I read through my whole novel and decided Chapter 1 was the best one to submit to the Rooted and Written workshop.
I got it beta-read by my most brutal critic - my husband. His focus is on keeping things easy to read and simple to follow. I realized I had to rewrite all of it. But how much of his criticisms were because of cultural differences or just being raised on a different set of books than I was? So, we went through the opening chapters of a good number of novels on my shelf, and reader, I must say, I have been humbled.
I realized my big issue was I was writing it like a screenplay. Not very much picture-painting, dialogues were exposition, and there was too much “Renowned Harvard Symbologist Robert Langdon” type stuff going on. In contrast, most novels had short, easy sentences in their first chapter (and every chapter), gave a good grounding of place and time, and when characters spoke, they talked about how they felt about things, not what was happening. Why had I never looked at it that way before?
Anyway. I edited it and submitted it to the workshop. I don’t have high hopes of getting picked up, because it’s hitting me as I read it again all the things that are still wrong with it. I don’t have enough description. It never occurs to me to add enough.
I also realize some of it is definitely from the ADHD. I don’t perceive a full technicolor world as I experience it. Others mostly do. Like, I don’t notice there’s flowers on the table, or what color it is when I walk into a room, even if I’m by the flowers. I focus mainly on people and things they are saying. And even there, I don’t notice details of their face. I just grab impressions and live with it. It makes me weak at description. But I attended a workshop on descriptions by Constance Hale from The SF Writer’s Grotto, and while signing my copy of Writing Character, I complained to her about how awful I was at descriptions, and she told me to start working on getting better. I oughta.
But I’m glad I did this. It gives me a better idea of what I’m up against when I’m editing, and it isn’t as intimidating as I’ve been fearing it would be. I also know now all the things I am not thinking about when I’m drafting. I really ought to write it like a novel, not a screenplay. I ought to be thinking of the reader while writing it, not just describing the movie in my head.
Here’s to a better rest-of-the-first-draft.