Re-imagining Revision

Maybe you have hit a wall. "Revision" in your writing has turned into a series of minor word changes and sentence alterations. You don't feel as if you are really revising. You’re simply marking time, waiting for some new thought, some new way to express your ideas.  How to break out of this funk?

One my go-to solutions at this point is an old book. Revision by Kit Reed was published in 1991 but I still find it useful. It was written for the fiction writer. I'm usually stuck in a mess of non-fiction or creative non-fiction. Will any of Reed's techniques be able to help the non-fiction writer, you ask?  I do feel somewhat like a trespasser, a person visiting a church I don't attend. If I sit in a foreign pew and stare at someone else’s' altar, will God still hear me?  If I read a book about revising fiction, will it help me out of my non-fiction slump?  I can say that it does.

Kit Reed is ready for doubters like me: "Even attitudes need revision," she says almost immediately. (p. 4)   I have been clinging to the idea that I lack the ability to go any further with my stories. I read this sentence in Reed's book and sheepishly recognize that part of my so-called slump concerning this latest round of rewrites might be a result, not of ability, but the other "A" word: attitude.

Revision, Reed points out, ". . . closes the distance between you and your audience." (p.10)  So, revision is not about what the writer wants to say as much as what the writer wants the reader to know. Have I been going about this all wrong?  I was writing a series of chapters relating the historic development of forensic science. The first story tells of Paul Revere who identified the war-torn body of a friend from the false teeth Revere had made for him. As I was writing my Paul Revere story, members of my critique group kept saying: "We just want to know about the teeth."  I got so caught up in Paul Revere the silversmith, Paul Revere the father of eight children, Paul Revere the Revolutionary, that I included all of those things when I should have been focusing on Paul Revere the maker of false teeth. Kit Reed encourages the revising writer to stop thinking about the story at a certain point and focus on the receiver of the story.  My critique group was giving me the same advice.

Reed divides revision into two basic types: 1) draft writing, draft revision; and 2) block construction (or revising as you go). (pp. 29 - 32)   Draft revisers write the complete story before beginning revisions. They may make large organizational changes between one draft and the next.  Block constructionists work on one sentence until it is perfect then move to the next. They work on one paragraph until it is perfect and so on.

I am a draft writer. I need a beginning, middle, and end before I can make any changes. I admire people who can work from an outline or write the last chapter before they write the first, but I'm not one of those people. I start each story with a vague idea of what I hope to accomplish, who my characters are and, if I'm lucky, something of a plot.  Even a work of non-fiction needs this basic plan.

After several revisions, however, when the story seems "cooked,” Reed reminds us that there is still more to do:

“No matter which method we choose, sooner or later we come up against that moment when we have written "the end" and discover we still need to consider one more reading, for that third major kind of revision: revision to strengthen structure and story.

This relates to an important point. There are things you have to do even after you think you are finished." (p.38)

           

One of the great mysteries of my writing life is why, after I've spent so much time researching, reading, thinking, and preparing to write a story, I can't just skip all the junk and go immediately to a perfect piece.  Kit Reed tells me I'm not alone. As frustrating as it sometimes becomes, revision is part of the package. She suggests three ways to tell whether a piece is really done: 1) by reading the works of others and comparing what you've written. 2) by putting the work aside and giving yourself distance from it. 3) by allowing outside readers (critique groups, friends, even editors) to judge whether the piece continues to need work.

I have done all of these things with past work and the truth is, they are all helpful. Unfortunately, the answer I really wish for (Someday you'll get it down perfectly in one try!) doesn't exist.

Reed does provide me with an alternative: a series of step-by-step questions to ask myself as I rework my latest story. The author means her book to guide fiction writers. Will her suggestions help me over the wall I've hit with my non-fiction pieces?  

            Some do:

Am I saying what I mean?  Are my word choices working for or against me?  What about sentence variety?  Do I sound like me or the last writer I read? Is my opening interesting?  Does my story really begin here?  Have I added enough (or too much) detail?

I rethink the beginning to my piece on Zachary Taylor. I had started with the day he became ill. Does my story really start there?  My book is about forensic science. Why is Zachary Taylor even interesting to a forensic scientist?  This story must begin with his death and the reasons it was considered mysterious enough to warrant forensic research. I want to grab my audience, too. So I start on the day Taylor died:

"July 9, 1850. The news spread quickly: the President of the United States was dead. Many, many people were glad to hear it."

This opening feels better. I have set the time of the story, the character, and a statement that just might make my reader want to know more.

As I begin to write a piece on Jesse James, I keep Reed's question in mind: Am I saying what I mean?  I mean to tell a story about forensic science so how do I turn an outlaw's story into a story of science?  I must start this story not at Jesse's death, but at the point his death becomes a forensic mystery. I begin the story sixty-six years after Jesse's death, when an elderly man claims that he really is Jesse James. I feel as if I'm beginning to get to the "teeth" of all my stories.

There are many fine books on revision out there.  If you’re stuck on your writing, go to your local book store and look for one.  It may help you look at your work in a different way.

Revisiting Natalie Goldberg’s "Writing Down the Bones"

            It’s good for writers to go back to school every once in a while, even if that “school” is an old book on technique. Writing Down the Bones has been around for a long time and has attracted its core of disciples. Natalie Goldberg calls her series of exercises  ". . .the practice school of writing." (p.11) "This writing practice is also a warm up for anything else you might want to write. . .The trust you learn in your own voice can be directed then into a business letter, a novel, a Ph.D. dissertation, a play, a memoir." (p. 13) 

While this sounds fairly practical, there are "out there" aspects to Goldberg's book that I find harder to deal with. The author says things like ". . .writing does writing" and "You accept what is and put down its truth." (pp. 45 and 46)  For the down-to-earth person these kinds of statements might sound a little “woo woo.”

For someone who earns his/her living with the written word, doing "writing exercises" seems like a busman's holiday. Why just play with words when you spend your life working with words?  Why waste time writing things you will never use when you spend so much time re-writing things you will need?

            Rather than attempt to use Goldberg's advice as a series of separate exercises, I used some of her techniques while re-writing  a work-in-process. Goldberg tells us to give ourselves permission to write junk and, later says "Allow yourself to be awkward." (p. 36) 

I have never really suffered from writer's block, but I have suffered from writer's hesitation. I define this phrase as knowing what I want to say while mentally hemming & hawing my way until the right words appear. In the process of a rewrite I decided to allow myself to write anything, not worrying about whether I was making the writing better. I'd been plugging along, a page at a time and wanted to pick up some speed. I knew what the story was. I knew what I had to say and what kind of sensory details I needed to add, but the going was slow.         

            I attempted to let myself write without self-editing. This practice was difficult as I have for years written at a very deliberate pace, constantly adding, subtracting, re-organizing as I work along. I used Goldberg's technique for about three pages worth of text. And, when I reread it, I found Goldberg was right: it was junk. I didn't touch it, however, I let it be so I could continue getting to the end. I'd allow myself to re-write only when I got to the end of the story. Goldberg says we should let ourselves learn to trust our own voice. After this exercise, I thought my "voice" was pretty disorganized and rotten. Still, I've been around long enough to realize that sometimes you have to let first impressions go. More often than not, you can learn a thing or two. I was willing to give Natalie’s methods a few more tries.

            There is a lot of time spent in Writing Down the Bones, discussing Zen Buddhism, quoting this religious thinker or that, and how their method of thought applies to writing. I found this interesting, but not, at first, useful. I didn't want to think about spiritual beliefs, I wanted technique, a cookbook on writing, a set of directions. Natalie Goldberg doesn't look at her writing life in that way. So how, I wondered, could her methods help me sort out the mess I was trying to revise?

            "Writing is not psychology. We do not talk "about" feelings. Instead the writer feels and through her words awakens those feelings in the reader. (p. 68)

            "Several years ago I wrote down a story that someone had told me. My friends said it was boring. I couldn't understand their reaction; I loved the story. What I realize now I that I wrote "about" the story, secondhand. I didn’t enter it and make friends with it. I was outside it; therefore, I couldn't take anyone else into it. This does not mean you can't write about something you did not actually experience firsthand; only make sure that you breathe life into it. Otherwise it is two times removed and you are not present." (p. 69)

            Here was the reminder I needed when I revised my non-fiction. It isn't enough to simply re-tell or report a story. I must be sure to bring the audience with me so that the reader experiences the same feelings as the protagonist. In my case, I was writing about a sled dog team attempting to reach the summit of Mount Washington. One sentence could tell what happened. That wouldn't bring my reader into the story. I had to show the danger, the challenge, the adrenaline and, even, the foolishness of the stunt. The first way was just a sentence. The second could turn it into story.

            While doing this re-write, I was also researching a project on forensic anthropology. I found Goldberg's advice about making the story feel "first hand" had made me reading differently. I found new appreciation for the way in which some of the authors brought me into their world. In Witnesses From the Grave, Christopher Joyce and Eric Stover describe various cases forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow has examined. The authors did a wonderful job of bringing me into Snow's story. Here they describe a case in Brazil:

            "While his companions drowsed in the backseat [of the cab], Snow gazed out of the open window at the passing show. In the wide doorway of a shop, boys in sweat-stained T-shirts twisted hot glass for neon tubing into large letters. A few blocks farther on, two bare-chested boys played on a dirt lot by an old church, . . .sending tiny clouds of red dust into the air. . .On either side of the road, new skyscrapers loomed, while at their curbed feet, well-dressed business people and beggars shared the sidewalks." (Joyce, Stover, pp. 166-167)

            The authors added so much sensory detail, they practically gave me a seat in the back Clyde Snow's cab. As you work on your projects give readers a "seat in the cab" too. Golberg says "Writers write about things that other people don't pay much attention to." (p.99)  But it is these mundane details that give life to story. While we might not pay attention to the clutter surrounding us, the color of a wall, the background noise, we are still aware of all these things. The writer's job is to include the mundane enough to give the reader that same awareness.  

 One difficulty I have is "writing through the junk." Maybe this sort of thing happens to you, too. You have an idea for something. You know what it should be like in the end but it takes many, many tries before you get even close to the idea you had.  After so many years as a writer, why can't you go from idea to final copy in one try? Why doesn't your head do all the revisions?  Why do your hands have to be involved with the middle steps at all?  Goldberg offers advice:

            "Don't worry if you come back six months later and the piece you weren't sure of turns out to be terrible.  The good parts are already decomposing in your compost pile.  Something good will come out.  Have patience." (p. 158)

            It’s a challenge to bring your reader into the story.  It’s difficult to be patient with the process.

Mentor Monday: Revising, Part 2

For this exercise in editing I’d like to suggest that you pull one of those old manuscripts we all have stashed around the house to use for practice. You can work on whatever your most recent WIP is, of course, but chances are you’ll be more aware, and more willing to be ruthless, with a piece you’re more removed from.

There are, essentially, two kinds of editing to consider. Both are important, and to some degree you will probably do them simultaneously, but it is worth noting the differences between the two.

First is the editing we do to clean up the manuscript. This includes searching for and correcting actual errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation, as well as editing to improve the style and flow of the work. We want the manuscripts we submit to be the very best representation of our work possible. We don’t want any distracting conflicts or awkwardness to draw the reader’s attention to the words instead of the content. This is the kind of editing that these exercises will focus on. 

There is, however, another critical kind of editing, and that is the editing we do to make our manuscripts conform to the requirements of the publisher. If you are writing on assignment, your publisher will have given you specific guidelines for the work you are doing. If you are writing on spec (“speculation,” meaning that you are going to submit the manuscript without the publisher having made any commitment to buying it), you need to figure out what the guidelines are. Many times publishers have printed guidelines which you can find on their websites or request by mail (one of the places where the old fashioned Self-Addressed-Stamped-Envelope, or SASE, is still appropriate). With or without written guidelines, you will also want to analyze other works in the series or imprint you hope to sell to. 

Editing for publisher’s requirements includes such details as word count and reading level. It may also involve subtleties such as how often a key word repeats on a page; stylistic preferences such as whether “Black” and “White” are capitalized when they are being used as race-defining adjectives (and indeed, whether the publisher uses those terms or not); and such content-preferences as whether there are an equal number of male and female characters in a story or examples in an article. (You should also notice style points like whether the publisher allows or discourages complex sentences, such as that last one. Many publishers would never print such a thing, although it is grammatically standard.)

I recommend that in your first edit you target those publishing requirements. There’s little point in investing time and effort perfecting your parallel structure if your publisher is going to require only simple sentences in the final draft, and if your manuscript needs to be cut by 15% to make the word count, you don’t want to be doing that after you’ve lovingly coiffed each phrase. So do the cutting, trimming, and rewording you need to do to fit the publication first.

Next you want to look for the kinds of grammar errors that often slip past us when we’re writing. First and most important step: Read your work out loud. Really. Go in the bathroom and close the door if you need to, but read it out loud. This does two things. First off, it slows you down and makes you notice each individual word. You will be surprised at the things that leap off the page when you’re reading aloud that slip past when you read silently. The leftover “ing” from when you changed the verb structure. The doubled prepositions. The hanging bits of dialog tags. They all become obvious when you stumble across them as you pronounce those sentences you’ve crafted so carefully.

And speaking of stumbling, the other advantage of reading aloud is the number of places where you discover that a phrase is awkward or a sentence ungrammatical because it doesn’t sound “right.” You may or may not know the name of your error, but you can hear it – and, oftentimes fix it, without ever actually identifying its species.

There are, however, species of errors you should be aware of and search for. Dangling prepositions, for example, which are a particular weakness of mine (as you will have noticed in this post, if you are sensitive to such things.) Dangling prepositions are not the bugbears they once were, as many grammarians have conceded that they are, in fact, indigenous to the structure of English and were only considered “wrong” because they don’t work in Latin. Nevertheless, in formal writing they are still to be avoided when possible, which generally means flipping a sentence around (or just dropping the preposition – I could have said, “flipping the sentence” and you’d have known what I meant.)

Agreement is another common problem to look for. Plural nouns require plural verbs, while a singular noun requires a singular verb form (see?). Collectives can be tricky (and are handled differently in England than in the States) so pay particular attention to those.  And don’t rely entirely on your word processor’s grammar program. As I write this, Word is insisting that in the sentence above I should say “is a particular weakness” rather than “are,” presumably because it is a singular weakness, although possibly because it thinks “example” is the subject, rather than “prepositions.” If you strip out all the intervening words, it becomes more clear: “Prepositions are my weakness” not “prepositions is my weakness” (which deliberate error, ironically, Word is ignoring). The use of “their” and “them” to avoid saying “he/his” or “she/hers” leads inevitably to mismatches, and highlights the other big area of agreement issues: pronouns and their antecedents. (The antecedent is the thing the pronoun is standing in for. If it was singular, then the pronoun needs to be singular. If it was male, the pronoun is male. But what if it is neutral or unknown? Standard English says "male," modern sensibilities say "Ack!" Simplest approach is to make the antecedent plural, if you can.(But see this great post about the "singular they."

While you’re inspecting your verbs, check for tense consistency. If your account is in the present tense then things that happened previously are past tense, and if your account is written in the past tense, previous action is in the past perfect– but then when you come back to your account, did you come back to the correct tense? These kinds of inconsistencies often creep in during rewriting.

Parallel structure is another thing to check while you’re scanning the verbs, although it is a nice stylistic touch that applies to adjective phrases as well. “After Johnny ate lunch, washing his hands and playing with his toys it was time to go home.” “Susie’s favorite dress had pink bows and gray kittens but was woolen. “ Read aloud. . .

Double check uses of the verbs “to be” and “to have:” while both are obviously very useful in their own right, each also gets a great deal of work as an auxiliary verb, and auxiliary verbs tend to lead to weak expression. Everyone has heard “don’t use the passive voice” (say, “Johnny hit Mary,” not “Mary was hit by Johnny.”) Other auxiliaries are similarly weakening: “he has gone” vs “he went,” “she may be lost” vs “she is lost.” If you want to mitigate the impact, then use the auxiliary, but do so intentionally.

Adverbs and adjectives are other words that can be used to fill in details and make a story more vivid – or that can just be filler. In general if you can find a single word that conveys your meaning, it will be stronger than a pair of words. And shorter, which is a good thing when you have a strict word count!

It’s best to go over your work looking for just one of these kinds of correction at a time. You will focus more sharply on the text that way. (Think of it as having several different fine-toothed combs, each of which pulls out different kinds of nits.)

Over time (and with the help of your critique group) you will doubtless discover YOUR particular weaknesses. Be sure to do a final sweep looking for those.

If you’re uncertain about your grammar, there are some helpful websites you may find useful:

Purdue has great info for their students.

Grammar Girl has a light approach and a very handy search function: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ 

The University of Northern Iowa has a “Dr. Grammar” page with lots of good things – and a great links page.

Next time (Finally) proof-reading!

Mentor Monday: Revising, Part 1

I have a motto I often share with new writers: Real writers are rewriters. Real writers know that first drafts are just that – drafts. They are brain dumps, capturing all kinds of ideas, plot devices, images, and lots and lots and lots of words. They are the lump of clay out of which you will fashion your work of art. There’s still a lot of molding, shaping, smoothing and polishing to be done before your work is ready to be read by an editor – who will then, if she likes it enough to consider buying it, have lots of additional work she wants you to do on it!

Over my next few Mentor Monday posts we’ll look at this Revision process, which breaks down into Rewriting, Editing and finally Proofreading or Copy-editing. Although in reality you will automatically do a little bit of the later steps at the same time as the earlier ones, it is helpful to think about each distinct piece of the process.

Of these, rewriting is the most dramatic. Remember that the word “Revision” means “seeing again.” This is when you massage and reshape the lump of clay that is your first draft. Don’t be afraid to consider major changes at this point. (If it helps you to be fearless, save a copy of your original in another folder.) If your story is told in the first person, try re-writing part of it in the third person, or vice versa. What would happen if your main character were a boy instead of a girl? If your story took place in the 1950s instead of the 1970s? (If your setting doesn’t really matter at all to the story, this may be a flag indicating a problem!)

Think about your story the way a teacher preparing a lesson plan would. What is the theme? (Please be sure your story has a theme but not a “lesson.”) Who are the main characters and what are their motivations? What is the conflict, and how is it resolved? (Make sure your protagonist solves the problem!) What are the relationships between the different characters? A common problem is having too many minor characters – considering combining some of the roles.

Keep in mind that although I’m referring to “story,” “plot” and “character,” the techniques of the revising process apply to non-fiction as well. You won’t be free to manipulate the chronology or the genders of the people, but you still shape the narrative, choosing what details to include, and managing the flow of your work.

Map the plot and subplots, and examine them carefully. Is the story balanced? Does the action rise and fall, gradually reaching a peak, or are there long flat places that need breaking up? Watch out for extended passages of narrative without dialogue – or pages of dialogue with no action. If your work is a picture book, be sure you can identify enough different “scenes” for an illustrator, and see how the text breaks out over them: you don’t want to create a few text-heavy pages while the rest of the book flips past quickly.

Keep an eye out for missing pieces and loose ends. Remember the old bit about if there is a gun on the table in the first act, it had better be fired before the play is over? The opposite is also true: if you need a gun in your climactic scene, you have to introduce it early, and make sure we know that the character who is going to fire it actually knows how. Often we don’t know in the beginning all the details that are going to develop as the story progresses, so it is very common in later drafts to go back and insert objects, skill sets and even whole characters into appropriate places (sometimes this means writing a new chapter to create the place).

Think about the structure and flow of your story. How much time passes between the opening and the conclusion? Are there markers entwined in the narrative that show this to the reader? These can be as straightforward as “On Tuesday, Janie overslept” or as subtle as “his boot crunched through the ice on the puddle.” Is the length of time covered by the story appropriate and necessary? Should you start the narrative closer to the climax? Or, if you do need some bits that occur a long time before the climax should you build in some “jump forward” transitions to get you more quickly toward the point? Don’t forget that it’s important to wrap up and get out quickly after the climax, or you’ll leave your readers feeling let down.

Consider the possibility of “re-stringing” your story. Think of each scene as a bead which you have strung together along your plot. Would things flow better if some of the beads were in a different order? Might you put a “brightly colored” or “loud” scene next to a quieter one, to heighten the effect of each? Or do you need to move a goofy scene to a different location so it doesn’t alter the somber mood of a particular passage?

Don’t overlook the value of distance in this process. Put the whole manuscript into a drawer and don’t look at it for a week. When you read it again you’ll notice all kinds of things that you skimmed over before, when it was all so fresh in your mind. Distance also makes it easier to identify (and eliminate) those precious but unhelpful words, phrases and scenes that all of us seem to create and cling to in our early drafts. But that’s a subject for another post.

Mentor Monday: Good Writing is Rewriting

I'm about to start the interesting work of revising the first drafts of two novels.  Here's what other writers have said about the work of revision.


"I rework my stories as I go along and after I finish.  For Durango Street I had nearly two thousand pages of rough draft, out of which came two hundred pages of finished manuscript."

Frank Bonham




"By the time I am nearing the end of a tory, the first part will have been rearead and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times.

"I am suspicious of both facility and speed.  Good writing is essentially rewriting.  I am positive of this."

Roald Dahl





"To produce a 60-page book, I may easily write 1,000 pages before I'm satisfied."

Dr. Seuss






"I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied."

Ernest Hemingway








"I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting anything over and over again.  I scarcely ever re-read my published writings, but if by chance I come across a page, it always strikes me: all this must be rewritten; this is how I should have written it . . . "

Leo Tolstoy

Mentor Monday: Repeat as Necessary

I like playing solitaire on the computer. Partly this is because I seldom misplace my computer, while finding a complete deck of cards in my house can be a challenge. But the best thing about games on the computer is the “repeat game” option. In real solitaire you can’t re-deal the exact game you just lost, so you can’t go back and figure out whether a different choice at some point in the game might have yielded better results. The computer allows me to play the same game over and over until I either win or determine that this particular combination of cards just isn’t going to work. I can also use the “undo” option to back up through the game, choose a different option at a particular point, and explore the result.

Computer solitaire provides an instructive model for our writing. We sometimes become so caught up in our created work that we feel as though, like real life, it cannot be changed. But our work (even if we are writing non-fiction) is in fact revisable, and nearly always can be improved by rewriting. We can “repeat last game” over and over, trying different approaches, different transitions, different connections until we find the strongest, most vivid language and most effective presentation possible. As with card games, the computer makes re-writing simpler, although generations of writers managed with pen and ink and scissors and paste.

Perhaps recalling painful days of junior high school, some writers profess to hate the revision process. Most professional writers, however, love it. The initial anguish of trying to capture thoughts and corral characters is over. The essential thread of the story is set. Revision (literally “seeing again”) is a time for weighing words and polishing phrases. The writer can focus on pacing and rhythm, balance and structure, voice and theme. Sometimes a thought mentioned in passing in the first draft catches our attention, demanding development. Sometimes a line, lovingly embellished in the heat of creation, appears cloying or out of place. Whole scenes, arguments, even whole characters may turn out to be superfluous, while in other places you may discover a backstory that needs revealing.

Two factors are essential for effective re-writing: time and feedback. Here the analogy with computer solitaire breaks down.

The replay option in the game only works if you use it immediately. Re-writing, in contrast, demands a time-lapse. It is almost impossible to do more than surface editing on a piece you’ve just completed. For a short piece, at least ignore it overnight. For longer works, even if you revise as you go (revise the last chapter before starting on the next), plan to let the first completed draft age for a while before re-reading it.

A time lapse will also enable you to involve the second factor, feedback. Have a critique group, a writing buddy or at least a reasonably objective spouse read your piece and tell you, honestly, what works and what doesn’t.

Real writers are re-writers.

Even God did a second draft!