Is there anything more reliable than gut feeling to tell you when it's right?

I find it more helpful to tell me when it's wrong, but it's often over-ruled by the rose-tinted glasses.

I agree with Naomi. When you have to keep reassuring yourself that something is right, that’s your gut feeling telling you it’s wrong.

Dee

that’s your gut feeling telling you it’s wrong

I've got enough ways to find that something is wrong, I reckon I could talk myself out of liking anything I've ever written if I put my mind to it.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you write something that works. Even more rarely, you write something that works and fits into what you have in the way you intended... But even then, you read it on a bad day and end up hating it. Or, you reorganise something and your carefully crafted prose jumps from dramatic pivot point to irrelevant padding. Some of my best writing has turned out to be background detail for characters who are unlikely even to be name-checked in the final thing. In fact, I nearly binned the whole lot in a fit of pique a couple of days ago...

Then I read a couple of scenes in a writing group (FINALLY, managed to get one) and was quite glad I hadn't. Came back and liquidised the rest to fit with some fairly dramatic decisions I made as a result. The first time, I think, that I have known for certain how this thing has to be stitched together.

The thing is, now I know, I want to know how or why I know.

More to the point, how can I get there more quickly next time?

G

I'm not sure that there is a sure-fire way, thought reading aloud is about as close as you can get, I think, especially if you're reading to others, because then you hear it partly through their ears. And reading it like a book, if you see what I mean: fast and fluently. I find it's when I'm brooding over it sentence by sentence that suddenly just about anything can seem trite, or creaky, or banal, or whatever, even though it seemed fine yesterday.

The best way to train one's ear in a general way, I think, is to crit other people's work - even great literature - because it's much easier to take it at face value, as it were, and just hear the bits which chime, and the bits which clunk, without wreaking your own internal hangups about writing on them. It's then much harder and better exercise (though also much less angsty) trying to work out why the creaks creak and the chimes chime. In fact, I think it's enormously important to learn to hear the clunks and the chimes clearly: to listen to your instinct while reading, and only use rules/tools afterwards, to work out why they are how they are.

But am I right in thinking that you said on a thread once that you never read a book more than once? If you're not used to how different a book can seem on different re-readings, I can see that the experience of re-reading your own work would be particularly difficult to decode.

Emma

you never read a book more than once

Almost never... I might have reread a Pratchett or two because (though I like him) I find it difficult enough to distinguish his books in the first place and can easily forget what I've read.

you're not used to how different a book can seem on different re-readings

Surely that says more about you, the reader, than about what you are reading? I know, for example, that there are some moods where I really should not look at anything, by anybody. And if I do, I should not be allowed to comment about the experience - specifically not to the person who wrote it. That said, I think good writing should be able to affect your mood at least to a limited degree.

The thing is, though I am with you 100% in favour of the value of critting, critting in writing groups (and WW) is almost invariably at a micro-level, individual scenes or even fractions thereof. In this instance, my eureka moment was on a macro level. I read two scenes, both well received, but based on the very obvious emotional reaction of my readers felt confident to dump the first scene entirely (maybe it was one of your little darlings that I am told I have to kill, nothing personal). This freed me up to emphasise a series of scenes over the next four chapters and has made today one of the best writing days in weeks...

All fine and dandy, but the leap was utterly intuitive and only loosely connected to the feedback I received. It was also a case of two pieces of writing, both of which I think represent me at my best, both of which fitted the character and view points I wanted to portray, both of which fit the plot, timeline, story development etc. But only one of which can be kept if the story is to have the shape I want.

So, maybe the question is about finding the right shape?

Somewhere between the BIG QUESTION that drives it all (which I know) and the sequence of events (which is often an inevitable consequence [you should see the pile of alternative synopses I have run through]) there is a shapeless blob that I think a more experienced writer would be able to visualise as an intricate mechanism of character and plot. The writing group gave me part of the mechanism... but I have quite a bit more still to find.
G

<Added>

(By "readers" above, I clearly meant "listeners" as they were unable to see the page.)

Interesting. I find that so much depends on what mood I'm in, reading my own or other people's work, and it's also knowing when to leave it. I read almost every piece of dialogue aloud now - would someone say it, and if so, would they say it like that? More than ever, I'm aware of rhythm in my work, that silent beat of sentences that make the eyes flow and the mind float - hopefully. Often, I find it's the long words that jar, so I simplify and cut, and it reads much better.

I do think there's a gut feeling that is pretty much incontestable however. They're usually the parts that lead to heated arguments with editors, I reckon.

JB

I find the bits I fudge - or have reservations about - or try to wriggle out of writing - are always the bits that come back to haunt me

Yes. Agree. Although it can take time.

I mentioned on another thread recently that I was as a re-editing stage with my last book. I hadn't looked at it with a critical head for the best part of a year and had fallen out of love with it in the interim. Well I've picked it up again and because I had torn myself far enough away from the original beginning I was able to see that it all needed to go. Around five or six chapters.

Now my gut feeling is telling me that the new start could actually be in a published book. Before it was just telling me that it would be good enough to try and tout around. I think that's an important distinction.

S