Novel Ideas Do it properly

That’ll do isn’t good enough, says Lynne Hackles

Have you seen that advert’ on television where the Yorkshireman says, ‘That’ll do.’ Those words always remind me of what Caroline Graham, author and creator of Midsomer Murders, once said to me. When you finish a piece of work and say That’ll do, it invariably won’t. It’s when you finish something and can say That’ll do nicely that it actually works.

‘That’ll do’ is something I often used to say when I’d finished a story and was eager to send it out to a magazine and guess what? Most of the time it didn’t do. It was rejected and when I read it again I could see why.

One of the hardest things for new writers is to hang onto a story or article once they think it’s completed it but if it it’s left alone for a week, or a fortnight, and then re-read it’s almost definite that they’ll find a mistake in the plot, a typo, some missed punctuation or a sentence that doesn’t make sense.

Have you ever said That’ll do about a piece of work? Perhaps it was at the end of a long writing session, when you were tired or hungry, or it was time to go off to work or pick up the kids from school. Or you’ve been working on a story, a chapter, an article and you think you are almost there. It’s looking good, sounding good but there’s something missing – something you can’t quite fathom.

It’s time to press ‘save’ and return another time, another day, after supper or the following morning. Save it for when you are fresh again and can look at it with wide eyes. I learned to read my stories every day until, one day, I didn’t change a single thing on them. That was my That’ll do nicely moment.