Category Archives: revising your work

Smuggle and Stitch

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I am mostly through a major revision to one work-in-progress (wip), and facing something similar in another. I’ve been talking about this revision for – like,  I don’t know, five years now. I have probably gone over and revised the same material the standard dozen times, and I still don’t have it quite right.

Problem – in part – is that I’m having to add new material. What that means is that I have to create the new character/storyline/words to add this to the story, THEN I have to figure out where to fit it in, including bits and pieces scattered throughout the existing writing. It’s HARD!

I don’t care how much better it will make the story (well, yes I do) but IT IS HARD!

The other aspect of this is that I have to go back and cut as many words as I can. This consists of eliminating unnecessary words as well as getting rid of any information dumps (okay, exposition) that is unattractive and uninspiring for the reader. They want the story, but they want to be entertained while learning about the character’s past love affair or the minor childhood incident that changed a lifetime.

There are only two ways I know to go about this revision, and it still is tedious, time-consuming, and , well, HARD. I’m referring to Smuggle and Stitch.

Smuggle

Smuggle is a term some writers use to explain how to present certain information about the story, especially the characters, to the reader.  The idea is that rather than dump a whole pile of information in straight exposition (even if it comes via a character’s dialogue), bits and pieces of information should be dropped simply into the narrative along the way. This builds the reader’s knowledge of the character gradually and allows them to draw on it in an organic way when things come to a head.

My cardinal rule of thumb is that you don’t want anything to break the reader from the story. Jarring notes such as misinformation, eg, Alaska is located on the North American continent at a latitude lower than that of Hawaii; speech patterns inconsistent with the character’s previously demonstrated patterns; an off description, such as unexplained inconsistencies about the protagonist’s hair style and color.. Other ‘sins’ can include inconsistent or inaccurate locale description, historical gaffes, out-of-date slang, or even anachronisms such as a cell phone in the 1890s. (short of a time travel story). The point is, anything that even momentarily makes the reader stop reading and think “Hey wait, that can’t be right!” qualifies here.

“…you don’t want anything to break the reader from the story”

Also in the bucket are long paragraphs or scenes of exposition, description, or the phenomenon called ‘talking heads’: characters doing nothing but sitting around talking about what is happening, has happened, or will happen. These are absolute ‘no-nos’, because nothing will throw your reader out of a story faster than boring passages, even if the information conveyed is necessary to the story.

You, the writer, are here to entertain. Inform, too, but in an entertaining way. Allowing your story to feature passages that throw the writer unceremoniously out of their reverie, out of the world you have spent precious time creating is at least counterproductive to reaching this reader or getting them to read your work again.

Stitch

Writing is sometimes like a quilt, patches sewn together with tiny – preferably invisible – stitches to make a complete and cozy blanket to enshroud the reader in a new world.  Adding new material to a blanket already completed is no small feat, but it must be done so as to be undetectable in order to make the quilt good as new.

So it is with new material being added to a story. Some patches, or scenes go in wholesale, between other rows of patches. To keep the pattern consistent, however, a writer must work in individual ones here and there, or adjust an existing patch with a stitch or two.  Some quilts even require added stitching all over to unify the design properly. To make the story come out reading as if it were never any other way is artistry.  Also, hard). 

My next blogposts, published within a day or two, will have specific examples of the smuggling and stitching I practiced while revising my current wip.

‘ta

Not-so-Easy Does It

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We all need encouragement and inspiration to write a story, but that kind of support is easy. We tell you how you have so much to say and you’ll say it so well.  We remind you that you have a unique voice, and that we can’t wait to read your work. Then we ship you off to your study or desk with everything from a plate of beans and coffee to filet mignon and a glass of wine and wait for your golden manuscript to appear. 

Okay, who said, ‘Yeah, right’?

All right, I get it. Writing isn’t that easy; neither is helping someone write. But it can be easier than the next step. Revision.

I enjoy a number of creative pursuits besides writing. One is house renovation. Ask anyone; I’d rather build a new bathroom than clean one.

BR1rough

 

Recently I heard Canadian Contractor turned YouTuber  Jeff Thorman  (Home RenoVision DIY),  remark that “Anytime we’re doing dry wall mud or any other kind of finishing, we start from rough and push toward finished.”

 

BR2partial

 

 

 

 

The concept applies to a lot of creative endeavors besides building.

 

logoFRS010115  Painting

logoFRS010115  Sculpting

logoFRS010115   Dance – even choreography starts with rough blocking of movement before it finalizes into polished dance steps and poses.

 

How often do we tell writers: Just get the first draft done; get the main story down in print. Then you can go back and rework it.

Rework it. Revise. Revision is, according to some 90% of writing. What does the process look like? Many writers work in steps.

  1. Revision 1 may be to remove all the over-used words. We each have our ‘favorites’, our personal crutches that we put in when we think there is a blank space that needs filling, eg, just, very, that. So the first pass may be to remove those unnecessary placeholders from our manuscript.
  1. The next one may be to clarify passages, put more imagery into description, add more authenticity to dialogue, more substance to characters.
  1. Revision No. 3 may be to remove the new set of over-used words. You can throw in eliminating the overworked phrases for good measure.
  1. An entire new pass to straighten out the plot tangles resulting from added material in Revision 2

And so on.

First draft, second draft, …, thirtieth draft. However many it takes to reach the point where you put down your pen and decide it is really… 

BR3nearly done

 

 

 

REALLY…

 

 

 

BR4done

…Done.

 

The list here doesn’t encompass the question of how to fix things. My next few blog posts will deal in greater detail with the agony of revision, an agony only outweighed by its value.

 

“Anytime we’re doing dry wall mud or any other kind of finishing, we start from rough and push toward finished.”

Jeff thorman Home RenoVision DIY

 

Never promise what you can’t deliver…

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… a brief monologue on the ways that can backfire on you

 

Besides being a means of offering my excuses for missing deadline once again, this short list enumerates various ways promising something can get you into trouble.

  1.  Most obvious and pertinent: Never put in writing the date your book will be available unless it is on its way to the printer. And not even then. Those of you who are alert will  note the ‘update’ of launch info for FLYING PURPLE  PEOPLE SEATER. I won’t bother you with excuses; there are some. It will be out soon.
  2. Never promise you will  never do something. A certain editor I know vowed she would never go so far as to cross borders to see a performance she admired; guess where she will be next month? (correct if you said not in her home country)
  3. Never promise to house-sit or pet-sit when you don’t really know your own plans. (Was that the weekend you scheduled for minor surgery on Friday and were told you’ll be out of it from the pain meds for three days?)
  4. Never promise you will be there for the birth of a child (except your own, and then not if it is your spouse who is delivering). Do I really need to mention that babies are unpredictable?
  5. Never promise payback –  whether it’s a favor, a visit, a loan, or revenge. Life is also  unpredictable.
  6. Never promise to write an article from a certain slant. You  never know when you will discover information – even during an interview with the subject – that will change everything you’re going to write.
  7. Never promise a friend or a family member that you will name a character after them or, worse, ‘put them in your book’.
  8. Following from #7 is, never promise (or brag) that you’re going to kill off your mother-in-law (or anyone real in your life) in your book. — We all do it; just don’t say so.
  9. Never put so many people or things in the plot of your novel that you can’t keep track of them. You’ll have things like boats with gunmen on them vanishing  into thin air when they would have been in a position to turn the tide of battle, but you can’t have them there because that’s not how the fight turns out. (yes, that was a thing)
  10. And never, never, as the saying goes, put a gun on a mantelpiece in a scene unless someone is going to get shot.

That’s a saying that was taught to me by my screenwriting son. It refers to economy and purpose in writing.  When you put an object or person into a scene, there’s a reason they are there. There has to be, particularly in any short writing, but even in novels.

Mysteries may be notorious for red herrings and misdirection, but that’s not what you’re doing if you are introducing stuff into scenes and not doing something with them.  Ie, there is no reason for a gun on the mantelpiece in a young woman’s apartment, unless there it is going to be used. Maybe it’s self-defense, because she feels stalked. Maybe it’s  self-defense, because she feels under siege by law enforcement. Maybe it’s self-defense, because she feels stalked and under siege by an ex-boyfriend. Maybe it just goes off and the bullet strikes her baby. Maybe she’s going to sell it, turn it in, clean it, or use it on the damn cat, but that gun needs to be used somehow. Or it needs to not be  there.

Even 600-page novels have a finite number of ideas to convey, in a finite number of words. If you can’t deliver follow-up why something is on the page, if its being there doesn’t serve a purpose later on, don’t promise the reader that it does. Take it out.

Now I’ll go finish my book. No, that was not a promise, but I will.