When I moved into my home six years ago, my husband and I went to our local LDS temple. We didn’t know quite how to get there, and we ended up calling someone who didn’t live nearby to give us directions. Because we knew that route, we took it on each visit for the next four years. On a whim, I tried another route one day—and cut the trip by a third.

Frequently when I get critiqued or judged, I get defensive of my work. Granted, all suggestions won’t work for your story, you know your story best, and sometimes critique partners can be just plain toxic. But even bad advice can make our story better when it makes us take another look at our story with a critical eye, when we recognize that just because we wrote it that way, it might not be the best way.

I liked what Katie Ganshert said about this recently about developing skills and editing as an evocative writer:

I want to be an evocative writer. I want to transport my readers into the story. I want to make them feel what the characters are feeling. Which means I spend a lot of time trying to imagine what something feels like, and then trying to figure out how to translate those feelings into words.

Which is exactly what I tried to do when my hero touched my heroine’s arm for the first time. I sat in my chair and I tapped my chin and I tried to think, “What does this feel like? And how can I write this feeling in a fresh way?” . . .

So . . . I wrote: Something warm spread through her arm, as if she’d dipped her elbow into a bowl of hot pudding. . . .

Shannon [her editor] gave me a call and as we were talking she said, “You’re right. That is what it feels like. But elbows in pudding are not appetizing to people. It’s warm, but it’s messy and makes a person feel like they need a paper towel to wipe off their elbow. So what else does it feel like?”

Something in my brain started to click.

She went on to explain that just because a line isn’t working doesn’t mean I’m supposed to delete it. In fact, Shannon didn’t want me to delete it. She wanted me to make the line work. To keep the feeling intact using different imagery. . . .

Pinpointing how something feels is important. But using the right imagery to evoke those feelings is equally important.

This weekend I was looking through some older posts and I came across one from January about gesture crutches. Both of these posts made me think about the same fact:

Just because you wrote it one way doesn’t mean it’s the best way. We should always consider if there’s a better way to say what we’re saying.

I see people defend poor writing by saying it’s their character’s voice. Honestly, I think a lot of the time what they’re really thinking is that “I wrote it that way, so it’s right.”

Maybe. But could you write it better? Could your character say it better? If your character got another chance (or ten) to look at it over again and revise it (for publication), is that how he’d still say it? No, he may not make it poetic and beautiful and use words and images he doesn’t know, but that doesn’t mean he’d leave a mushy sentence there and allow it to undercut his meaning or make him boring and ordinary—and neither should you.

Because why else would we edit? Why wouldn’t we just submit first drafts and companies publish first drafts? Because there’s a better way to say it. And I think (and hope) self-publishing will ride out the same way: you’ll be able to tell who edits and who slaps their first drafts on the market, who says “I wrote it that way, so it’s right” and who says, “I did write it that way, but maybe there’s a better way to say it.”

So, can you say it better?

What do you think? What lessons have you learned from revision (or just thinking about it?)?

Map image courtesy of The Journey 1972 (South America “addicted”)

I’m gearing up to do the first round of revisions on my WIP. I totally don’t have a system for revision (yet?). I’d really like to do have a set of steps I follow for revisions—instead of still making plot-level cuts and additions two years after I should have!—but I think I just might not be that kind of person. I mean, I can be really faithful about using a datebook, but only for a couple months. The last two months of each of my children’s baby calendars are a major challenge. (Oh wait… Gotta update that!)

Here’s what I do/have done—and I use at least three of these methods at any given time:

• Make running commentary notes as I’m writing in comments or square brackets.
• Keep a list of changes I want to make in another document.
• Keep a list of changes in a sticky-note.
• Write down ideas on any available slip of paper.
• Email myself ideas, notes and changes.
• Reread the completed draft, where I’m only allowed to make notes/comments. (And fix typos.)
• Complete the exercises in one or more of Donald Maass’s books.
• Send to alpha/beta readers.
• Read more craft books.
• Take time off.
• Write down character exercises on any available scrap of paper.
• Talk over potential changes—mostly with myself, since it takes too long to explain everything to give someone else enough context to respond.
• Lose and/or toss a good proportion of the notes.
• Print off the entire book and read it aloud, chapter by chapter.
• Margie Lawson’s EDITS system.
• Start over at step 1.

Each of these methods can be effective. But still, if this looks like a mess, that’s because it is!

This time around, I’m trying to focus on the plot- and character-level fixes I need first. I went into this book not sure of my characters’ voices (apparently I did something right, though!), or even my characters themselves, and with a plot that was a lot less defined than I usually like. I know the big things I want to improve, but I’m trying to figure out if there are other things I need to fix now (before I get into the more wordy-level things).

I know some people are much better at going about this systematically, and I want to learn from people like Jami, Natalie, and Suzannah. It seems like they have such great “systems” for revising, attacking each problem in order, and they’ll never miss anything. Okay, so that last part is probably just wishful thinking on my part, but wouldn’t it be nice if we all had a single system we could work through with our first draft to make it into something we can really work with?

What do you think? How do you revise?

Edited to add more posts on systems of revision (partially for my own reference): Five types of edits from the QueryTracker blog.

Photo by Joanna Penn

Accepting that first drafts aren’t final drafts is a big milestone at the beginning of the journey to becoming a writer. The first couple things we write, we think that we have to—and will—get it perfect on the first pass through. It’s devastating to receive the news that our draft isn’t perfect—or even that good. It’s disheartening to think that what we thought needed a minor word-level edit actually needs a major character-and-plot-level overhaul.

But finally, we accept that our first drafts are just that—first drafts—and our writing is found in the rewriting of it. And for most of us, that means we don’t put quite as much effort into our first drafts, focusing more on getting the broad strokes down than getting the phraseology perfect.

So when we’re drafting lazy, of necessity, we leave in some things that we know we’ll only end up taking out later—or we leave out some things that we know we can add later.

A few examples:

• Leave in:
  • clichés
  • scene summaries (of scenes you do intend to show in real time)
  • near-match words
  • scenes that may or may not turn out to be tangents
  • the boring bits
• Leave out:
  • descriptions
  • dialogue
  • punctuation
  • grammar check
  • spell check
  • voice (I think we may talk more about this later in the week)

What do you leave in or out of your first drafts?

Photo credit: Aaron Brown

This is just an idea I came across while blogging this week. Many times, we pressure ourselves to write beautiful, literary, vivid, compelling tales on our first try—our first attempt at a manuscript, or our first draft. We let that blank page sit there while we search for a fresh, creative way to express that our character is tall/short/angry/sad/sarcastic/etc.

Note to self (and everyone else): stop it. Stop worrying about getting it right—nay, getting it perfect—on that first attempt.

The purpose of drafting is not to write it all down in its final, publishable form. The purpose of drafting is to write it all down.

The fact is that pretty much no one writes a perfect first draft. The skill of writing is seldom found in the drafting. It’s found in the stick-to-it-iveness to rewrite, the skill to identify the basic and clichéd and to search for a new way to say it—but not at the detriment of actually getting it all on the page.

One of my critique partners put this really well after her husband imparted some priceless advice (emphasis added):

“You also can’t make chicken salad out of an invisible chicken.” Then, after dispensing this tidbit worthy of Confucius, he went off to watch ESPN. I sat in stunned silence. This made it so clear to me! He was right of course. I can’t fix something or make it what I want if it’s still in my head. It was his nice way of telling to quit whining and write the darn thing down.

So we all now have my permission: draft lazy. Use clichés and trite expressions if you can’t think of anything better quickly. If you can’t find the “right” word on the tips of your fingers (or with a quick thesaurus & dictionary check), use the wrong-but-close one. (Feel free to mark anywhere you do this so you remember to fix it later.)

Is this just making more work for yourself in the revision process? Maybe—but then again, you can’t revise and perfect something you haven’t written yet.

What do you think? Do you draft lazy?

Photo by Matt Majewski

I have a guest post up at LDS Publisher today on setting up an author website—you might recognize it if you’ve been around here for a while .

By parallels, I mean scenes that repeat something from the previous ones, or very recent scenes—the same character goal, level of tension, or even setting. Now, parallels can, of course, be used for good—but they can also be ignored for evil to our detriment.

Parallels for good

Within reason, parallels can show off recurring themes, symbols, and the importance of characters or settings. Well-chosen repetition draws attention to itself unobtrusively—it makes readers sit up and take notice without (“Hey, this is the third scene on the dock; what might that mean?”) without stopping the story.

Parallels to our detriment

On the other hand, parallels can be over done, or completely unintentional.

Scenes in the same setting can be repetitive, and may also be a sign that not enough is moving in the story. Maybe not, of course—you could have the whole thing take place inside a single room, but this may be one area to look at. As with the tension chart, we can look at whether there’s another possible setting that might enhance the conflict or add a new layer of meaning.

Scenes with the same character goal are often a sign that the character isn’t making enough progress. While we definitely don’t want to make things easy for our characters, watching a character fail repeatedly at the same thing wears down the suspense. We may begin not to care whether they’re going to succeed or not, unless each scene has high tension—or the character goal can be refined to relate to the specific events, conflict and disaster for that scene.

But probably most important are the sections where the tension level doesn’t change or varies only slightly for several scenes in a row. In Writing Mysteries, one writer shared some advice from an editor: “I must not try to keep everything at high pitch all the way through a story. Excitement, if too steady, can be as boring as having nothing at all happening” (109).

One way to look at this visually is to use the tension rating from your scene chart. In most spreadsheet software, you can create a line graph from that column of data—Kaye Dacus calls this an “EKG” for your story (you know, an electrocardiogram? Like a heartbeat chart?).

Naturally, at the climax of a book, the tension will be quite high, probably for several scenes. But is the tension flat in there? Are there other “plateaus” or “plains”? Does the tension start (or the promises from yesterday) out much higher than it ends?

If the end isn’t satisfying because it doesn’t match the tension of the rest of the book, don’t lower the suspense! Fix the end!! Change things up in plains and plateaus—if you can, add what looks like a reprieve, or a rest for a little bit before plunging them back into danger.

What do you think? How else can parallels point out problems with suspense?

Photo credit: Redvers