Drafts 11, 12 and 13

Draft 11 detail and description

This is about the taming of detail and description. Have I used just enough detail to give the right impression? Is there enough detail? And regardless of how much information is needed am I giving the reader enough time to digest it?

In the 21^st century we need less description than people in Dickens’ time would have. We know more of the world and even if we’ve never been there the name “New York” conjures up all sorts of images. People who live in town know about the countryside and don’t need several pages of description about frost in Wiltshire as we have in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit  

It’s good to rely not too much on just the visuals but also to engage the other senses. One crucial scene is when Helga and Helmut come out of the cellars. Helmut is perplexed by the blue sky, the fresh air, and the sound of bird song; he has only ever known life in the cellars.

I’m still pulling myself up on logistics.  How could Owain even get his car to the Müllers’ farm if a sink hole was between him and main road? So, I’ve now had him borrow a car.

I had a similar problem with Jamie supposing the Mrs Thomas had been brought to Tesco’s by Glynn.  Glynn would have been working on the farm and he also would not be able to get his car out. So, Mrs Thomas has come on the bus – the one that runs only every two hours and goes all round the houses.  That helps to emphasize how deep the rift between the Müllers and the Thomases has become. She would rather endure the bus that travel with Jamie.  

There was also some confusion between meningitis and measles.  So, I correct this to James and Helmut (Miriam’s brother) having meningitis and Helmut (Helga’s son) having measles.     

I’ve been using Ma and Mam for Mum in the Welsh scenes. These are now all Mam, including Mam Thomas.

 

Draft 12 point of view

This is to check whether I have the point of view right. Do I keep with one point of view? Am I at the same distance from the characters each time and if I do move, do I zoom in and out too quickly?

I have two points of view characters here; Jamie in 2001 but with an epilogue in 2003 and Helga with stories from 1923-1980. Jamie is very much living in the moment whereas Helga is reflecting on a life lived and rationalises though as she tells her story she takes us back to these moments in the past.

I tighten this all up in places.

I also wondered a little about the recovery of one person who had been in hospital. She went from unconscious in hospital, to having visitors in hospital, to convalescing at home in what seemed a rather quick succession.  However, the dates work and to some extent the reader will be able to make up their own mind; I’ve decided for the moment only to have months and years on chapter headings.

 

Draft 13 Show don’t tell

That ever thorny problem.  It’s relatively straight forward in the Jamie scenes. She’s very much in the moment, and I think I’ve mainly achieved that balance of dialogue, actions inner monologue, description and very little exposition that makes this work.

With Helga scene it’s a little trickier.  She is after all “telling” Jamie about her past. In order to keep the reader engaged she must use some fictional techniques that take them to the then and there. But she intervenes and rationalises some of this. This is all a part of her voice.

On the whole, I’d got it mainly right for both characters but I was able to tighten here and there.

I did also realise that we needed a little more of one of the medium strength characters – Helga’s daughter, Tilde. So, I’ve given her a couple of scenes.

And I also discovered that the household brandy was in the cupboard and in the pantry.  It’s now firmly in the pantry!   

Draft 6 and 7 of Helga’s Story

               

Draft 6 is all about making sure that the characters are consistent, rounded and believable. I actually didn’t find a lot to do here. I have sharpened a little the one who might be described as the antagonist.

I noticed something else as well as I worked my way through this draft. Each chapter with Helga as the main character portrays her life during the Holocaust as it relates to something that is happening in 2001. The connection wasn’t quite working in one case. She was supposed to be talking about what it was like being a single mother but she talked more about what made her sleep with Jamie’s natural grandfather in the first place. This was easy to rectify. I just had to change one of her speeches.

Draft 7 is about cause and effect and here is a real opportunity to look for any plot holes. I did find that there was one sub-plot that had no closure. This was rectified by adding a paragraph to the final chapter.

I realised that I had made the grandmother with whom Helga lived in her youth a maternal grandmother rather than a paternal one. She needed to be the paternal one. This meant rewriting one paragraph.

There was also something not properly explained in part of the back story. How did the Thomas farm stay in the family when Tom Thomas’s son, Thomas Thomas was unable to farm because of a disability?  Well, by the time someone needed to take over from Tom Thomas, the Thomases had two children who were brought up to be farmers. So they had to hire help which also helped to explain why the Thomases could never afford to buy the farm off the Müllers. Again, I needed to add a paragraph.

And so it continues.    

Drafts 4 and 5 of Helga’s Story

 

Yes, I have now completed drafts 4 & 5 of Helga’s Story.

Draft 4 

This is all about time and making sure it works.  I tend to have time planned in but as the story take over this may slip a little. So, now I’ve gone back and made sure that the time is logical in each chapter.  Will they have enough time to do what I making them do?  Beware of eleven month pregnancies and do allow them to sleep and eat and perform other human functions even if you don’t go into detail. In fact, please don’t go into detail.  

Some chapters, particularly where Helga is reminiscing about the past, cover several years. By contrast Jamie’s chapters cover just one or two days, but we sometimes skip forward within a chapter.

I’ve now put the place and the date at the beginning of each chapter. Now, I need to decide whether I’m going those places and dates in. And whether to have precise dates or just a month.

I have noticed as I’ve started Draft 6 that I need to reorder a couple of chapters and if I do decide to keep the labels I’ll have to relabel.

Draft 5

This is deciding whether the text suits the reader and the market. This is a little difficult in this case. There are only a few works which show this German point of view. Yet it does contain many of the characteristics of historical fiction and in particular of novels set in the 1940s. Yet it is different again because we have the 21^st century part.  Readers and whoever published this will decide in the end.

I’m at least reasonably happy that the text is consistent with itself and speaks to the same reader throughout.

Other things I noticed

In Draft 4 I found another instance of quad bike that I have now changed to quad-bike.

A crucial sub plot is on character’s girlfriend finishing with him. I thought I’d made this happen on two separate occasions I hadn’t. I had one instance of her been disgruntled with him and then a reference later on to her ending the relationship.

In Draft 5 I say that Helga began to call Eberhard Bear, just like his sister Gisela did. However, she never does as she tells Jamie of her past. So I’ve altered this to say she sometimes called him Bear.

Two sets of holiday cottages are mentioned: one at the big farm complex where Jamie is offered a job and potential ones on the Jenkins’ farm. In both cases I had to make sure the references were logical.

I had made Helga’s mother’s hair both wavy and straight.  I settled on straight or even just “long, dark and shiny”.