Cuts - and What is your Ruling Passion?

The editing on my children's book is still going well. My initial cull got rid of a whopping 5,000 words! That's a third of the bloody book!! Seems incredible, but I over-write wantonly. It's a major issue for me, especially in dialogue. Which may or may not be weird, considering that my major writing experience up to this point has been writing plays.

Only another 1500-2000 words to lose and then it will be within publisher's guidelines for the age group. I'm not going to force it, but I think I can lose that reasonably comfortably and not compromise the story.

I had a major breakthrough at the weekend with my novel. I had been wondering why I'd stalled at 70% completed. I had the next section plotted, knew the ending, was in the flow - all should have been a breeze. But it felt clunky.

Well...

I've been reading 'How to Write a Damn Good Novel II' by James N Frey. I'm not hugely into 'How to...' books, but someone had recommended it so I thought I'd give it a whirl. It's an easy read but is definitely aimed at those who've had a bit of experience of writing or done a course. I don't agree 100% with all he says, but it's certainly made me think about my work.

He talks about how the main character has to have a clear 'ruling passion', the driving force/reason/intent that governs his or her actions in the book. For example, character's main ruling passion might be to find his true father, but he may have different ruling passions in different scenes; say, getting drunk or passing his driving test. Some of his ruling passions are mutually compatible, some aren't. If they aren't, this causes conflict which can be dramatically interesting, but the writer should always keep in mind the main ruling passion and not go off on too many tangents!

As a former actor, I should have been more hip to this. In acting these ruling passions are called 'objectives', the governing passion is the 'super-objective'. To be convincing, it's essential to know at any given time - as a writer or an actor - what your character wants!

It all sounds like such obvious stuff, but when I was made to think about it I realised that I'd lost the grip on my character's main ruling passion. It had kind of faded away amongst all the mayhem. So I thought of ways to strengthen it, cut a character, changed a bit of plot and restructured my ending! Not huge changes, but what a difference - now I feel like I know where I'm going again. And why.

Thanks James N Frey, you lil' devil, you.

As an aside to all of this, when I was a drama school and we were learning about all this 'objectives' stuff, I always used to think, 'Well, that's crap. I don't know what I want all of the time, why should my character?' Fair enough. But does that make interesting theatre? Or interesting writing? Moments of indecision are interesting/necessary/dramatic perhaps, but who wants to watch or read something about someone flopping around like a wet cod, with no direction or purpose? Not bloody me.

That's the KajJay take on it - for now, anyway. I'll probably change my mind in a week, but then as Bobby Brown (or indeed, Britney) once said, that's my prerogative...;-)