{"id":6273,"date":"2020-08-07T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/the-three-page-novel\/"},"modified":"2020-08-07T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T12:00:00","slug":"the-three-page-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/the-three-page-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"The three page novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine is a painter. He was in a grump the other day because he\u2019d been working all morning on a new canvas, then decided the picture wasn\u2019t going anywhere. His plan was to scrape the canvas down \u2013 scrap it, in effect \u2013 and start on something else the following day. He moaned about a morning\u2019s wasted effort.<\/p>\n

Well, he didn\u2019t get much sympathy from me.<\/p>\n

(I\u2019ll tell you why in half a second, but the last of my triumvirate of writing books is out at the end of this month. It\u2019s called HOW TO WRITE and \u2013 in its previous, Bloomsbury, incarnation \u2013 it got lots of nice comments from readers. We\u2019re looking for people who would like an Advance Review Copy. The e-book will be yours totally free. Your only commitment is that you\u2019ll leave an honest review on Amazon when we publish. More info in the PS. And here endeth the public service announcement.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Right. Back to painting and all that.<\/p>\n

Now, for one thing, a painter\u2019s decision whether to commit to a project is just a much smaller deal. My buddy thought he had a good subject for a painting. He tried it out. He didn\u2019t like it. He decided to do something different.<\/p>\n

For a painter, that\u2019s a day. For a novelist, that\u2019s a year. And \u2013 especially if you rely on your writing income for a living \u2013 that\u2019s a year you literally can\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one reason why I make a big deal about elevator pitches. You just can\u2019t afford to go bombing off on a project where the basic idea is flawed.<\/p>\n

But also \u2013 editing.<\/p>\n

My painter buddy can just step back from his canvas and see, at a glance, if he\u2019s happy with it. He literally has to take one backwards step. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n

A screenwriter has more of a challenge, but even so, she has only 20,000 words to deal with \u2013 an easy hour\u2019s read.<\/p>\n

You lot \u2013 you brutes \u2013 have work that often runs to 100,000 words or more. My first novel weighed in at 180,000 words. The final book was like a blue and gold brick. And don\u2019t get me wrong. I love long work; I\u2019m almost incapable of writing briefly.<\/p>\n

But the editorial challenge is huge, even at the basic level of evaluating your own project. Instead of the painter\u2019s simple backwards step and visual assessment, we might have to spend six hours reading the damn manuscript. And having done that, we\u2019ve got a ton of intersecting thoughts and issues. We\u2019ve half-forgotten our opening thoughts by the time we get to our closing ones. And the implementation phase is even more arduous than the evaluation one.<\/p>\n

So: what to do?<\/p>\n

The obvious answer is: you just plunge in.<\/p>\n

Gotta problem with Character A? Dive into your 100,000 word swimming pool, find references to Character A, tweak what you need to tweak, then get out dripping and wet.<\/p>\n

Got a plot problem with that bit after the escape from the castle? Then dive in again, tweak again, do what you have to do.<\/p>\n

And so on. Given that you may have a whole string of editing issues to fix, that\u2019s a lot of dives into your swimming pool \u2013 or, worse, you decide you\u2019re going to deal with everything at once, which means you soon start drowning in word-porridge. You fix one thing but accidentally break two others, and because you can never just step back and see your manuscript at a glance, you don\u2019t even see the breakages.<\/p>\n

Now, any pro author ends up evolving their own methods for handling these issues. (Common elements include: washing less, drinking a lot of coffee, sleeping at weird times, forgetting about your family and developing a tic.)<\/p>\n

But watching the magnificent Rachael Herron<\/a> at the Summer Festival brought a new clarity for me.<\/p>\n

Assuming you\u2019ve written your first draft, here\u2019s what she suggests you should do:<\/p>\n

You go through your entire manuscript. You note down every scene and summarise it in a sentence. Like this:<\/p>\n