Did you get a chance to read my newsletter from last week? If not, you can find it here. I drafted an example of poor-writing slush that an agent might find in their inbox, and broke down exactly why it wasn’t working.
This week, I’m back with the revision.
Before I share my new iteration, I want to preface it by saying that this still isn’t necessarily a perfectly polished piece. I’m not guaranteeing that an agent would be clamoring to sign me after reading this opening. However, I think it’s a solid second draft, in which I focused on fleshing out five main things, which I detail below. My goal is to help you see how to direct your focus in your own writing and revision, if you find that your writing looks similar to last week’s version.
So without further ado…
On the morning of the reading of her father’s will, Tabitha Bates put on mismatched heels. She didn’t notice it until she was walking into the lawyer’s office, when she clocked Ben giving her appearance a once-over, his eyes homing in on her feet and pinching into its usual judgmental sneer. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment.
Tabby quickly sat at the opposite side of the wide mahogany conference room table, tucking her feet out of sight from her brother. It had been an easy mistake to make, she wanted to bark at him. Maybe he should try getting dressed in the pitch dark so as not to wake a sleeping four-year-old who’d been up half the night missing his dad. Ben also didn’t have to drive two hours to get to this meeting, since he could afford to live here on the peninsula.
That luxury had long since passed for Tabby, and things were about to get a whole lot harder if this meeting didn’t go the way she wanted today. But Ben didn’t know any of that and Tabby hated the idea of him finding out about the mess she’d made of her life.
“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Rice, Mrs. Bates,” the lawyer, a tall mustachioed man in a pinstripe suit nodded to each of them.
Tabby winced and tried not to think about how both the “Mrs.” title and the “Bates” would soon no longer apply to her. She took a deep breath to clear her head, remembering why she was here. The beach house: the answer to her broken living situation and financial troubles. Maybe even the key to helping her be someone…better.
“Let’s get started,” the lawyer, Mr. Smith continued. Tabby half-listened as he rattled off a bunch of legalese that she didn’t understand, and took in Ben’s appearance from across the table, careful not to meet his eyes. His suit had been pressed that morning, she could tell, probably by perfect Melinda, and it was pristine, lacking any spill of coffee or splatters of syrup, both of which marred Tabby’s shabby grey dress.
They’d always been like that, Ben with his perfectly coiffed hair, polished manners, framed MBA from Harvard, and her with…not one of those things. Where he was stainless steel, she was rusted iron. And she’d never felt more distant from him and ashamed to be his sister than she was right now.
She tried to focus as Mr. Smith called out items of little interest to Tabby: the Warhol painting, the vehicles, Mother’s cache of jewelry. While certainly valuable, none of those would solve her problem as immediately as the beach house would.
Small and tidy, it was the perfect place for a fresh start—or, as her best friend Abby would say, as a hidey hole for her to avoid the disaster she’d made of her marriage. Louis was kicking her out in 30 days, and unless she got the beach house, she had nowhere else to go. And without her job, she certainly didn’t have the money for anything else.
Tabby chewed the split cuticle of her thumbnail as she waited for Mr. Smith to name the house. She could feel Ben’s gaze on her after each and every inheritance item Mr. Smith checked off on his list, like was judging every breath, waiting for her to flip out like she usually did. But she kept her eyes resolutely trained on the polished mahogany table. She would hold herself in check, no matter the outcome. She would prove to him—and herself— that she actually could keep it all together…that she could handle any news with grace.
Hadn’t she already done it once when Ben had called her with the news of Dad’s passing? She’d comported herself with dignity and calm that day. It was only afterwards, in the days following, that she’d completely fallen apart.
God, she missed her dad fiercely. He’d been so much more patient with her than Ben, even when she was having one of her outbursts. And he’d always been the one to say that Tabby was a different person at the beach house, that she was focused, sweeter, grounded by the waves. He’d told her numerous times how much he adored seeing his three grandchildren play in the ocean just yards away from the patio. The beach house was good for all of them. She was better at the beach house. Dad would have remembered that, wouldn’t he? It would be hers…it had to be.
Right?
“The home at 123 Driftwood Lane,” Mr. Smith announced, snapping Tabby out of her thoughts, “will go to… Benjamin Smith.” He eyed Ben over the tops of his glasses.
“What?” The word left Tabby in a breathless whoosh. No.
Ben’s eyes flicked to her.
“Are you sure?” Tabby asked, lurching forward to try to read the words with her own eyes. How could that be? Hadn’t Dad wanted to leave her something that would help her? Maybe even make her into a better person than the one she was? Ben was already a perfect person. He was a boy scout for fuck’s sake! And she…she was lost.
“Quite sure,” Mr. Smith answered, pulling the folder closer to him. “Mr. Rice was incredibly clear about his wishes.”
“Is there anything else?” Tabby asked, wanting to understand why Dad had chosen Ben for this too. “A letter? An explanation?” she could feel the choke of tears rising in her. “Why Ben?” she croaked out before clearing her throat to keep the tears away. She would not cry in front of them. Even if panic was pressing in on her like a landslide. Not to mention heartbreak.
Mr. Smith shook his head.
Tabby swallowed, pushing away the threatening grief at being cast aside by her own father, and steeled herself. What mattered was finding a place to live. One that was close enough to the kids after she moved out. One where she could fix herself. She turned to her brother.
“Ben,” she implored. “Please. Can’t we…” Couldn’t they what? Switch? He’d never agree to that in a thousand years. “I need this…” she trailed off.
“Why? Why do you need it more than I do?” Ben asked, his eyes flinty, the sneer turning up his lip again. He was looking at her like desperation was contagious and he wanted no part.
Tabby took a shaky breath and contemplated her response. She hadn’t told him yet about Louis and her job and the affair. And she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t let him know just how big of a fuck up she was. How she’d single-handedly blown up her life by hopping into bed with her boss.
Her boss who also happened to be Ben’s oldest friend.
What do you notice about this? Do you feel like you have a better sense of who Tabby is, and why this beach house inheritance matters to her? Do you understand what is at stake?
I hope so.
So what did I focus on primarily when I sat down to revise this? Five things: character, motivation, stakes, interiority, and showing-not-telling.
Character:
In the last version we didn’t get much of a sense of who Tabitha was besides the fact that she wants the beach house and doesn’t get along with her brother. But there were no details showing what her life was like, what kind of person she is. In this one, I tried to show who she was: a mother who makes mistakes. She puts on mismatched shoes accidentally, she has messy clothes, she bites her nails, she’s the type of woman who managed to sleep with her boss and blow up her world as a result. She’s desperate, insecure, and ashamed—especially when comparing herself to her “perfect” brother. Do you see how filling in context—especially showing some character details—makes us feel more connected to a character? Even if it’s one we don’t necessarily love right off the bat?
Motivation:
In this version, the next thing I really focused on was showing why she wanted the beach house so badly. In my first version, there was little to zero context about what the house means to her. So in this one, that was the first question I asked myself. Why does Tabby want this inheritance so badly? The answer: because she desperately needs a place to live, but also because she believes it will be the key to her reinvention. She likes the person she is there, and she wants to be better. So there’s internal and external motivation here.
Stakes:
The stakes are the engine that keeps your story in motion. And they are intimately tied to motivation. Simply put, your story’s stakes are what your character stands to lose or gain if they don’t get what they want. So for Tabby—in the second draft—we understand that she has 30 days until she will be kicked out of her house. And, without a job, she has no way to pay for rent. Also, the beach house is still close enough that she can see her kids. Without it, maybe she won’t see them as much. These are external stakes. But I tried to weave in some internal stakes as well…she needs to get her life in order to be the better person she wants to be. She believes the beach house is the way to do that. It’s grounding, freeing, and she’s a different person there. Without it, she might just continue on as the trainwreck she feels she is. Her sense of self is at stake too.
Interiority:
Interiority is the POV character’s direct thoughts and feelings. It’s the character’s internal landscape that shows us why they are doing what they’re doing. Interiority is a huge part of how we show the character’s motivation, stakes, and voice. In the first version of this scene, there’s almost no interiority. Anything we learned about Tabby came mostly from clunky, unrealistic dialogue. Interiority closes the narrative distance between the reader and the character. In this second version, we hear her voice, the patterns of her thought and we learn a lot more about what she’s thinking and feeling.
Showing, Not Telling
“Show, don’t tell” is a common piece of writing advice, especially given to novice writers. And for good reason. Showing, instead of telling, paints a clearer picture for the readers, so they can feel like they’re living in the eyes and heads of the characters. Commonly misunderstood, the advice actually encourages writers to show what things mean to the POV character. But I also think it applies to filling in the scene with details that show what the world is like. It’s bringing the world into sharper relief. In the first version there was none of that. Little description, vague language, etc. In this version, I worked to add in specific details that showed Tabby and her world: the mismatched heels, the stained dress, the mustachioed lawyer, Ben’s Harvard MBA, his stainless steel to her rusted iron, etc. To adhere to the “show, don’t tell” rule, I focused on taking a quality about my character, like her being a “mess” (which is pretty vague) and working on showing what that looks like specifically to her, in her life. With showing, not telling, you’re working on being specific and vivid, which I tried to do here.
So what do you think? How did focusing on these five elements of fiction help improve my draft?
Could they help you with yours? Give it a try!
Before I sign off, I want to share one more thing with you. Before I finalized this, I reached out to two readers to get a bit of feedback on it. Because even though it’s an improvement—and even though I’m not going to actually write this book—I wanted to check myself. Yes, I am a writer and book coach, but even with my knowledge I still have blind spots when it comes to my own writing. So I contacted my friend and fellow book coach, who was kind enough to point out some of those blind spots.
I also asked my sister to read it. Her response: “This feels longer than the first.” And to that I said, “yeah, of course it does.” It is much longer. Because I had to fill in the skeleton bones of the first, with meat and flesh and…well, context. Chances are, if you are deepening your work, yours will be lengthier too. Though I will say, that I haven’t mastered the Hemingway art of sparse language, much as I should. We are all works in progress, aren’t we?
All of this is to say that getting feedback is a crucial part of the writing process, and one that makes your writing stronger. I hope that no matter where you are in your novel writing, that you have someone you can bounce your words off of and receive qualified feedback.
And if not, please reach out for help. I’m happy to jump on a free 30-min call and/or read your first page. Revision is magic, y’all, and I’m here to help. You can book a free 30-min story strategy chat here.
Happy Writing!
Karyn
From Slush to Success