The mentoring scheme works by submitting 6 pieces of up to 10,000 words to your mentor via email, who will then come back to you, usually within a week with feedback.
Having slightly trimmed the prologue and removed the character studies I sent my 10,000 words to Tim and eagerly awaited his response.
When it arrived I didn’t open it straight away.
Critiques are a strange thing, I’ve had my work critiqued before, indeed I am regularly involved in critiquing as part of Litopia, but this felt different. I don’t know whether it was because Tim is a successful published author, or because I was part of a scheme that someone is paying for, but also because it is a process that will see me through to the end of the piece of work; but for whatever reason I was nervous.
What I got, when I opened the email, was a comprehensive, honest and helpful piece of critique, which spanned two sides of A4 and is now printed out and displayed next to my computer.
There were a couple of fundamental points that he addressed: a couple that I knew of and a couple that I didn’t.
1) He kindly said that my writing was lucid and assured. That writers who adopt a ‘literary’ voice often lose control of it, but for the most part I didn’t. This was obviously pleasing.
2) I was prone in places to overwriting. I knew this. I’ve been told this before and it is something that I am now really conscious of. For some reason this didn’t really sink in until I saw it written in this critique.
3) There are places where I tell and don’t show. For anyone who has ever been part of a writers group, reads agents blogs or is a member of any writing forum you will know that this is the cardinal sin in modern literature. At this stage I didn’t think I did it, I thought I clearly understood the difference and this was one writing sin I didn’t give in to. I was wrong. He highlighted a couple of examples and reading them back I had to agree.
4) My lead character was too passive. Things just happened to her. She wasn’t part of them, she simply felt the effect of them.
Points 2, 3, and 4 were all things I needed to look at. So I went away and did some thinking and a wee bit of research.
