Not-So-Minor-Changes, Part Three

(Part Three in a three-part series about how to edit when you run into a major problem. Check out Parts One and Two.)

Three: “There are long sections of my novel where it feels like nothing is happening. But those chapters still have important information in them, so I kind of have to keep them.”

This has happened to me a lot, since I don’t usually outline before I start writing. Pace is a big reason to rewrite sections. The plot has to keep moving.

Before you do anything else, identify your “lullaby” sections. This is what I call the boring parts, the chapters readers would be tempted to skip if they were in a hurry to get to the end. Then try one (or more) of these ideas:

Add conflict. It’s fine to have chapters where there aren’t any explosions, shouting matches, or cave-ins. But it’s not acceptable to have a chapter without conflict. Easiest way to have conflict? Work with the characters you have. If you haven’t noticed in your interactions with others, people are experts at creating conflict. They have different goals, have the same goal but different ways of getting there, hate something the other likes, want to avoid confrontation, love confrontation, say things they don’t mean, refuse to say things they should have said a long time ago, and generally are excellent at adding tension to a scene. Also, people and their interactions—positive or negative—are extremely interesting to us. We are drawn toward dialogue because of that. Try putting a little conflict in to liven up scenes where not much is going on.

Not-So-Minor-Changes, Part Two

(Part Two in a series of tips about how to make major changes to your novel while editing. You can read Part One here.)

Two: “My beginning/ending is a letdown, and I don’t know what’s wrong.”

For some reason, the first and last thing we write tends not to be our best work. (Maybe you’re one of those people who write brilliant opening lines and climaxes in the very first draft. Congratulations. Also, I hate you.)

Honestly, with this one, there’s only one solution: try things. Open with a flashback from the narrator’s childhood. Open right in the middle of a scene when the readers don’t know what’s going on. Open with dialogue between the two main characters. Open with the perspective of the murderer. Open with anything but an alarm clock going off or a dream sequence (both clichés that have to be done really well to be original).

You know what I love about this picture? The fact that "Keep Calm" posters have become just as cliche as the story device listed on this one.

Try an ending that explains what happens to every single character, as well as one that leaves several subplots dangling. Try an ending right after the climax, and one that rambles gently through a scene of reconciliation and repair afterward. Try letting the narrator address the reader directly, try a final exchange between the main character and someone important in his or her life, try a graveside goodbye, a letter, an introspective assessment of what happened, a bystander’s observation on the whole affair. Try anything and everything, and go with what you like best.

(Note: this is not the same thing as "go with what your friend likes best"or "go with what feels safest" or even "go with what's marketable." It is also, however, not the same as, "go with what you like best even if several editors said it didn't work for them.")

Most of all, try an ending with hope. That doesn’t mean your last few pages have to be happy. Actually, if you like, nearly everyone on your cast list can be dead, but the reader has to feel that they died with purpose, or that tomorrow will be better, or that we learned something very important about people and life and love. As Anne Lamott advised writers in Bird by Bird: “In general…there’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.”

Not-So-Minor-Changes, Part One

Many writers don't enjoy micro-editing: the teeny tiny little changes and grammar rules that they have to follow to make their fiction flawless. It can get a little tedious, and there are always going to be a few things that slip by. Beyond proofreading, I've also written a post about small changes to strengthen your story, little things to add or take away or watch out for.

Sometimes, though, the alternative is even more daunting. It's the scenario every writer is secretly afraid of: what if, reading over your manuscript, you find something that takes more than just a fine-tuning or an inserted sentence? What if it looks like you'll have to get rid of whole chapters, rework an entire sub-plot, or even *gasp* start over?

First, panic. Go ahead. It’s totally natural. The rest of this post will be here when you’re done having an emotional meltdown.

Basically, red ink is scary. Even if you're editing yourself.

 

Okay, if you’re back and ready for some advice, I have some for you. Basically, making major changes requires a balance between two opposite-yet-still-true-statements.

True Thing 1: you may not need to change everything. Sometimes, there are ways to solve even seemingly unsolvable problems with the plot or structure of a novel. Don’t assume you’ll have to scrap the entire thing.

True Thing 2: Sometimes you may have to change everything. Or, at least, it will feel this way. You might need to get rid of a cherished character, cut out a plot twist you found particularly clever, or say goodbye to a chapter that was crammed full of your most heart-wrenching dialogue.

Do it anyway. Your story will be better for it. (I feel a little bit like a camp counselor telling the little rookie that getting poison ivy, eating mystery meat, and sleeping in the rain “builds character.” But it’s still true, anyway.) When you get so attached to a line or chapter or event in your story that you can’t bear the thought of changing it, then you’ve stopped caring about the story you want your readers to hear. Basically, you get to choose: will I put in the effort to make this the best story possible, or will I cheat my readers by ignoring this change that needs to be made?

The Myth of "Good Enough"

I learned something while editing the other day: I don’t like fixing things when it’s hard.

Usually, editing is a lot of fun. I can worm my way around plot holes, tune up dialogue so it’s punchy and true to the characters, and tweak chapter beginnings and endings to get them where I want them.

This time, though, I’m deleting the middle eight chapters of my book and completely starting over on them. Suddenly, I’m not exactly looking forward to the amount of work that goes into this project.

I mean, come on. I have a full manuscript of the right word count. The characters are great, there are a lot of funny parts, and I like the beginning and ending. That should be enough, right?

But I can’t just leave it the way it is, as much as I’d like to, because I know two things: first, it’s not as good as it could be, and second, there is a way to fix it. It’s just that the fixing is going to take an awful lot of work.

And that’s how I realized that the old saying isn’t really true. Good isn’t always the enemy of best. Sometimes it’s the necessary precursor to best. And maybe terrible is the necessary precursor to good. It takes a lot of work to get from one stage to another, but that work is necessary for creating an end product that’s really excellent.

The problem comes when we get comfortable with good—with just “okay,” the generic, passable good of those little mass produced stickers we got in elementary school for copying out the right answers. When we think what we produce is good enough, we stop trying to improve it.

This is true in writing. And this is true (ouch) in character.

15 Ways to Make Your Story More Believable

Last week, I talked about how to write convincing fiction using Aristole’s Triangle of Rhetoric. This Wednesday, the focus is on one of his three emphases: logos, or why your story should be realistic.

Actually, the why is pretty simple: people don’t like fiction that’s not believable. The how is a little bit longer. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but here’s an editing checklist of tips for making sure your story doesn’t make readers think, “Wait, what? That doesn’t make sense.”

Characters and Dialogue

• Go through the story and read through all of one character’s dialogue. Is it consistent? Is it distinct from other characters?

• When you have a child character, ask a teacher or a parent who has a child that age read the dialogue and tell you if it sounds right.

• With a dramatic revelation or a death or a love scene, try reading the dialogue out loud and see if it sounds too cheesy or not.

• If you’re writing a character who speaks only broken English, make sure the vocabulary he knows and the grammar he uses are consistent. What I usually do is figure out what I could say after two semesters of Spanish, and what grammar mistakes I would make at that point. Sometimes I literally translate what the character says into Spanish, then back again.

• Ruthlessly eliminate any information-dumps: places where you used dialogue to tell the readers something they needed to know, but that the character probably wouldn’t say out loud.

•  Villains tend to be primary offenders for unrealistic dialogue. If you understand what motivates your villain and makes her personality unique, you won’t have to resort to cliché lines. (See also the evil overlord list. This is hilarious and contains all the cliches you could possibly use with your villain.) 

• One simple, yet overlooked question: would my character be smart enough to think of this? Make sure you know your character’s general intelligence level, how perceptive they are about social things, and how good their memory is. Then keep it consistent.

• Have someone involved in theater read over your story specifically for dialogue mistakes. They usually have a pretty good ear for how people talk.

22 Words On How to Write Compelling Nonfiction

Here they are:

In the first draft, focus on what you have to say.

When revising, focus on how you want the audience to react.

That’s it. Really. It’s especially true of opinions articles or blog posts, but also just your run-of-the-mill reflections on life designed to get people thinking.

If, by the final draft, your writing is all about you and the commentary or wisdom you want to share, it’s going to come off as arrogant, even if that wasn’t your intention at all. There’s really no way around this.

But, if you take the time to ask, “What would make people care about this topic?” or “If someone posted this on Facebook and asked for reactions, what would the comments underneath it say?” or “Is there any way to make this old topic new and interesting again?” it’s going to be much more interesting.

How To Edit Your Story: A Handy Checklist

Whether you’re writing an article, short story, or even a novel, editing is an important part of the writing process that most people ignore. And by “important,” I mean, “you must do this if you want a chance of getting published.”

“But wait,” you say, “I’m not an editor. I’ve never edited anything in my life.” Great! Neither had I before I started editing my own work. It takes a lot of work, sure, but it’s nothing too complicated. Here are some guidelines for how to self-edit your story.

1. Don’t. Seriously. This is the first step. Write everything first, then make changes later. There are some exceptions to this, of course, but in general, it’s better to have a finished product before you start editing. It will be terrible. That’s normal, even for really famous writers. But there will be a story to edit, which might not happen if you start editing four paragraphs in, decide you’re a terrible writer, and give up.
2. Wait a few days at the least, preferably a week or more. Clear your brain and get some distance from the story.
3. Read through the story once with the idea that you’re trying to remember what it’s about. Fix typos and grammar mistakes that you notice as you go, but don’t stop and look up random hyphen rules or whether or not to put spaces between ellipses. Try to get a sense for the general flow of the story.
4.  Give the story a second read-through, probably on a different day. Make comments with the Track Changes tool if you’re working in Word. (If you don’t know how it works, here’s a tutorial. It’s an amazing, wonderful thing sent directly from God to editors.) This is the time for comments like, “Need a better transition between these sections,” “This character’s dialect needs to be more consistent,” and “Plot flaw: I really don’t think this is realistic.”
5. As you have time, make those changes. Start with the easy things: the phrases that need to be reworded to sound less awkward, a character’s name that should be changed because it sounds too similar to another character, and so on.
6. Now it’s time to tackle the big things. Start a new document and copy your story into it. When you’re messing with major stuff, all kinds of things could explode, and you might wish you could take everything back. Good news—if you do it this way, you can. Now, feel free to be bold. Rearrange whole sections! Cut out your first page and write a new ending! Kill a character! Kill ALL of the characters! Okay, maybe not. But you get the idea. Never get so attached to your story that you can’t make major changes.
7. After you’ve figured out what large-scale changes you want to keep, read through the story again, because typos and other simple mistakes can creep in during re-writes. By now, you should be able to stop and look up those picky grammar and usage rules that you don’t have memorized. The Chicago Manuel of Style is a great place to start. Also, take a look at the most common problems editors have with manuscripts. Look for them. Fix them.
8. Stop. Again, I’m being totally serious. After you’ve put in a good effort on several editing passes, you’ve done a thorough self-edit. There will always be ways you can improve, but at a certain point, you need to pass the story on to someone else to get a different perspective on it, even if you don’t think it’s perfect yet. It won’t be. That’s kind of the point.

If you’re tired of your story by now, congratulations! You should be. Most writers don’t spend nearly enough time editing, and if you do, your story will be far ahead of everyone else’s. It can be an exhausting process, but it’s worth it.

Editing and the Statue of Liberty

If you had asked me to write an inscription for the Statue of Liberty, my first instinct would have been something like: “Come to America, land of the free, home of the brave.”

Or, if I decided to spend more time on it, I would have written a nice bit about the U.S. being the land of opportunity, and how people coming here would have a chance at a better life. Focus on the positive, you know. On the future.

Not Emma Lazarus. She took the ordinary people coming through Ellis Island and transformed them into characters of an epic, not by making them seem great, but by welcoming them in their bedraggled and outcast state. Here is what she wrote:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

See that? See how it defies our expectations? The poem doesn’t make the lives of these people sound happy. It doesn’t make wild promises of fame and fortune in America. It doesn’t have to. It shows the state they were in before, and leaves the reader hoping things will get better for them, grateful that someone saw their inherent value and gave them a place to rest.

Compliments for (Almost) Any Manuscript

It’s the classic editor’s dilemma: how to give constructive criticism without shattering another writer’s hopes and dreams into small, dust-like shards. I know it all too well. Give me a manuscript to edit, and I’ll send it back with Track Changes red ink and hundreds of little Microsoft Word comments in the margins.

That’s right. Hundreds.

Most of the time, they’ll be as polite as a dignified British butler. Unless you’re my friend, in which case they’ll sound a lot like I talk. Which is not particularly dignified. To illustrate, I asked my roommate if I could include some of my favorite comments that I made on her fantasy-in-progress.

Highlighted: “The wall was a mere three feet high.”

My Comment: Why even make it that high? Explain. (To keep sheep in? To establish zoning for taxes? Because it looks nice on a postcard?)

Highlighted: “I stared at him.”

My Comment: Um, wasn’t she staring at him before? Only say this if she notices something about him that makes it significant. Like, “I stared at him. He was smiling like my imprisonment was a good thing” or “I stared at him. He started to do the chicken dance.”

Highlighted: “Nothing could make me feel worse at this point.”

My Comment: “Never say such things. It’s like, “How could this be any worse?” Then, CLANG! Anvil falls from the sky, crushing Wiley Coyote.”

Highlighted: “Death. Death. Death.”

My Comment: Catchy little slogan.

What's Your Punctuation Habit?

Okay, everyone, time to talk about excessive punctuation!!!!!!!! Yeah, I’m talking about you, Facebook status posters whose emoticons have the fluctuating emotional range of a jr. high drama queen. (I’m pretty sure some people have invented emoticons for things like “angst-ridden,” “perplexedly bemused,” or “slightly beaten down by the apparent meaninglessness of life.”) I’m talking to you, fiction writer whose narrator uses punctuation marks that really should only crop up in dialogue. And I’m talking to you, college student who thinks that a colon in the title of a paper will get an automatic A.

Usually there’s some traumatic event that subconsciously attaches writers to a particular mark, and then they use it. All the time. In almost every sentence. Until you never want to see it again.

Okay, that might be an exaggeration. For the most part, though, if you use a punctuation mark more than once a double-spaced page, it might be your punctuation habit. Try editing out some of those repeats, especially if someone else has mentioned that it’s distracting. It will be hard, I know. You have deep emotional connections to that mark. But just do it. It’ll make you stronger. I promise.

Editing Acronyms and Pet Peeves

Lest anyone think from reading Saturday’s post that I never suggest things that can be improved in other people’s manuscripts….

Here’s my editing motto: Be ruthless when editing yourself, and be compassionately ruthless when editing others.

Ask anyone who’s been brave enough to let me edit something for them: I am addicted to comments. When I’m done, it looks like an entire army of highlighters bled to death on the Microsoft Word document.

No one is ever obligated to take my suggestions. I often tell the writers to get second opinions. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have made a comment if, as a reader, I didn’t think there was a problem that needed to be fixed.

I admit that sometimes it’s hard for me to listen to advice from others, especially if it means major changes (mostly because I’m notoriously lazy). It’s easy for us to fall in love with our first drafts and not want to make changes to them.

Fun with Rejection Letters

I thought about titling this post “Win Freshly Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies” or anything that would attract people’s attention in a positive way. I decided against it, mainly because I didn’t want to get a lot of nasty letters saying, “Where’s my chocolate chip cookie?” “Why don’t I have a chocolate chip cookie?” and I wasn’t prepared to deal with that.

If you recognized this as an obscure VeggieTales reference, you win a gold star. If not, keep reading to figure out what this blog post is about once you get past the seemingly unrelated introduction.

The point is, the topic of rejection isn’t all that appealing. Who wants to read a whole blog post about being rejected, anyway?

You, that’s who. Because if you’re a writer, you’re going to be rejected. And because this isn’t your typical blog post about rejection. It is not….

• A list of authors whose famous works were turned down by multiple publishers. Look this up on Wikipedia if you want to make yourself feel better, but keep in mind that for every bestseller that was rejected, so was a poorly written manuscript. Rejection is no guarantee of greatness. Or, as Carl Sagan put it, “They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
• An instruction manual of different origami creations that can be made out of rejection letters. This could be a future blog post, though.
• A five-step plan for not caring about rejection. There is no such plan. There is, however, a one-step plan that will work every time: don’t care about the things you write. That way, it won’t affect you at all when your work is rejected. Getting published won’t matter one way or another.