About the professional reviewer: Melissa Weatherill worked for literary superagent Ed Victor before becoming an editor at Simon & Schuster where she worked for five years on women's fiction, literary fiction, crime and thriller. She commissioned, edited and published authors such as Jules Hardy, Annabel Dilke and Kate O'Riordan, and worked closely with many others including Adriana Trigiani, Will Rhode, Victoria Glendinning, Jennifer Weiner and Kathy Lette. She is now an independent editor and reviewer for books and film, freelance editing fiction and non-fiction for publishing house including Macmillan, Orion, Hodder and Grove Atlantic. Melissa also assesses books and screenplays for film companies such as BBC films.


Professional critique for SONGS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL by Tommi

Congratulations on being in this month’s bestseller chart – your chapters are certainly worthy of much discussion and interest, and I’ve really enjoyed reading them.

Plot and structure:
Your story has the potential to be incredibly powerful on lots of levels, but it is slightly let down at the moment by the amount of different things going on in the narrative. It contains many strong threads, themes and ideas, but it also contains a few which I would judge to be surplus to requirement. As your structure is so convoluted in the way it almost begins at the end, and darts back and forth in time, it is challenging enough to follow without the added complications of a disparate narrative. After reading these chapters, I wasn’t sure whether it was a love story, a coming of age novel, or one about the destruction and subsequent salvation of a family, or one about politics and art. Of course, one could argue it is all of these things, indeed it is, but there is a danger of it falling between the various stools rather than being a fully cohesive narrative that deals equally successfully with each thread. The storyline that held the most interest for me was the one about Sandrine finding herself by finding her mother as well as reconciling herself to her homeland. All the artistic and political expression forms a very interesting backdrop to this story, and of course the story of unrequited love between Claire and Sandrine adds an intriguing edge, but I’m not sure it works as the main focus of the narrative, especially as it’s all a bit abstract and whimsical.

That Sandrine’s boyfriend Istvan is behind the murders of the Tylers seems a little far-fetched. Likewise, the sudden and tragic death of her father seems one drama too much to swallow. In fact, there is rather a lot of death in this novel, perhaps a little too much to be credible. Be careful of demanding too much of your reader. I was asking myself at one point: whose death is this novel about? Of course, I’m only really judging these twists and turns from the synopsis, and perhaps they work very well in the fullness of the complete narrative, but be careful of cramming in too much for the sake of it. You can’t be all things to all people. I suggest you pare it down to the elements that make the most sense to you, to the storylines which resonate most clearly for you and I bet the whole thing will hang together much more fluidly and convincingly. I would certainly cut out the encounter with Michael’s father as it rather takes the whole story off on a tangent that doesn’t add much to the overall picture. If anything it is distracting. If you do choose to keep it, it needs to be explained why, as is stated on page 14, Michael’s father could never be known to him? This is one of a few gaps which need to be filled in.

I would also cut the passage about the book she has been writing, as again it distracts from the main narrative and makes for quite a staccato read.

A big contributor to this lack of focus is the proliferation of characters. For instance, it isn’t made clear who Radko Dokic is and what relation he bears to the narrator and why his death causes so much pain. His death is closely followed by Michael’s and Claire’s that it is hard to distinguish whose is more important.

Another reason for this confusion is the ambitious nature of the structure. If Radko Dokic were introduced in the context of the narrator, in a way that enables the reader to grasp his significance, his death would resonate more. Likewise with Sandrine, all the useful facts and background information about her only emerge piecemeal throughout – for instance, her estrangement with her mother is only brought up very late, but it’s the kind of detail that is essential for the reader to have early on to be able to form an accurate picture of the heroine.

Character and voice:
Which brings me on to characterisation and voice. As I say, there are rather a lot of characters introduced in a short space, for instance, in para 2 on page 5, we are told about a Gyorgy, her father and Radko, yet with no real context to allow the impact of the information to hit home. It may seem obvious, but it’s a good technique to somehow introduce the principal characters early on in a way that enables the reader to properly engage with them. For instance, that Claire and Michael are already dead when we meet them makes it hard to engage with them and consequently it is hard to be affected by their deaths in an empathetic way to the narrator.

Similarly with Sandrine herself, this is her story, her journey – it is through her eyes and her experience that the plot unfolds. As such, she needs to be a fully fleshed, three dimensional character whom the reader cares about, even identifies with, and the key to this is empathy. The first person technique certainly helps with this in that it provides an immediate draw into the world of the narrator, and her voice most certainly sings off the page in her political and artistic musings, but I didn’t feel I knew her by the end of these chapters as well as I should have done. As I say, all the stuff about her family background, her disillusionment with her homeland, her sexuality and the prejudices she encounters, etc, need to be brought out earlier on so we can have a proper idea of who we are dealing with before embarking on the journey with her.

Writing style:
I realise my critique so far may appear to contain more criticism than praise, which wasn’t quite my intention as there is a lot about this piece which has impressed me; it is very original, unusual and intriguing, but at the moment it’s just a little confused and all over the place.

You write extremely well – with a wonderful turn of phrase and descriptive abilities which make for an atmospheric read, but I think your writing also needs a bit of weight to anchor it down. For instance, the scenes of New Year (in these chapters anyway) are rather poetically rendered in broad brushstrokes, but I think they have the potential to be a lot more intense, violent and therefore gripping. They would make an effective counterbalance to the passages of internal conjecture, to complement her metaphysical journey, if you like, with her physical one. In short, your writing talent is slightly undermined by the complexities of your structure and plotline.

Be careful of being over the top with the passages about music; quoting lyrics, as with poems, can sometimes seem a little pretentious. In my opinion, the last para on page 5 is an example of a section that could do with being cut for this reason. It doesn’t add much and slows down the pace of the narrative detrimentally.

Final Analysis:
As I said, your novel has a lot of very interesting and potentially very powerful ingredients in it; it just needs taming into shape a bit more. It is nothing which a bit of discipline in the editing process can’t solve. I advise you to work out exactly what you want your novel to be about, what kind of audience you see it working for, and going through it and getting rid of the extraneous storylines, enhancing the ones you want to focus on and perhaps simplifying the structure a bit. I think you’ll find it will become the fluid, gripping drama this novel deserves to be.

I wish you great good luck with it and thank you for a very enjoyable read.

"This novel has a lot of very interesting and potentially very powerful ingredients in it; it just needs taming into shape a bit more. It is nothing which a bit of discipline in the editing process can’t solve."

That is a great crit! Lots to think about like you said Tommi, and a lot of very positive feedback on your writing skills and your storyline. That is what we all want from a crit isn't it, an encouraging and honest appraisal from an experienced editor. Congratulations and have fun working on your novel.