When character and voice go wrong

And my Circling Process

I AM HEADED TO THE UK FOR TOUR! Literally, I am on a plane as this is sending, and I hope I see some of you along the way!

If you haven’t gotten a ticket, do so now! (Also, I know some of the stores have moved to larger venues, so if a site was sold out before, check again now!)

And for the record: a ticket includes attendance to the event, the opportunity to meet me, and a signed, personalized book!

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Now onto the meat of the post. From @Rachael:

What are two things you wish you could change about publishing? And how do you know when your character and narrative voice are wrong. What do you do to get them back on track? I know I asked more than one question, but I couldn't narrow them down. Please choose which one you'd like to answer. Thank you.

As mentioned before, no need to narrow it down, Rachael. I got you. 😉

We tackled burnout recovery, so now let’s dig with the character and narrative voice question. How do I know when they're wrong? How do I get them back on track?

I’ll be honest that this is hard to answer—if only because I’ve tried so many times over the years to articulate how I personally can sense when something is not the Right Story. But it’s such a “gut feelings woo woo intuition” thing that I struggle to put it into words others can learn from.

First, I’ll direct you to a post where I think I managed to distill something that’s all intuitive into an explanation. This about how I know when I’ve found the Right Story, and maybe it will offer some guidance on the first part of your question.

But maybe it also won’t because how you write and create is going to be so vastly different from how I do it.

So I’ve got a few more tips below.

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Rereading

One piece of writing advice I see often is, “Don’t stop! Just keep writing forward and get to the end. You can’t edit a blank page!” While that works great for some writers, it certainly doesn’t work for all.

And it doesn’t work for me. In fact, I stop often, I reread often, I edit often, and by the time I actually hit The End, my book isn’t really a first draft at all. It’s more like a 47th draft.

The reason that I create this way—and why I have accepted this is what’s best for my brain—is that I am a writer who relies almost entirely on emotions. I have to be fully in the emotional state of my character in order to write not just how they feel at any given moment in a scene, but also to know what decisions they will make next

If I draft too long without going back to reread, I lose track of the emotional progression. (More on this below!)

On top of that, I regularly get Writer’s Block—like, not just some normal stuckery, but the Big Stuckery, and it is almost always because the character made a choice somewhere that wasn’t quite in-line with who they are as a person. And until I find where I went awry, I cannot proceed onward.¹

Any time I hit a story blockage that just doesn’t want to come out or doesn’t feel right, then I stop writing, reread everything, and search for the broken emotional beat or character choice. Once I find it, I fix, then reframe whatever comes after. And bam! I’m back to the drafting after that!

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My Circling Process

Here you can see my Circling Process in action. Some pages have almost no changes; others get meatier. I fix whatever I see that needs fixing as lock back into the emotions.

I am so reliant on rereading and editing as I go that I even have a name for it: my Circling Process. And it looks like this:

• I write 10-15k words. I either get Big Stuck (see above) or my story simply starts to feel muddy inside my brain. Maybe I’ve lost the voice or emotions, or maybe what I have next on my outline doesn’t look appealing anymore.

• So I circle back and read the book. Sometimes I go all the way to the beginning of the book, or if I’m pretty far in to the story, I will only return to the start of the most recent 10-15K chunk.

• I read it and edit as I go (by hand!) or by listening to the book.²

• If I find something is Big Broken, then I’ll fix it right away. I don’t wait until a later draft; I fix it now.

• If I don’t see anything Big Broken, then I simply make small edits for pacing or prose, and I use the read-through to re-lock into my characters’ emotional progression—which in turn allows me re-lock into their voice and state of mind.

• Maybe the actions they will choose to do next are what is on my outline, and I just needed to relock into their emotional beats. Or maybe what they need to do next is something unexpected and now I need a new outline.

Because, as mentioned, we’re frequently told to NOT STOP, I fought my Circling Process for years.

I mean, I fought it for a full decade! And I kept trying to be the writer who could just “hammer out a draft and fix later.” I really believed I was somehow failing by having to circle back so often to re-lock into my characters/voices and emotions.

But no. I wasn’t failing.

This is simply how my brain is wired. It’s how my intuition operates. And leaning into that truth has helped me not only write faster, but simply be a happier writer.

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Of course, a lot of authors hate to read what they’ve written before they’ve finished a draft—and that’s fine too.

Or some writers get stuck like I do, but they aren’t as intuitively able to sense where things have gone awry. This is where I often urge people to find outside readers. It’s hard—I know—to find a person you jibe with. I went through so many readers, and the people who once read for me (before publication) aren’t the ones who read for me after publication…and they aren’t the people who read for me today.

That’s okay. It’s normal. But finding someone who can read for you (and for whom you can read in return)! will transform your writing and your ability to self-edit.

Or, if you’d rather hone your editing skills without others, check out my free Guide to Revising Your Novel course on the Academy!

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There you go, Rachael! Let me know if that doesn’t help you. because I can always tackle this again.

💚 - Sooz

1. I mean, I can. But then I throw out words. Thousands of them. Or even tens of thousands. So I’ve learned to trust this gut feeling that tells me things aren’t working.

2. This is a new revelation for me! I will talk more about it in the future!