What I did in H&M (though it's a bit kitsch and wouldn't work, perhaps, in a more 'serious' book) is to finish with a series of tiny cameos - a line or two each - leaving all the cast doing something which is very essentially them. The idea was to give a sense at the same time of rounding off/tidying up, but also (if possible) of lives going on and continuing to be led...

- I thought this worked brilliantly, btw.

Yes, I think that can be really successful and satisfying for the reader, though perhaps it's more get-awayable-with in something which has a light-hearted side.

One way or another, though, I do think you don't want too much of what Dodie Smith (or rather Cassandra) in I Capture the Castle calls a 'brick-wall happy ending', where you can't imagine the characters going on and having lives afterwards. It's almost as if you want a faint sense that you're sowing the seeds of a sequel - how the marriage panned out, what happened after she left town - if if you've no intention of writing one.

My editor's just said she thinks my one happy ending (the other two are deeply sad, though resolved) in the new novel is too neat and too quickly set up and then resolved. Cue effort to make it a) more convincingly established, and b) both upbeat and hopeful, without quite sending them off hand-in-hand to vanish completely in the sunset...

Emma

On the subject of editing, Emma, would you be willing to say how long the rewriting has taken you in your novels so far? (that the editor has requested after receiving the finished ms, I mean). And how much of it has been serious - ie structural, requiring whole novel to change - and how much tweaking?
Susiex

I watched Little Miss Sunshine on Sky movies last night, and there was a 'cut off' ending - they drove away in the bus. No tidying up of any loose ends, the audience were left to draw their own conclusions of which direction each character went from there - a whole other film.

Susie, with the new one I first sent my editor the beast somewhere around the beginning of July, as I recall. She took about three weeks to get back to me. Two of the three strands basically needed tweaks - re-arrangings, amplifications, trimming - but one strand, which I'd revised extensively already from the first-draft version, she really wasn't happy with at all. Once I'd stopped kicking the furniture, I realised she was right, and set about working out what to do about it. So I re-wrote that strand from scratch, (cast cut by 75%, plot entirely different, settings and back story much the same) not looking at the old version, except when I wanted to import flashbacks. That took the summer, and I sent it to her about a fortnight ago. (I've also detailed input from my agent at the same time, and my PhD supervisor's seen it in instalments all the way along, and has read the latest version from scratch.) I've just got that back, and I'm hoping this will be more-or-less the last pass, incorporating all three views as well as my own, before it's scheduled and we reach the copy-editing-proof-reading phases. And when my agent sells it to the US there'll be some tweaks more, as well their copy-edit and then proof-read. All being well I shall have finished with the text - finally!!!!! - somewhere around March?

With TMoL it had been workshopped already, and had various sets of input - including a lot from my agent - before Headline bought it, so there was rather less serious structural work. Though you've never finished when you think you have: she asked me to I re-write the first page of TMoL after the bound proofs had gone out, so there are 1,500 copies out there forever with a different opening!

Emma

Thanks for your very interesting and open reply, Emma. What a process!

So I re-wrote that strand from scratch, (cast cut by 75%, plot entirely different,

Sounds like you were more annoyed initially than scared - I think I'd have retreated gibbering to the coalshed!
Did the rewriting have much of a repercussion on the other strands?
You are blessed in having such a wonderful team of supporters in your PHD tutors etc. But ultimately the writing has to be done alone, and that's the scary bit.

And when my agent sells it to the US

Hoorah!
Susiex

The re-write didn't mess the other strands too much plot-wise because they're set in the 15th century. It was more a matter of bringing out certain correspondences and themes again after I'd shifted all the elements around so drastically.

I did plenty of gibbering as well as furniture-kicking. But lots of talking through with everyone helped me to sort out a) whether I agreed (some things I completely didn't, and haven't touched) and b) if I did, what was the heart of things, and what I could change as she wanted without betraying it.

But I'm very, very lucky in having a very shrewd and nice editor who isn't trying to make my work something other than it is, whatever her particular quibbles. And even if she moves on, I'll still have my agent, who is just as shrewd and nice, and also seriously powerful, and completely 'gets' what I do...

But as you say, in the end it's us who has to do it. They can help, if they're good, but they can't write it for you.

Emma

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Actually, my editor could write it for me, as she's a prize-winning novelist herself. But that would be her book, not mine.

Emma, it's inspiring to hear your story. This is an amazing site. I keep telling writer friends about it. It so helps to connect with people at all stages of the writing journey and share stuff that other people generally aren't interested in! Thanks a lot, and fingers crossed for a very positive response from your editor.
Susiex

Emma, it's fascinating to hear the details about your editing journey - thanks for sharing that. Susieangela, I would maybe just add that I think the amount of work that you end up dong for an agent or editor is infinitely variable. Even in my own experience...

My first novel I sent out in a very raw state (I knew nothing aout writing and certainly nothing about self-editing, having not had the advantage of involvement with a site like Writewords at the time! I thought once youd got to the end you had finished!) and my agent worked through three drafts of it with me over a prid of maybe two to three months of evenings. It was mainly adding material (the first draft was very thin at only 65,000 words, and I added around 15,000 words under his guidance. He didn't line edit - I think it's probably rare for agents to offer this, unless they charge extra for it - but he made quite major suggestions about adding plot twists, and about beefing up the (very slightly) edgier side of one character, to make the whole thing margnally less saccharine! Then when Headine bought it, my editor didn't touch it at all.

The second one, I was lucky - as well as knowing slightly more about what I was doing - and my agent merely made me beef up the final few chapters, because it had ended rather suddenly without sufficient exploration of the final issues for the two main charcaters. I added maybe 2,000 words for him - no plot change, just some extra fleshing out near the end - it took a week of evenings. But then after that, again, my editor had nothing to do, beyond a quick phone call resulting in my making twenty minues' worth of changes (shortening one paragraph and adding a para at another place).

BUT in between these two was a book which foundered. My agent liked it and didn't tinker at all, but my editor had major issues with it. We met up for an editorial meeting and talked for three hours! As a result I cut 15,000 words and added 35,000, making it up to 130,000 in all, over a two month period. (It wasn't plot changes, it was basically cutting satirical material and adding 'personal sob story story' material. Then she still wasn't happy, she had now taken against one of the three main characters, and wanted her rewriting to be more open and less 'in denial' - and to me that was the whole point of that character... plus cutting most of the remaining satire which to me was a major facet of the book I'd wanted to write. Anyway, you'll see where this is going. We agreed to differ and the book has gone (probably permanently) into a drawer.

Anyway, long boring story. But you get the idea - hugely variable experiences with different books. Not sure anything is necessarily a 'typical' edit!

Rosy x

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And, Poppy, I didn't notice anyone 'disappearing' in SC - except maybe Joe, and that was for a reason... And david, whi has been booted out. Different books are totally different - in SC the engagement is so centally with Sara that the only thing that matters at the end is what's going on for her, and who's in her sights - Dad, and if she's lucky Anna and noone else much at all. That's because that's the reality of where she's reached at the end of the book, isn't it?

Rosy, this is fascinating! Those of us who imagine that getting an agent and then a publisher is the fairytale ending can certainly learn from this. I guess it's like finding a partner - the wedding day and the honeymoon are blissful, then the hard work begins...
Your agent must have totally believed in your potential if he/she was willing to spend that much time working through three drafts with you. Would love to hear how you found this agent. Did they take you on before working with you on the drafts, or were they waiting to see how it would turn out? Did you agree with everything they suggested? You clearly have one of the best sorts of agents, who care about their authors and want to help them become the best they can be. It also opens up the old chestnut about whether it's OK to send work to agents that has not been completed. On a local MA course,at least one student is sending off work to agents after writing the first three chapters, after Mark Lucas came to give them a talk and said agents might prefer this because then they could work with the writer early. I think I know what Emma would say to that!

BUT in between these two was a book which foundered.

This must have been devastating, esp. being the second book. Did you agree with what the editor thought (your agent clearly didn't). How painful must that have been, to do all that rewriting and then have to begin again. I suppose if you ever changed publishers, you could offer it to the new one. Do you think you learned anything from this process that was useful?
Thanks so much for this,Rosy and Emma - it really gives an insight into the whole process.
Susiex

Thanks so much for this,Rosy and Emma - it really gives an insight into the whole process

- Yes I agree, this sort of thread is fascinating.

Those of us who imagine that getting an agent and then a publisher is the fairytale ending

-er, yep - that'd do nicely for the moment!!

x

On a local MA course,at least one student is sending off work to agents after writing the first three chapters, after Mark Lucas came to give them a talk and said agents might prefer this because then they could work with the writer early. I think I know what Emma would say to that!

How right you are!

I've met Mark Lucas and he's very nice and clever, and knows a lot about it all (specially considering that he's best known for putting together packages of sports star and ghost writer and getting million-pound contracts for them! )

I think, though, that agents don't have the first idea of just how rubbish our unfinished work may be. They've no idea how much will change and how much better it'll get, and nor has the beginner novelist. Agents get things which need some work, and they think that's our first effort, but of course it isn't. And of course since we're all desperate for the affirmation - not to mention the book deal - saying send it off early is music to our ears...

Emma

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And as Rosy's and my experience shows, it varies so hugely between agents, which is why there isn't and can't be a sure-fire recipe for how-to-get-an-agent-and-be-published. Sometimes I've wondered what would have happened if the first agents who really liked my (much earlier) work had taken me on, or if the editor who very nearly bought an earlier novel actually had... But I don't think I would have developed nearly so much as a novelist as I did in the fires of being unpublished, nor written TMoL: I'd probably gone a different and much less interesting (and possibly less successful) route. And I have far more confidence (and much older children) to cope with the whole getting-published thing, too...

Yes, I thought Mark Lucas was mainly a non-fiction agent, or best known for that.

But I don't think I would have developed nearly so much as a novelist as I did in the fires of being unpublished, nor written TMoL

Love that - I guess you either get burnt out in the fires of being unpublished, or they hone you!
Susiex

I had an interesting and surprising (just shows how much wider book-trade people's interests are than their profit-centres) conversation with Mark Lucas about how once-upon-a-time publishers could take a risk and a loss on a new author's first book or two, in the hope that by Book Three they'd write a real winner that broke even or made money. I quoted Ion Trewin (ex-MD Weidenfeld, Booker administrator, father of Simon) saying that he thought it no bad thing that these days One and Two might not be published. Mark L. said that the trouble was, now that's how it is, in some cases Three just never happens at all, and how many terrific books the world has missed out on as a result. Nice man.

Emma

Like that. I guess the more commercial a world we become, the more the quality of trust may be sidelined. Trust in a writer's potential, I mean, and also the ability to wait and be patient and allow something to develop at its best pace, rather than the rapid, crazy pace of the world.
Sx