REVISION: REAL WRITERS REVISE
By Peter Selgin
FIRST DRAFTS
Before we decided how to revise, it helps to have something to revise, namely a first draft. I've heard it said that a first draft should be written with the heart, whereas subsequent drafts must bring to bear that more critical organ, the brain.
It's okay if a first draft sucks; it should suck; it's supposed to suck. Be reckless, be shameless, be grossly irresponsible and self-indulgent, even, but get something down.
Remember: when writing first drafts you should not be editing. There is a woman who owns a collections of hats and wears one while writing her first draft, and another hat when revising.
However inspired, first drafts can always stand improvement. And while there may be nothing sentimental about revision, editing can be enjoyable. With experience the fiction writer learns not only how to find and solve technical problems but that solving such problems in a manuscript can be as creative as writing first drafts.
Be honest with yourself and you'll admit that for every sentence hurled down onto your page like a lightning bolt from Zeus, ten others must be dug up like root vegetables from the humble soil, from which they emerge covered with dirt and manure.
Some writers may feel that once their raw genius has been spilled onto the page it's up to someone else to clean it up; that's what editors are for. Those days, sadly, are gone. Today the typical editor is a harried creature with more urgent things to do than edit your novel or story.
PRELUDE TO REVISION
Before revision can begin, however, our words, need to have grown cold, sober, well rested. Hence do not reside in the throes of creative ecstasy, or when angry, upset, exhausted, depressed, or filled with self-doubt, dread, or loathing.
Let it sit. Do something else for a while--work on another project. Soak your weary soul in the sea, while letting your manuscript grow clammy-cold. Distance, we're told, makes the heart grow fonder. It also makes editing easier. A paradox: the less we recognize our own words, the better equipped we are to judge them. Just as distance makes the heart grow fonder, familiarity breeds contempt, or, worse, a false sense of inevitability, turning our sentences into ruts in an oft-traveled road.
Some writers write in the morning, and then, in the afternoon, or evening, revise what they've written. Others wait until the next day, when they can be sure they're no longer in love or hate with what they wrote the day before.
But what if, after a day or two, you still can't see clearly what you've written, or you don't have or want the luxury of more time? Or you're on a deadline, with an editor's hot breath wilting the short hairs behind your neck? How, then, to cool a manuscript quickly, and make your all-too-familiar words less familiar?
Try reading your words aloud to yourself, sharpened pencil in hand. Read loud and clear--hurling each word like a stone at an imaginary audience. Imagine that somewhere in that audience is your ideal reader. As you read, imagine her facial reactions, see her twitching, scowling, smiling, or wincing at certain words. Listen to yourself. Words sound different to our ears than to our eyes. You'll be surprised how much editing pencil gets on your pages this way.
Some people don't even like going to the movie alone, and may balk at reading alone to themselves, in which case they should find someone to read to. Not an editor, or even a fellow writer, just someone who likes to be read t. They needn't comment. In fact, better if they don't.
Or have someone read your words to you. Having your own words thrown back to you in another's voice can greatly enhance the revision process.
YOUR TURN:
Return to something you have written. Read it aloud. As you read, make notes on what you think can be improved. If you find yourself bored as you read, odds are the reader will be bored too. Ask yourself why the piece is less than thrilling. And any words or sentences that make you (or you imaginary reader) wince or cring should be treated as suspect. As a bonus round, revise the piece based on your notes.
Two other solutions remain. The first is so simple it's almost embarrassing, yet it works. Print out your entire chapter or story in an unusual, but legible, font. Your words will seem like strangers to you, and you can begin to edit them.
The ultimate solution is to get help, that is, if you're lucky enough to know a sympathetic reader who is also a skilled editor. That said, no editor's advice should be followed slavishly.
THE REVISION PROCESS
You are willing and ready to revise. What to revise, how to revise, how much to revise?
The purpose of multiple drafts is to discover what we're writing and then to refine it into its ultimate form. Initially, revision is often a matter of re envisioning.
Suggestion: having finished a first draft, start over again. Put in a fresh piece of paper or open a fresh document on your computer, and start typing, this time with a sure, or surer, sense of what it is that you're writing. Refer to your first draft, if and when it contains something worth referring to. Otherwise write from scratch. Old words can block fresh insights.
YOUR TURN:
Return to something you have written. Reenvision this piece. Read it through several times, asking yourself what is the most original or powerful about this piece. It may be a character, a theme, a stray idea, even a single line. Now be bold. Toss out everything but this one promising thing. Start over, writing the piece entirely from scratch.
But two drafts may be just the beginning. It's not unheard of for a writer to go through twenty drafts or more, on a single story.
The fact is, some stories are easier to write than others. But the hard ones are no less worth writing. Be prepared to see your work through many revisions.
THE BIG PICTURE
If a first draft is the place to write from the heart, free of worry, subsequent drafts are the place to worry about everything, and heed all the sage advice on craft doled out in this book. You may choose to spend whole drats focusing on a single craft element. Whatever your approach, before addressing little things--like whether to use a dash or parentheses--you want to make sure the Big Things are in order.
CHARACTER
When you get down to it, people are interested in people. Ask yourself: Do I have all the characters I need to tell my tale? If so, Can I afford to lose a few? When considering the number of characters with which to tell a story, as with so many things, less is more It's also less work.
Are any of my main characters too flat? Do they fulfill their roles too neatly, to glibly? When we assign characters narrow, predictable roles in our fiction, we are essentially condemning them to be archetypes, if not stereotypes.
Are my main characters sufficiently motivated? A character with no goals to struggle toward, who exists at the mercy of outside forces, we call a cipher. Unless you're writing a satirical fable or an existential novel, your characters should want things.
PLOT
A beginning, a muddle, and an end.
Beginnings are crucial. If the beginning of a story is weak chances are no one will ever get to the "muddle," let alone the end. The point is you don't have to be sensational to be amusing, entertaining, or interesting. What is the first interesting thing that happens in my story? Begin there.
Having finished your first draft, you can be fairly sure the muddle's there, right here it out to be, in the middle. As I've said, motivate characters sufficiently, and select a limited number of telling moments from their lives, and providing you've chosen and shaped each of those scenes to something near perfection, the middle more or less takes care of itself. Have I judiciously selected the necessary events with which to tell my story.
With endings, though we aim straight for a point on the horizon, it's better if we don't arrive there, exactly. Assuming all does not go as expected, the ending of a story should be unpredictable not only for the reader but for the writer. That said, an ending that's surprising but also unlikely, if not impossible, is by no means satisfying. The thing to aim for, in novels and stories, is the ending that's both surprising and inevitable. A good ending is also the direct result of everything that has come before.
POINT OF VIEW
Telling a story a certain way instinctively doesn't make it the right, let alone the only, or the ultimate way.
Have I chosen the best possible point of view? Should I stick to this one character's viewpoint or alternate between characters?
Each point of view option has its advantages and disadvantages.
Of course, whatever POV choice you make, keep it consistent.
DESCRIPTION
"Go in fear of abstractions," said the poet Ezra Pound.
When writing descriptions, you want your reader to hear, see, smell, taste, and feel what your characters hear, see, smell, taste, and feel; you want specific sensations that grip the senses, not the intellect.
With descriptions the particular always trumps the general, and concrete always trumps abstract.
Still, when choosing concrete details, it pays to be selective.
DIALOGUE
Concise: the fewer words to make a point, the better. Subtext: it's not what the characters say, but what they mean, that counts. Illogical: people are illogical, especially when they speak, especially when they argue. Adversarial: and they should argue.
Try not to force dialogue into your character's mouths. If you know your characters well, and have motivated them successfully, they should know what to say and when to say it.
Pay attention to the ration of scene to summary, of dialogue to description. A skilled author layers scene with summary, weaving and blending the two, aware that the best narratives are like roller-coaster rides, with slow climbs of exposition leading to swift falls of dramatic conflict.
SETTING
Context is everything, and our fates are determined as much by landscape as by geography. Our readers should be grounded in the time and place of our stories. Also look for ways to use setting metaphorically.
FLASHBACKS
Essentially, a flashback is a digression that works. Beginning authors often lose sight of their own scenes, letting them drift into flashbacks like Arctic explorers into snowstorms, never to be seen or heard from again. Thus a general (and, to be sure, breakable) rule for flashbacks: keep them very brief. If a flashback insists on turning into a full-blown scene, consider putting it elsewhere, or giving it its own section or chapter.
VOICE
With the first few paragraphs of a story or novel, you make a contract with your reader. You agree to tell a particular kind of story in a particular voice. Whatever you contract to do, as with POV, you contract to do it consistently.
It can even be argued that what we call style is little more than a writer's tics and mannerisms rendered consistent through editing to produce a narrator's voice. Do something weird once in a while and it's a mistake; do it consistently, and it's a style. A stylist, then, is a writer who pays particular attention to what I'll call the details: to language, punctuation, the use of figurative devices, sentence rhythms, and the overall music of words.
THEME
As I've said, we read fiction to learn about people. And though we may start with some notion of a theme, we needn't know exactly what we're writing about until we've written it.
When themes emerge, as a writer we're responsible for recognizing and highlighting them.
Writers don't plant themes, they find and nurture them, make them resonate for the reader, dress them up and display them. And they do so with a subtlety bordering on the invisible if all goes well.
YOUR TURN:
Return to something you have written. Revise the piece, making some kind of major adjustment--changing the point of view, overhauling the dialogue, altering the scene...As you revise, force yourself to focus solely on this single craft element. If so desired, you may take another round of revision, focusing on another major craft element. With so many craft elements to juggle, often it's nice to focus on just one thing at a time.
SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF
Now with the Big Things in place, comes the time for micro revision. Now's the time to sweat it. But fear not: this part can be as much fun as that fevered first draft. This is where you get to sharpen your editing pencil and line edit yourself into the next best thing to a poet: a literary stylist.
Once again, this is a good time to read your stuff aloud.
GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION
Grammar is a convention, something that civilized people can agree upon, and, like all conventions, creative souls are free to depart from it, with good reason.
Grammar is one of the few things, maybe the only thing, that keeps writers civilized. Use it.
Indented paragraphs, punctuation marks: exclamation mark, dash, ellipse, semicolon, comma, period.
But before breaking conventions, know them, at least. Only once mastered can they be broken with flair. Otherwise, people may just think you're dumb.
THE LESS-THAN-PERFECT IMPERFECT TENSE
When it comes to good prose, the imperfect tense could not be more aptly names. The words is, was, and where are all variants of the verb to be, which, among dead verbs, wears the heavyweight crown. To be paints no picture in the mind, conveys no action, makes not the slightest dent in the reader's psyche.
True, in conversation people tend to use the imperfect tense. It sounds friendlier, softer. For sure, the past imperfect has its place, and not just in corny old songs. But used to frequently, out of sheer lazy habit, like a carnivorous wasp it sucks the meat out of otherwise healthy writing.
MIND YOUR METAPHORS
A metaphor is a poetic device whereby one thing is described in terms of another. My rule, if there is one, being this: if you can change a simile into a metaphor without confusing people, do so. Your reader isn't stupid. The reader knows you're being figurative; to be told so is an insult Any you must never insult, or underestimate, your reader.
About mixing metaphors: don't. If the art deco hotel in your novel starts off looking like an ocean liner, don't turn it into a cake. If a metaphor starts out watery, keep it water. Metaphors are onions, be careful, or they'll stink up everything in the icebox.
MIND YOUR MODIFIERS
A modifier is a word--adjective or adverb--that modifies another word. One hopes that in modifying, the modifier adds meaning that isn't already there. Choose the right nouns and verbs, and you won't need adverbs and adjectives. Go through and strike out any adjective and adverb that is either not doing much work or can be replaced by a noun or verb that will work much harder.
Of course, adjectives and adverbs needn't be shunned entirely. "Go in fear of modifiers" does not mean don't use them; that's the coward's way out. It means use the boldly, bravely, but sparingly, as a chef uses spices.
KILL THOSE CLICHÉS
A cliché is a figure of speech that once had its moment in the sun. Were you the first to coin that expression, you'd be rightly proud. But you're not, and neither am I, and should either of us commit that particular string of words to paper, except as dialogue in the mouth of a bland character, we should be ashamed. We're supposed to be writers; we're supposed to come up with our own string of words to describe things.
When, reading over your draft, your eyes come upon a familiar grouping of words, odds are you've authored a cliché. A heart of stone, baby-blue eyes, on a silver platter, desperately lonely, wreaked havoc, abject poverty, sweating profusely, every name in the book, etc are all clichés.
WATCH YOUR ATTRIBUTIONS
Said--that most watery of words--is the perfect host to dialogue: smooth, discreet, all but invisible, like the butler. Therefore stop killing yourself to come up with new, improved ways of saying said.
I don't mean to imply that said is the only allowable attribution. Algren is a master at avoiding said. On the other hand, Robert Stone, no less an author, never uses any other attribution. Both are brave, honorable men.
EXCOMMUNICATE THOSE LATINISMS
By any definition, a Latinism is an unnecessarily bulky word, typically derived from the Latin, when a plain, simple one would do. Buy vs Purchase.
Why is so much academic writing bad? Because it is pretentious; because it imitates clear, concise writing while being neither clear nor concise. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all bad writing is bad in pretty much the same handful of ways, pretentiousness being the worst.
Avoid pretentious words like ascertain, perpetrate, at this time, the fact that, the question whether, etc. Be on the lookout for words ending in tion. Ditto ism, acy, ance, ness, and ment. Such words are for politicians, not poets and maybe for a few pretentious narrators who'd be lost without their lexicons.
When in doubt, cross out or replace overripe words. Simplify. Your readers will extend gratitude to thank you.
YOUR TURN:
Return to a piece from the previous exercise, upon which you tampered with something major. Even if you're sick of it by now, stick with it. Revise the piece by doing the following: 1)check the grammar; 2) weed out the be verbs, modifiers, clichés, and pretentious words, reserving the right to keep any of them if you find absolutely necessary; 3) unmix any mixed metaphors; 4) adjust any attributions that call attention to themselves. You may look for all of these things at once or do them one at a time. When done, congratulate yourself for graduating to the role of an editor.
CUTTING AND TWEAKING
Readers are rude. They'll put your story or novel down in the middle of that sublime passage you spent ten hours on and never pick it up again, without apology. The reader holds all the cards; he has no obligations to the writer, while the writer has every obligation to him. That's why writers cut and tweak, mercilessly, throughout the revision process, down to its final stages.
There comes a time when you must cast a stern, judgmental eye on each and every one of your sentences, like a hanging judge whose noose is a sharpened pencil. No mercy here.
So much cutting may seem masochistic, but the fact is a piece of writing that can work well in five thousand words shouldn't run to ten thousand. And you'll be surprised what you can cut. So much of what we state is implied; so much that we've spelled out can be deduced or imagined. Remember, the reader wants to participate in the story. Do all their imagining for them, and they feel left out. Furthermore, the reader's imagination is a better writer than you or I will ever be, so why not let it do some of the work? Unlike oil paints, words cost nothing; use as many as you like, scrape them all away, use some more--no charge.
By tweaking I man crafting sentences and paragraphs, orchestrating them, shifting and changing the words around until they're as clear and pungent and crisp as possible.
Tweaking may be less painful than cutting, but it's trickier. It calls for experience.
How do we know when we are done? How do we know when our fiction has been improved to the point where it can be improved no more? Some writers claim they never really finish their stories or books; they abandon them.
And then there are those who say they simply know when the work is done; when all the planets seem to have aligned themselves, when form and meaning are so of a piece they seem indistinguishable, and every word feels inevitable, if not carved in stone. For me, it's like raising children; at a certain age, ready or not, they go out. Perhaps some stories will never please certain people; perhaps they will never be universally loved and admired. But like their author they will have done their best.
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