Tricks and Tactics

Hard writing makes easy reading. Wallace Stegner

I’m in the final gasps of revising a manuscript and, once again, I’m grateful that a friend’s fresh eyes gave me a proverbial kick in the manuscript. Whether I’m drowning in delight at my own cutesy-wootsy phrase, or persisting in beating the reader over the head with how important the d r a m a of the situation is, well for those times, I gotta have friends. Honest friends. Honest friends with eye for the ick.

Whether you’re ruthlessly judging your own work or a friend’s, you should look out for the problems we all tend towards:

1) Shrugging, grinning, and grimacing: Are your tics showing? All of us have writing tics—repetitive descriptors we repeat. Discover yours or have someone point them out (If I let them, all my characters will lean toward the other characters during times of stress) and remove them.

2) Let the reader rest after you jazz them up: Have you balanced scenes and sequels? Can you feel a good rhythm of active scenes vs. reflective sequels? (Scene: Maria snuck the diamonds from the dresser as Mama slept. Sequel: Maria researched the legality of taking her mother’s jewelry, anxious to see if she’d do time.

3) Don’t make the reader insane! It’s really not artsy to make the reader guess where the characters are in time and place. Are your Transitions clear and smooth? Are you moving the reader through time? Sliding effortlessly into flashback? Showing that settings have changed? Showing changes in mood, tone, emotion, weather, and POV?

Have your transitional sentences do double duty: The following day, rain kept Elliot from getting in his daily run. The enforced laziness made him nastier than usual—making it a good time for Maria to hide out.

Thus, in two sentences we learned: Elliot has a temper, he runs, Maria is scared of him, and it’s raining.

Practical strategies I use

1) The first read: After the first draft cools off (the longer, the better) read it from front to back like a book. Printed out.  I put it (double-sided) into a three-hole punched binder—so I can sit back and turn the pages, trying to fool myself that I am actually reading a ‘book.’ One smart writer I know actually prints out one paperback copy through Lulu.

Read your work before you re-read collected critique from your writer’s group, before doing computer tricks, before micro-changes. Don’t revise as you read, just mark it as you go, writing  down thoughts such as: Make Maria older. Maria’s hair changes color in Chapter 4, 8 and 9! Chapter 3 is boring.

I write TK for ‘to come’ in large red letters next to the clumsy stuff that bothers me, as a way to say:  rewrite this junk. I can’t remember where I picked up “TK” (Editors mark?) but it lets me read through the junk without feeling that I have to stop and fix. I scribble MEGO (my eyes glaze over) every time my work doesn’t even hold my interest.  Trust me, if you’re darlings bore you’re your reader will fall asleep.

2) Post Draft Outlining helps you see what you have, which is probably different from what you planned. Taking the time to do this helps you envision the larger picture.

After finishing each draft, update your outline chapter-by-chapter outline. I use a spreadsheet to show POV, setting and main conflicts of each chapter. This serves not only to orient me, but helps me avoid repetition (like realizing I’ve set half my scenes in Maria’s kitchen.)

I enter chapters and main events into an actual calendar for a visual at-a-glance method of orientation. (You can print ones from Word and other programs.)

3) Search and Replace and Highlighting: MS Word’s Control F action (command F in Mac) helps me more than any other. I use it for universal changes (oops, I should have named the maid Zita instead of Jane.) I use it to find tics (wow, the word ‘lean’ comes up 2300 times!) I use it to locate weak writing (for instance by highlighting passive words.)

As example, the offending word “was” is insidious. I just looked at an early document vs. a more recent iteration and saw the number of “was” went from 1678 to 971. Highlighting all the ‘was’ in your manuscript will force you to re-work dull or weak sentences:

Original Sentence: I was making a mess as I was baking the blueberry pie

Revised Sentence: I made a mess when I baked the blueberry pie.

Better: After baking the pie, greasy flour and sugar covered the kitchen counter.

Removing Tics: Find and highlight your ‘tic’ words. I searched and highlighted ‘sigh,’ ‘sighed’ and ‘sighing’ in my last revision. (When I went from Revision 1 to my most recent, I only reduced ‘sighs’ from 29 to 15. Sigh.)

Overused words: Swearing in small doses, in fiction as in life, can be effective. Overuse waters down the impact and spoils the read. Find, highlight, and fix.

4) Reading aloud: I hate doing it—but I find it invaluable. Read the entire manuscript aloud. The bad parts, the clumsy parts, the rotten dialog, the typos, the unrealistic and over-blown, the underwritten, the lazy—it will jump out when read aloud. DO THIS!

I have moved from self-reading to using a text-to-voice reading program. I use two computers—while one reads out loud, I fix text on the other screen—pausing the program as needed (oh, and it is needed plenty.) For me, Natural Readers has been the best of the text-to voice programs. I found the version I paid for in Natural Readers superior to the free program.

5) Gut check. Sadly, often what we think is great isn’t necessarily so. What we think is groan-worthy in our own writing, generally is. Therefore, if you think it’s broke, fix it. In addition, if there is a line you love so much you’re willing to keep entire shaky or unneeded scenes to support it—kill that line!

6) Orphanage: Uncertain about a cut? Sad? Afraid you may need it later, but don’t want to search through entire manuscripts? Make a computer file labeled orphanage or excised scenes and put in your cuttings. I find it reassuring.

7) Websites I’ve used:

1. http://www.cliches.biz/clichecleaner/ the free download alone is worth the trip.

2. http://www.refdesk.com/ Dictionary, thesaurus, medical, government, statistics

3. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ Find the top 500 names for any year

4. http://www.infoplease.com/index.html Atlas, dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, etc

5. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#l Common English errors

7. http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/index.html Guide to grammar and style

8. http://www.askoxford.com/?view=uk Grammar view from Great Britain

9. http://scholar.google.com/ Research friendly

10. http://answers.google.com/answers/ Ask and answer questions

11. http://thesaurus.reference.com/ Thesaurus/dic-medical and legal dictionary, translates

12. http://www.foodsubs.com/ Cooking terms

13. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/

14. http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/ Art, architecture, geography

15. http://www.fao.org/aims/ag_intro.htm multilingual vocabulary/ terminology of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food, and related domains (e.g. environment).

16. http://www.howstuffworks.com/ What doesn’t it tell you?

7) Recommended Reading for Revision

Between the Lines: master the subtle elements of fiction writingby Jessica Page Morrell

The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop by Stephen Koch

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway

On Writing by Stephen King

Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King

Roget’s International Unabridged Thesaurus (The old fashioned harder to use kind—nothing matches it.)

“The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him/her.” Rachel Carson

“To write simply is as difficult as to be good.”

Somerset Maugham

Micro-revision // First Steps

After the macro revision and after deconstructing your premise, themes, etc put your manuscript away. Let it cool down. As written so brilliantly by Kathy Crowley in Beyond The Margins, what happens in the drawer is a bit of magic. Refrigerate your book between each revision. Fresh eyes are a writer’s best, if most cynical, friend. When you are madly in love with your product is the time to resist. Resist sending it out to agents, resist giving it to everyone in your family (no matter how hard they beg) and resist reading and re-reading your over-loved words until you’ve memorized it.

You need to look at your book with eyes as critical as the ones judging how your ex’s have fared.

A Checklist for technical concerns:

Issues & Questions to ask yourself after every draft.

1) Showing or telling? How much narrative summary do you have? Does enough happen in scene? Is your prose as active as possible? Do you have he was angry or he shattered the window?

“Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” Mark Twain

2) Characterization? Avoid thumbnails sketches and let characters unfold before the reader. Don’t define everything the moment they come on stage, start with a bit of looks, and let character’s personality unfold before reader. Watch out for ‘looking in the mirror’ descriptions. Have your characters (more…)

Just when you think you’re done with revision, guess what? There’s room to do one more (or maybe two, or three.) The smartest thing my agent did for me recently (uh, except for selling my book) was suggesting that one more revision on my current work-in-progress would be beneficial. (Her words were a little more pointed, actually. But that’s why I love her.)

I don’t know about you, but I read books with an eye towards how well they were revised. Not just well written, but well revised, because it’s between the first flashes of imagination and the last comma switching that the magic occurs. Sometimes I think the formula is this:

More work for the writer=more pleasure for the reader.

It’s difficult  to see our own mistakes. I see this all the time when I’m writing posts. I’ll dash one off, think it’s just swell, publish it, and then cringe two weeks later when confronted with my clunky phrasing and grammatical errors.  Of course I can delete a post and pretend it never existed or I can revise it post-production and pretend it’s always been like that. With a book, once it’s on the reader’s shelves, that’s it.  Revise in haste, cringe in leisure.  (Who among us hasn’t opened our published book and wished we could change this word, that construction?)

“Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, and intensify scenes. To fall in love with a first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing.” Richard North Patterson

My first job in revision is:

Macro revision and deconstruction

“Try to find your deepest issue in every confusion and abide by that” D.H. Lawrence

In my first revision (of many, many, many) I ascertain the over-arching questions, which will frame my revision point of view:

A) Are you certain of the theme(s) of your book?

“Theme is not imposed on the story but evoked from within it—initially an intuitive, but finally an intellectual act on the part of the writer” John Gardner

What is your central idea, your connecting thread? (for example, in my book, The Murderer’s Daughters, interlocked themes I recognized after the writing was family loyalty and the limits of family loyalty.)

B) Are you certain of the premise(s) of your book?

“A premise is the truth the story proves, and helps reader extrapolate meaning from events.” Jessica Morell.

What beliefs does your story rest on? (For example, in my book, one premise was that family violence ripples through generations.)

C) Are you clear about the motivation(s) of character(s)

“Make the characters want something right way, even if it’s only a glass of water.” Kurt Vonnegut

Why do your characters do what they do? (One motivation I saw for my character Lulu was shame; for her sister Merry, fear was a stronger motivator.

D) Do you know your character’s crucible?

“Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character.” Anthony Robbins

Crucible:  1. vessel of a very refractory material (as porcelain) used for melting a substance that requires a high degree of heat 2: a severe test 3: a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development. (For example, in my book, when the daughters and nieces of my point of view characters are in danger, that becomes their crucible.

E) Is your dramatic question(s) answered?

“Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear fine line persists.” Eudora Welty

What is the over-riding question of your book, what is the gotta-know? (In my book, a dramatic question I recognized was whether or not the POV characters would be re-united with their father.)

F) Do you know your story?

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” William Wordsworth

What happens, that’s your story. How it happens, that’s your plot. Does your plot move the story along? Have you shown your character’s change? Are all conflicts and loose ends resolved? Does your plot structure reveal the story in as gripping a manner as possible?

G). Do you have Tension?

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” Isaac Asimov

How is your ‘gotta know?” Why would the reader turn the page or move past the first five pages? Do you have questions they want answered? Why will they care about this character(s)?

“It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.” Gustave Flaubert

Coming in Part 2: Checking your technique