I have spent the better part of a decade working in the magazine publishing space, with some freelance work creating advertorial content and social media strategy for brands. I’m writing my first novel manuscript, and in some ways I feel like I’m starting from square zero.
Specifically with syntax, prose, and sentence/scene length. Throughout my professional tenure, the importance of succinctness was always top priority, getting your point across clearly and in the least words possible. Basically, marketing writing is highly cognizant of the short attention span of a reader so everything is very punchy with 0 flowery language.
I feel like this briskness is reflected in my novel. I’m noticing that I’m kinda rushing through scenes, making descriptions very brief and efficient, and almost summarizing things instead of fleshing them out. This is causing me to have to rewrite and lengthen scenes multiple times.
Can any journalists/content marketers relate? Is there a way to unlearn these patterns and become stronger in this new discipline ?
What are the last three novels in your genre that you read? What can you learn from the techniques those authors used?
Sure. I’ve been a copywriter, technical writer, and copyeditor for 20+ years, and I also write shorts and novels (mostly speculative literary fiction and SF).
You don’t have to unlearn anything, but you have to reframe what you’re selling. You’ve spent ages writing around keywords and funneling traffic or attention to various CTAs, I’m guessing. Fiction doesn’t really require the same approach. You still need keywords (pet words) and key phrases (standout phrases), but now the thing you’re selling with these is your authorial style.
The main thing to do is to read. When you were first trained for your first writing job, you were probably given written examples of what to do. Writing prose requires the same sort of training. You should read a few of the very successful and renowned (seminal) books in your genre to get an idea of how they’re structured, how pacing works, and so on.
For example, if you want to write mainstream commercial fiction, read a Michael Crichton book from the 1990s and compare that to something contemporary from James Patterson. Both of those guys cracked the code for their eras, commercially. Right now, a 120-page novella stretched out over 325 pages and maybe 50-60 chapters is probably structurally your best bet. In that genre, at least.
Anyway, read. Spend as much or more time reading as you do writing, every day, until you feel like you have a good grip on the expectations of mainstream readers within your genre of choice.