main plotline, and because I thought I could bring some realism and real emotion to it. Things happening in my main plotline influence what happens to the woman I can't write about, with crucial consequences, so the two plotlines are intertwined. However, I might have to rethink if I can't get my act together with how I write her.

I think usually it works well to write about things which matter strongly to you, but you also need sufficient distance from them, I think, to focus them correctly - as you suggest. I think I'm deliberately skating along the surface of her experience because it's painful for me to write her in the 'raw' way I prefer to write most of my characters.

Hmmmmm. Major rethink needed, by the sound of it. Or else I stick with the same plot and just find a way to write her the way I want her.

Thank you everyone so much, all of you, and esp to Emma because she found the needle.

Deb

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Apologies to Kate, who also mentioned the problem in question in her comment. Thanks Kate!

her main concern is her childlessness

Just a suggestion, Deb – and I realise it might not be easy, or even possible – but does this character have a partner/husband? Could you maybe write the thread from his POV. We could see her through his eyes, and you could add the extra layer of how her need for a child affects him. It would maybe change her moods and her behaviour towards him. You could get right inside their relationship, convey her needs and feelings in their dialogue, while at the same time showing us how he feels. Perhaps he feels she needs a child more than she needs him. Maybe his own longing for a child is being sidelined by hers. Or what if he really doesn’t want children. Has he had a secret vasectomy…

Sorry! Getting too carried away here. Just thought I’d throw it into the pot. My Cornerstones report suggested some groundswell changes that I first thought impossible but, now that I've broken them into bite-sized chunks, I think they're doable. Don’t give up on the plotline yet – just try looking at it from a different angle. You can do this!

Dee

I remember when I was doing my A level English Lit, we were allowed to submit a piece of creative writing for a supplemental qualification. A girl in my group had been struggling with a brain tumour all through the lower sixth which meant that she'd spent some time blind (though I'm delighted to say she made a full recovery). Not surprisingly, she drew on the experience for her story, but I remember her saying when she handed it in that it read 'like someone imagining they'd gone through it'. She wasn't happy with the piece and it didn't pass.

I think we can be too close to what we write about, but the good thing is, Deb, you've recognised that 'inconsistency of conviction' and you're addressing it. Once you get the right angle, it will come good in the end.

Deb, I think that just shows how many reasons in the writer there may be for the same result in the writing: your being too emotionally as opposed to too practially close to the material is one cause I hadn't thought of.

Was it Wordsworth who said that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity? You can't write without some experience of the emotion, but you won't write it the right way, until you've reached the tranquillity.

When you're too close to something, you may either not engage enough (whence comes your banality) or not be dispassionate enough and lose all sense of balance and proportion or even good writing (I think these are often the darlings we don't like murdering).

There are places I don't want to go in my own work, though I know that some of my best writing comes from them, once I am capable of treating that material with as much engagement and dispassion as I do anything else.

Emma