Sticking to the core of your novel

In all the years I’ve been writing novels, there’s one piece of advice that’s stuck with me: find the core of your novel and stick with it. There are other variations of this advice you might have heard: don’t go off on tangents, stick to the main plot, don’t overwrite, do the plank exercise every day (oops, sorry, wrong core!). But let’s delve deeper and learn what this really means and how you can achieve this.

The first time I started getting to grips with this was when reading a blog post by YA writer Maggie Stiefvater many years ago. I didn’t properly understand it then, nor put it into practice. But it made me sit up and listen. Her Shiver series of novels features werewolves (yep, I have a soft spot for urban fantasy!). But in her blog post, she said she would rather cut out the actual werewolves then lose the core of the novel, which for her was the mood, a ‘slow, slow build to a bittersweet end’.

Years later, when I got my first book deal with HarperCollins, I worked with an editor who helped me to put this into practice. In her revision notes for my second novel My Sister’s Secret, she wrote:

‘This editorial stage is all about weighting and organising and prioritising then finessing the material. If you could say what this book is in a sentence, what would you say? I feel that you have to decide what you want to be the overarching strand and then prioritise plot lines accordingly – there’s too much noise and too many things happening.’

She was absolutely right. I think it’s fine to write your first drafts in a passion, if that’s what you like to do. But when it comes to revising, that’s when this focus on the ‘core’ really comes into its own.

For My Sister’s Secret, the core of the novel was sisters. Simple as that. You might read this and think ‘yep, pretty obvious’. But actually, it wasn’t in the initial drafts. In fact, the novel was first called The Layers of Me and the different strands I’d weaved in meant the true core of it – the relationship between three sisters and the impact of this in future years – was lost.

Once my editor helped me draw that out, including changing the title, I felt I finally had something to hone in on. Everything became about those sisters and the consequences of the tragedy that befell them. It worked too. My Sister’s Secret went onto become a Kindle and Kobo number one bestseller, and one of the biggest selling ebooks of 2015.

So how do you find your core in your writing and then maintain focus as you’re revising your novel?

Sometimes, it’s about the first kernel of feeling that came to you when writing the novel. So I came up with the idea of my latest novel, Her Last Breath, while watching a documentary about landslides. It got me thinking about how that would impact a town. But also, the own internal landslides we experiences. With the help of my current editor, that became my core: landslides and the, as Maggie Stiefvater calls it, ‘slow slow build’ towards it.
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You see, landslides start before we perceive them. Years of subsidence and ruin, all kept hidden beneath a seemingly perfect visage until all falls to pieces. I applied this to the characters too: how a seemingly perfect life on the outside can be falling apart within. And what happens in that last gasp of breath before the landslide happens. Before Estelle, the main character, falls metaphorically to the sea below?

So how did I keep that focus?

• Music: I made a playlist in Spotify to reflect that feeling. You can see it here. Just songs that for me created the mood I was aiming for.
• TV: I focused on watching films and series to inspire me too. Like Blue Jasmine, a wonderful film that depicts a woman’s descent into darkness. There aren’t many correlations plot or character-wise with Her Last Breath. But it was the mood… the core.
• Photos: I also hung up photos of landslides in my office, of women staring out to sea, anything that stirred up that feeling of falling.
• Quote and mottos: I hung relevant quotes and mottos up in my office too. For example, ‘Sometimes when things are falling apart they might be falling into place.’ By being surrounded by prompts in my office, I was able to peer up when I felt myself losing track then steer myself back.

Hopefully, this has all lead to a tightly plotted novel. And hopefully it’s helped you too. I’d love to hear from you about how you manage to maintain your focus, or if you’ve read this article and it’s helped you!