Rewriting Is A Good Thing

No two writers are alike, and I dare say, no two writers work alike either. However, in contrast to what some writers say and what others do, rewriting is a good thing.

Of course the depth of writing will vary, but pre-planners will benefit from rewriting and plan-as-you-go writers will benefit from rewriting.

Prolific author Dean Wesley Smith disagrees, and gave his rationale why the need to rewrite is a “myth.”

Among his reasons, he stated

Putting new and original words on a page is writing. Nothing more, and nothing less. Research is not writing. Rewriting is not writing. Talking to other writers is not writing (“Killing the Sacred Cow of Publishing: Rewriting”).

Strictly speaking, Mr. Smith is accurate, I suppose, but that’s why professionals refer to the writing process and not just writing. Any kind of writing is much more involved than what the finished product leads readers to believe. What someone can read and absorb in a matter of minutes, may have taken the writer hours to put together.

Why? Because details need to be checked, story structure needs to be hammered in place, characters need to be developed, voice needs to be created, dialogue needs to be constructed, and on and on.

According to Mr. Smith, thinking through these various aspects of fiction simply kills creativity. Rather, Mr. Smith’s own process works like this: first he lets the story pour out of him, then edits for punctuation and does a spell check, then gives the manuscript to a reader and does a touch-up draft based on what the reader has said. Next step, mail that sucker off to the agent or editor who’s waiting for it.

I suspect there are seasoned novelists who may have once upon a time, revised and revised and revised in order to produce a publish-worthy manuscript, but as time has worn on and their skill has improved, they may now need to do half as many revisions.

There’s no doubt that the more we write well, the more we write well. However, Mr. Smith has fallen into a trap:

And what you will discover is amazing is that the more you write, the better your skills become. With each story, each novel, you are telling better and better stories.

It’s called “practice” but again, no writer likes to think about that evil word.

Apparently Mr. Smith didn’t take lessons under the great college basketball coach John Wooden who famously said, it isn’t practice that makes perfect; it’s perfect practice that makes perfect.

In other words, if we keep making the same mistakes over and over, there is no progress toward perfect.

Ironically I didn’t believe in rewriting or revising when I was in school. I had wonderful English teachers who reminded us of the importance of reading our work and making necessary changes. But I didn’t see the point. After all, I’d written what I wanted to say or I wouldn’t have put it down! Why go back over it and rethink the whole thing if I knew I’d said it well the first time?

Such hubris.

When I finally got a couple teachers who required us to rewrite after our papers were graded, I got the picture. I had many more things wrong than I’d imagined, some that I could have corrected myself if I’d only taken the time to think a little more.

Mr. Smith’s idea is that the critical evaluation of our creative work “ruins” it.

The critical side of the brain is full of all the crap you learned in high school, everything your college teachers said, what your workshop said, and the myths you have bought into like a fish biting on a yummy worm. Your critical voice is also full of the fear that comes out in “I can’t show this to friends.” Or, “What would my mother think?” That is all critical side thinking that makes you take a great story and dumb it down.

I have two observations about this thinking. First, Mr. Smith started his article just as I did mine—by saying no two writers are alike. If that point is true, then how can he make this sweeping statement about writers and what’s in the critical side of our brains?

I have no doubt that had Mr. Smith revised this article, he would have seen the inconsistency himself.

My second observation is this: Mr. Smith uses input from a reader and then does his third draft, which seems to me a way of saying he’s fine with someone else’s critical side of the brain—just not his own.

Mr. Smith makes one final argument against rewriting—creativity is always ahead of our knowledge of technique. I think that well might be true for some people. But all the more reason to study our craft and catch our technical knowledge up with our creativity.

On the other hand, some of us imagine our story (creativity) but express it in rather pedestrian ways until we get to the revision stage. I’ve heard this termed “prettying up the story,” a thoroughly creative part of the critical process.

I do think some writers fear revision. I know I used to. I didn’t want to go through the whole, entire manuscript again once I’d finished. So much work. Could I do it?

That’s a little like saying, I washed the dishes yesterday; do I really need to wash them again today? If we want them to be clean, yes. If we want our stories to be as good as they can be, then yes, rewriting is part of reaching that goal.

I think there are two extremes when it comes to rewriting. One is to do too little. Especially with the ease of self-publishing, it’s possible to slam out a story, then put it into the digital world for anyone and everyone to read. Except, the anyone’s read the sample chapter, and they’re not buying.

Isn’t it possible that a couple rewrites could have made the story better so that readers would want to keep reading instead of clicking over to another book?

The second extreme is the never-ending rewrite. Some writers are unwilling to let their story go. Rather than move on to a new premise, they continually and obsessively tweak the one story they’ve been working on for years.

I had such a writer in one of my critique groups. No matter how many of us urged her to walk away from that story and work on the new project, at every turn she was going back over that first story she loved so much.

Another writer I know wrote something like 190,000 words and still wasn’t finished and couldn’t let anyone read her work. She continued to tweak and add and add and tweak. At some point we writers need to put our stories down and work on a new project. We can apply all the cool things we’ve been learning to this brand new story instead of trying to patch up the old.

The truth about fiction is that it’s never going to be perfect. Pretty much every writer can rewrite their story and find something to improve, no matter how experienced you are. Perhaps the only writers who think their story is perfect are beginners.

Of course beginners might benefit more than any other writers from a thorough rewriting process.

Advertisement

Heart Surgery

What mother wants to cut out the heart of her child? Even an arm or leg would be unthinkable, and a hand or foot, cruel. But what if surgery were the only way to save the child or to insure quality of life? In those circumstances, a mother might allow a qualified surgeon to operate. But would she be willing to dive in and do the deed herself?

Of course not, we think. She’s not trained.

How many of us writers, who surreptitiously consider our stories our babies, fail to apply the same reasoning to our manuscripts? We may allow cosmetic surgery, but serious amputation or transplantation? Not for MY baby! And not if it means learning how to cut deeply or (worse, in some people’s minds) turning it over to a professional who will do so.

Perhaps I’m the only writer who has had such thoughts, but I’m guessing I’m not.

Here’s the thing we need to consider: if we continue to receive rejection notices from agents, if we are selling only a modicum of books, if our editor has passed on our next novel, or we’re not winning awards for our fiction, perhaps we need to intervene on behalf of our darlings with some manuscript-saving methods, also known as revisions—ones we make or ones we hire an editor to make.

The following bit of advice is for those interested in diving in to learn how to make revisions themselves. As a reminder, I’m not talking about cosmetic changes—fewer speaker tags or eliminating as many adverbs as possible. I’m not even talking about a sentence construction make-over or fixing our comma errors. What we writers need to be willing to do is heart surgery.

The heart of any story, in my view, is the character. Consequently, when we sit down to do serious story revisions, the first thing we should look at is our characters–all of them, but especially our protagonist.

What specifically do we need to be willing to change when it comes to our characters? I believe there are three vital areas upon which the health of a story depends: the character’s (1) desires and goals, (2) motivation, and (3) uniquenesses.

• Characters need to have desires and goals which fuel their actions.

Too many stories have characters that simply react to the events taking place. At best readers are left hoping the protagonist survives.

Stronger stories that involve readers emotionally, allow them to cheer the protagonist on to victory or worry over them as they careen toward defeat. In other words, the protagonist has a desire and sets out to bring it to fruition; he has a goal that he believes will satisfy his need and sets out to accomplish it. Readers can hope he succeeds or agonize that he has taken a wrong path; they can be shocked by a betrayal that thwarts his plan, or dismayed at a new obstacle that makes it outmoded.

In short, the question writers need to ask first when they are ready to revise their story is this: do my characters want something? Do they have desires and goals?

• Characters also need to be properly motivated.

Aspirations and needs—what the character consciously or unconsciously wants—serve as the backbone for motivation. But each action he takes must have a reason. In real life we may act on the spur of the moment, without any apparent logical connection to what went before, but in fiction such actions come across as author manipulation. Rather, characters need to act because of. They need to act because of their goals, because of the obstacle, because of what they heard, because of their past.

The question writers ready to tackle revision need to ask, then, is why is my character doing what she is doing?

• Finally, characters need to be unique.

Editors are looking for the fresh and original, but that does not have to mean the strange or bizarre. Rather, freshness entails three things—a unique voice, a distinct outlook, behavior that is beyond generic.

A character’s voice is composed of her vocabulary, sentence structure, topics of conversation, and tone. Is she sarcastic, humorous, serious, matter of fact, down to earth, or pretentious? In addition, her voice should be different from her friend, her sister, her love interest, and from her boss. She also should rise above stereotypes. She can’t sound like all the other Southerners in the 1950s or like the typical school teacher. She can’t be just another female cop. Something needs to set her apart.

In the same way, a character’s outlook on life, or worldview, needs to be distinct. Certainly people share commonalities, but a character that is “run of the mill” doesn’t give a reader reason to care about this particular story. What about the character’s way of looking at life makes her special or out of the ordinary?

Perhaps she is a romantic—not something that sets her apart. What might distinguish her from other romantics? Has she decided not to marry? Why? Perhaps she must care for an aging parent or she is the sole support of her little sister. Perhaps she has a child from an illicit relationship. None of these circumstances sets the character apart in a unique way from stories that have gone on before. What if, instead, she thinks that no man can live up to her ideals and decides to remain single rather than become disillusioned. Now she is a romantic who takes on a different shape from the average romantic.

Thirdly, if a character is to be thoroughly unique, he needs to have behavior that is particular to him. Everyone’s heart races at times, and everyone walks or turns or looks. What action can a character take that is out of the norm, that other people are less inclined to do? These are the actions that make a character seem like one of a kind, a real person, a distinct individual. Perhaps she constantly forgets to take off her sunglasses until she’s in the pool. Maybe he turns off the car radio and asks people not to talk when he’s driving.

The final question, then, which writers need to ask as they are about to revise their finished rough draft is have I made my characters unique?

By asking these three key questions, a writer can diagnose the problem areas in her manuscript that may need surgery. No number of story make-overs will cure a character who is terminally lacking a desire or goal, who isn’t properly motivated, or who isn’t unique. Only the hard work of revision can do that, and doing surgery on her characters should be an author’s first revision concern.

This article is a re-post of the  original which published as a guest spot at author Marian Merritt’s site.

Revisions Make All The Difference

From time to time a novelist needs to change something in a story. Perhaps a minor character is flat or comes across as a stereotype and needs to be fleshed out with his own personality or backstory. Perhaps a scene needs to be added to do the work that a piece of telling narrative had done. What writers should remember is this: these changes make a difference, not just to that one scene or character, but to the entire novel.

I’ll speak from personal experience to illustrate this point. In one of my earliest drafts of my journey-quest fantasy, I realized that all my characters were single. It’s not a realistic scenario, and it’s a problem I’ve noticed in a number of TV programs. Hence, I decided to give a couple of my characters spouses. In one instance the man’s wife even joined the team on the quest.

Immediately everything about that character changed. He had a new motivation–not just his own well-being but that of his wife. He had a new relationship to cultivate, not just the one he’d established with the protagonist. He had new behavior patterns, new interests, and . . . more people in his backstory. There were his in-laws, of course, but what about children? Yes, I decided, it would be natural for he and his wife, given their ages and how long they’d been married, to have children. But what became of them? Suddenly I had a new plot point to go along with this revision.

And speaking of plot points, I recently made a change in my manuscript that added a point of view and several chapters. This addition seemed like the best way to get rid of a chunk of narrative summary that wasn’t working. Except, when I fleshed out the events and created a scene, I expanded the point of view character as well. The scene required it.

It also required that I kill one of the minor characters in those chapters, someone the point of view character had been close to.

Could I simply insert those chapters into my manuscript and leave my point of view character unchanged the rest of the way? Not if the story is to seem realistic. When someone we know well dies, we grieve, and the grief often lingers and surprises us when we least expect it. My character, therefore, can not soldier on as if nothing significant happened in those add-on chapters. She needs to respond differently to certain lines of dialogue. She needs to have changes in her motivation and behavior and countenance.

One revision leads to many more. Or it should. If we are simply giving a character a wife without changing him in any other way, our revision isn’t real. It’s simply window dressing. We can’t give a character a new motivation without it playing out throughout the rest of the novel in her actions and speech.

We can’t promote a character to a higher rank without it affecting how he talks to those who are now his subordinates. We can’t give a character a rebel father without it influencing his politics, his choices. We can’t make a character power hungry without having him struggle to control his desire, or succumb to it.

In short, one change needs to start a cascade of change if revision is to work.

Revision Is Your Friend

I’ve heard some writers say they hate revision almost as much as they hate rejection. Sure, we think, who doesn’t hate extra work.

Excuse me. Extra?

Is icing on the cake extra? Is the glaze on the donut? The butter on the bread?

Finishing touches may feel like extras, but they are the difference between stories that are OK and ones that sing.

Note that revisions must come when the loaf is out of the oven, not while you’re still mixing the dough. The first draft, in all its glory, must sit with “The End” predominantly marked either virtually or actually on the last page.

The end, of course, means the end of that first stage–the getting-the-story-down stage. Now comes the part that many writers hesitate to take. Now it’s time to pretty up the story.

Let me pull up that icing on the cake analogy again. I worked for a time in a boarding school. The woman in charge of the kitchen and other domestic affairs made a big deal of each child’s birthday. One of her specialties was to create cakes that were masterpieces–artwork related to the interest of the particular child whose birthday we celebrated.

I remember watching her work from time to time. After the cakes came out of the oven, her creativity took over. She carved off pieces of cake here, shaped it there, frosted, strung lines of licorice, popped in M&Ms, and before long, or sometimes after long, arduous work, from sheet pans of ordinary yellow cake emerged trains or space ships or puppy dogs or … you name it. Her creations were masterful.

Extras? Not to the child at the center of the attention.

All that to say, revising a story takes it to the next level. Writers, therefore, would be wise to embrace the process, not shy from it.

But what exactly goes into the process? Are we looking for typos, spelling errors spellcheck didn’t catch, punctuation problems? Not at this stage. How about word choice or repetition or sentence structure? Not yet. Not that it’s wrong to fix those things as you find them, but the focus needs to be on big picture issues first.

This is the stage where you look at the foundation of your story and see if it has what it needs to stand on its own outside that cake pan.

Author Kristina McBride, writing a guest post on revision for Writer’s Digest said one of the key steps in the process is to question everything:

* Does the book start with an inciting incident that will force your MC [main character] to act, and challenge your MC to grow?
* Is there enough emotion, tension, suspense, etc.? Or too much?
* Is something too obvious? Does something come too easy because you need it to advance the plot?
* What can you do to make each scene stronger?
* How can you weed out your cliched sentences and/or ideas?
* Is there a motivation for each event? What about a purpose?
* Are you keeping your MC from attaining a goal? This is a must until the ending.
* Will your reader wonder about or hope for something pertaining to your MC as they progress through the story?

Well, yes, it will be work to ask all those questions about the entire story and go in and fix every single page where you find something lacking. Writing is, despite all the fun parts, still work.

For someone satisfied with plain, unadorned sheet cake, I suppose this revision business seems like fluff. But for those who want to give readers the full experience of laughing, crying, hoping, fearing right along with the protagonist, for those who want readers to become immersed in their storyworld and to walk in the shoes of the main character, then revision is really the best part of writing.

Make It Better Than Your Best

How many times have I finished a revision, settled back, and said, “There! That’s as good as I can make it.” But surprise, surprise, after a critique session with my writing group or a go over by one of my writing partners, suddenly I see new things that can make the story better.

The truth is, I think too many of us writers are too easily satisfied. We are content with our “first best.” In fact, our articles, stories, and novels will improve if we refuse to be satisfied with what we initially believe to be our best effort.

First we need to set our work aside so we can gain some distance and perspective. After two weeks, four, or even six, we aren’t as in love with that scene or character or line or word choice. We can see things a bit more realistically.

Too many contracted writers working on deadline don’t allow themselves this vital step. Too many pre-published writers don’t believe it’s necessary.

The first group must learn to plan for this needed distance. The actual manuscript deadline, the date the editor sets, should be six weeks ahead of the deadline a writer gives herself. That allows her to walk away from that particular project for a month, then come back to it with fresh eyes and work on changes for another two weeks. Of course times may vary, depending on each person, but there’s value in coming back to our work after time away.

The pre-published writer may actually need a self-imposed deadline or a particular goal just to finish the work, but sending it off to an agent the next day is not be the best approach. Perhaps time researching agents or learning about writing query letters, then hammering out a good one can be on the agenda. Maybe it’s time to pick a new concept or research a new location. What about developing a new character?

Then after weeks have gone by, it’s time. I tend to think if a writer without a contract can get used to working in this way, it will be easier to do so when operating on deadline.

But what is a writer looking for in this revision, now that he’s gained some distance and objectivity? I’d suggest two things that apply to both fiction and non-fiction: clarity and structure.

The first has to do with word by word clarity, but also clarity of thought. For the non-fiction writer, this means a basic logic and progression throughout. For the fiction writer, clarity means proper motivation of each character and each action, proper set up of each scene, a fully realized story world.

Structure for the non-fiction writer means overall structure with a proper introduction, key points, supporting detail, and a “bring it home” conclusion.

Fiction requires a character desire, inciting incident, conflict, rising action, climax, resolution. Along the way the character should experience development leading to a change, for the better or worse.

After the writer examines these big issues, it’s time to do another revision on the sentence level, fine tuning word choice and variety in structure.

Next is the paragraph level followed by the the section or scene level, then the chapter level. These need to be scrutinized for redundancy, consistency, and variety. All “dead weight” needs to be cut out. This may mean words, but it also might mean scenes or characters. If it isn’t contributing to the forward motion of the story or to the overall point of the article, then it needs to go.

Please note, these revisions should come after all the other edits and revisions the author makes on that earlier version of the manuscript — the one he read through and said, This is the best I can do.

Time and distance give us writers the ability to tackle our manuscripts with an unbiased eye. If we do the work, we’ll discover that revising will turn our best writing into something better.

Sweating Punctuation

Ironically, the writers that worry about punctuation are most often beginners. Why? My guess is, writing from our school days was all about punctuation and capitalization and grammar and spelling and complete sentences. In other words, mechanics seemed to be the Biggest Thing.

In fiction, however, mechanics finishes dead last to story, characters, setting, and theme. Consequently, while an author shouldn’t ignore mechanics, paying meticulous attention to the rules of the writing road is premature if someone hasn’t given him feedback about the major elements that make up a story.

Why would a writer sweat over whether or not to put a comma before the and in a compound sentence if there’s a fair chance he may need to rewrite the sentence as two simple sentences, or as a complex sentence? Or as a deleted sentence. 😉

First the narrative needs to get down on paper or into the computer. Then the story needs a thorough revision, followed by a good amount of writing revision in which you pretty up your prose.

Certainly fix the mechanical issues as you see them, but a real search for those problems should not come until you’re ready to send off the manuscript to an agent who has requested the complete. At that point, you want your work to shine, and the other elements will be in place so you can concentrate on those irritating incidentals.