Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for the ‘Revision’ Category

I Don’t Know Nuthin’ ‘Bout No Writin’

My alias, “Craig” just received lessons number #3 and #4 of Rachel Plummer’s 3-day mini-course. Despite “Craig’s” objections, I’m going to share these with you (why should I have all the fun):

Hi Craig,

Two days ago you requested

“Fail-proof Tips for Your Writing and
Publishing Success!”

I do hope you got around to reading

Secret #1: Turning Ideas into Novels and Secret #2: Writing Books Publishers Can’t
Put Down

More important, I hope you’ve been considering how to use the secrets you were
presented in the first installment

Now it’s time to take a look at secrets 3 and 4.

Notice how she reminds “Craig” about the email from day 1. This accomplishes three things:

1. It tells “Craig” that she’s really serious about turning him into a writer.
2. It reminds him, just in case he didn’t read lessons #1 and #2, that he should read it.
3. And it challenges “Craig’s” seriousness. In doing so, it reinforces in the newbie’s mind that he will fail in his quest if he doesn’t stick with her advice.

Secret #3: Writing a Credible Novel

Writing a credible novel means that your readers
believe what’s happening in the book. Whether
it’s a mystery or fantasy, the worlds you create
in your book need to be believable within the
context of your story.

That means that you must build believable
characters whose motivation is believable for
that character.

In other words, if Joan decides to play amateur
sleuth to discover what happened to a neighbor
who disappeared, and Joan is putting herself
in a lot of danger to do that, you have to
give Joan believable motivation.

Get into Joan’s skin. Why is it so important
for Joan to find out what happened to her
neighbor? Is it something that happened in
her past? Is it something the neighbor did for
her that she’s trying to repay?

(note: Perhaps Joan is just a big ole nibshit — in which case motivation is far less important to the story or to the reader than Joan’s personality)

Character motivation is the key to creating
believable novels, no matter what genre you
work in.

Keep this in mind when developing your characters
and plots, and it’ll go a long way in helping
you write novels that sell.

*******************************************

Secret #4: Let Your Book “Breathe” to Maximize
Its Impact

Writing a novel is a long-term committment.
Even if you finish the first draft in 30 days,
you’re going to have to spend time polishing
that draft. The second and third drafts, or
even fifth and sixth, are where the novel
really comes together.

The problem is, after spending so much time
with your work, it can be really difficult to
read your novel objectively. You’re too close
to the characters and plot to pick up mistakes
in pacing or know when something isn’t clear.

The best thing you can do is have someone
else look at your book at this point. But
please note, by “someone” I don’t mean
your husband or wife or next door neighbor–
unless they happen to be professional writers
or editors.

Family and friends don’t really know what to
look for in a novel. They’re usually very
impressed that you’ve written a book at all,
and can’t judge it the way an editor or publisher
will. You need someone who knows about
writing and the writing business to tell
you what’s right and wrong with your book. I’ve
been doing this for fifteen years, ten as a
professional, and I still have several writer
friends read my work before I’ll even consider
sending it out.

After the first draft, your book isn’t really
ready for a complete edit. You need a general
critique of the work to make sure you’re on the
right track and, if your not, to guide you back
on it.

(note: here it comes . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . .)

I offer just such a critique FREE with my
e-book course “5 Little Words That Guarantee Your
Publishing Success” found at <--snip-->

(Ah-ah! See there. On her mini-site for her course, she’s offering to give a “comprehensive” critique, not a “general” critique. There is a difference — a huge difference in scope but, more importantly, a huge difference in the fee a pro freelance editor would charge for this service. So her free “bonus” is nothing of the sort.)

This is really quite an astounding bonus considering the
low price of the course and what you generally
pay for a multi-page critique of your work.

(Note how she again referrences the full critique thereby, twisting the different levels of critique together as if they were interchangeable.)

If you haven’t decided on a professional critique
yet, the next best way to “see” your work more
clearly is to let it rest for a month or two. This
means you should put the manuscript away in a
desk drawer or file cabinet, and don’t look at
it at all for at least a month (longer if you feel
you’re still too close to it).

You’ll be amazed at how many mistakes and
problems you run across this way.

Before you send your book out to publishers
and agents, you want to give it the best
chance you can. The writing business is
very competitive. If a publisher or agent
sees problems with your book the first
time around, they won’t ask to see it–or
anything else your write–again.

It’s well worth the time and extra effort
to make sure you get it right. And just remember,
Craig, I’m here to help if you need me :-)!

Okay, so lesson #3 is that fiction needs to have believable characters? Really? I never would have guessed.

Of course, lesson #4 takes the prize. Letting the novel “breathe”? Okay, that might be the case for some writers, but not universally true for all writers. Some writers can and do revise as they go and are quite successful this way. Others start revising their work the moment they finish a draft. Others do let their draft sit in a drawer for weeks, months, or sometimes even years before they finish it. And yes, some do seek the help of a freelance editor — but, hopefully, an editor with noted ability and a solid track-record in that field and a reputation for honesty. I strongly suspect this “tip” is more about the dumbshits who sign-up for the full course and keeping them on the string so she doesn’t have to honor her “money-back” guarantee.

Anyhow, I can’t convince “Craig” that this is just a lot of bullshit to get him to pay the big bucks for the full-course con job, so I guess we’ll have to take a look at lessons #5 and #6, which drops on Tuesday or thereabouts.

So, until next round . . .

The Devil is in the Details II: an afterthought about research and list-making

In regards to that neo-noir novella I mentioned the other day — here’s why is always important to do you homework and why list-making can sometimes help:

The other day I was going over the first chapter and realized I made a big mistakes. See, the opening of the story is set in Laughlin, NV. The protagonist works in one those Laughlin hotels and casinos as a dealer. The hook is that the guy runs afoul of his shady boss and has to skip town. The problem is that the “hotel” in the story is really a just a whorehouse with onsite gambling. The problem? I must’ve been so worked up over the idea when writing about the place that I forgot an important detail: Laughlin is in Clark County. So now I’ve got to make a choice — move the whorehouse to another location or turn the brothel into a regular hotel/casino and leave it in Laughlin.

And that’s why it’s important to do your homework. And if I’d made a list of items that would remind me to do my homework — say a list of Nevada tourist sites or a list of brothels, I wouldn’t have to do so much rewriting and would have save myself more time in the long run.

I’m Gonna Quit You Baby and Mosey on Down the Highway, Get Some Distance Between Me and You

Emotional distance.

It’s one of those made-up phrases given to us by clinical psychologists:

Tommy has been emotionally distant since his father’s suicide.

Dr. Nelson found it difficult to distance himself emotionally from his patients.

In creative writing, we usually speak of emotional distance as being a personal detachment between the writer and what has been written — a process of letting go. This process of letting go happens (or, in the case studies I’ll get to shortly, sometimes fails to happen) at several junctures during the writing process.

Writing can, at times, be an emotionally draining experience for the writer depending on how much effort that writer puts into it. One’s personal attachments both to the material and to one’s own personal reality can be as much a hindrance as an asset during the creative process. For my purposes, I’m going to illustrate three different types of stumbling blocks toward establishing emotional distance in one’s writing: Attachment to personal reality, attachment to fictional reality, and attachment to one’s own ego.

Attachment to personal reality

As writers we often use our own lives and our own surroundings as source material. This becomes a problem when a writer’s desire to exorcize some personal demon takes precedence over any other consideration. Let’s take my friend . . . well, let’s call her, “Cassandra”. Cassandra is a fine writer, don’t get me wrong. However, last year Cassie got her heart broken by this asshole. Getting over him was made harder by the fact that he was someone she had to see everyday. Naturally, she wrote about it. In the beginning, though, her fictionalized accounts were told solely from the perspective of her broken heart. Mostly, her stories were revenge fantasies. Stories in which her fictional counterpart either got back at her ex for hurting her or got him to come back to her. Not many editors would have seen the flaws in her stories because she often writes stories about jilted lovers and not all editors would’ve been privy to her personal circumstances or had the opportunity to read all of these stories and see how they evolved over many months. And they did finally evolve. Once she mended her broken heart and found much needed emotional distance, she gained a new perspective. Instead of using fictional reality to work-out a problem in her personal reality, she was finally using her personal reality to create a fully realized fictional reality.

Attachment to fictional reality

This is an impediment to a writer’s ability to achieve emotional distance. In some cases, the writer suffers from some psychological or developmental disorder that affects their writing and the way they talk about their writing. Let’s take my friend . . . ah, let’s call her Bertha. Bertha has Asperger’s Syndrome. Now Bertha has been writing a story for what seems like an Ice Age. The story is about a cursed man-demon with a goofy name I can’t pronounce. Beyond that, I have no clue what the story is about really — although, Bertha talks about this character constantly. She speaks about him as if he was a real person. She speaks about him as if he was her lover. She can’t seem to finish the story either. She keeps getting caught-up in the minutia of her characters — so much so that a coherent, well-developed story never emerges. What she has instead is an overlong, over complicated, overwrought character sketch. Whenever she speaks to me about this story, I think, My God! She’s sinking in quicksand; somebody throw her a rope!

Attachment to Ego

This is by far the most common type of impediment. It comes in two flavors and usually happens after the completion of the first draft. The first type is due to a lack of confidence in one’s own writing ability. This writer is so certain that their writing sucks that they can’t detach themselves from their fear of failure and humiliation so their writing is never revised and submitted for publication. It usually ends-up in a drawer somewhere with the writer telling people how they’d “like to be a writer someday.”

The second type is the opposite: this writer has too much confidence in themselves — so much so that they refuse to listen to any constructive criticism that might help them improve their writing. They are completely lacking in emotional objectivity about themselves or their writing.

For the first type, I refer you to my friend … how about we call her, “Maggie” (and, yes, I do realize I have a lot of female friends, so shut up). Now, Maggie writes quite a bit. She’s very young and attends a community college. I feel very paternal towards her and, believe it or not, have tried to encourage her development because I think she has some potential. But, for all the writing she does, she rarely finishes her stories or tries to publish her work. She’s just too self-conscious. Not that she can’t handle criticism — it’s more that she’s a little too eager to accept the slightest criticism at face value without any mechanism to filter that criticism and judge the fairness of it.

For our second type, I offer you, “Juliet.” Juliet is a young woman about the same age as Maggie. She also attends college. Juliet was a sickly child and because of this, her parents and everyone else doted on her and indulged her every whim. When she showed an interest in writing at an early age, her parents and English teachers encouraged her to the point where they convinced her that she was the next Joyce Carol Oates or Sylvia Plath or whoever. Juliet, for the record, does have a magnificently large vocabulary and is mature for her age. But, many of us who’ve read her work — at least those of us who don’t have a vested interest in inflating her ego, find her writing to be incredibly dull, unimaginative and unengaging. However, anyone who dares offer any serious criticism of her work receives a long-winded rhetorical defense of her “technique.” She absolutely refuses to see her writing objectively and never revises anything.

Hopefully, these examples fairly demonstrate how distancing yourself emotionally from your writing can help you along the path:

– that when using aspects of your own life as source material, it should be in service the fictional reality you are trying to create and not the other way around — in other words, leave the therapy sessions for your journal.

– that while it is important to have an emotional connection to your characters (after all, if you’re not attached to them, chances are your readers won’t feel attached to them either), it shouldn’t be your raison d’etre.

– Be fearless and confident enough to honor your commitment to the creative process, however . . .

– also be realistic about the limits of your talent and understand that even the best writing is flawed and is subject to improvement. Even Thomas Wolfe and Jack Kerouac had editors.

– Ego has no place in the creative process.

– be your first, most cold-blooded critic. if you can impress that guy, you may be onto something.