Crying time
Jane Wenham Jones has sound advice for a reader lamenting her difficulty in ramping up the emotional content of her novel
Jane Wenham Jones
You have my sympathies. It’s always respond to the more general editorial directives more humour, increase pace, or add emotion – specifics of say, ‘describe her job in a bit more does Fred look like?’ and I can empathise struggles.
But I think Kate, the main problem could summarised in your last four words. It is particularly difficult needs to be done when you are up against a deadline and panic, and it may be that you need to take a step back.
I am in the process of editing my first novel and the same sort of note comes up from my editor over and over again: ‘we need some more emotion in here’.
It is a historical novel and my editor says she loves the story and that I have really captured the period. But she needs me to ‘get inside the heads of the main characters’, and to make the sad bits more heart-wrenching.
I thought I had done this and I don’t know how to go any deeper.
When I try to make everything more emotional, it reads like melodrama!
Any ideas? Time is marching on…
KATE VINCENT
London