Tag Archives: self-editing

Technique

Making scenes matter

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or, How to Save Your Darlings!

We’ve all heard the phrase “Kill your darlings,” right? While sometimes, it feels like the injunction means that we have to carve out anything we liked in our work—whoa, don’t do that! “Kill your darlings” means more to carve out the pieces of your story that are important only to you—if they don’t matter to your characters, your story and your readers, they shouldn’t be in there, no matter how delightful their dinner discussion might be.

Janice Hardy has a great article on “Poking Dead Scenes With A Stick,” AKA do you really need that scene. She says:

When you have a dead scene, ask yourself: If I cut this scene, would anyone but me care or even notice?

If the answer is no, cut the scene. Go ahead and move it to a new file called "cut scenes" and save in case you need it later if you’d like. Be ruthless, the story will be better for it.

She has some great criteria for determining whether or not your scene is truly necessary. There might be events, statements or actions in the scene that are important, but you might be able to move them to another scene if you really need them.

But sometimes, we really do need these scenes. Perhaps they contain clues/foreshadowing that won’t work any other place. (But here’s a hint: if that clue is the only reason we need the scene, it’s probably going to stand out to the reader—maybe a little too much—unless we can make the rest of the scene work harder.)

So if we really need to keep a scene, what do we do to make that scene matter? To understand that, let’s take a look at the purposes of scenes.

Mission of scenes

On the Writing on the Wall blog, author Annette Lyon lists six of the most basic purposes of a scene:

  1. Advance the plot
  2. Create or show conflict
  3. Set the setting
  4. Reveal character
  5. Show backstory
  6. Lay groundwork for later plot

Numbers 1 and 2 are probably the most important in any sort of commercial or popular fiction. In fact, Annette says that most of your scenes should have #1 or #2 as a purpose—in addition to one of the other six.

To repeat, nearly every scene should advance the plot and/or create/show conflict, in addition to developing another aspect of the story. A scene just for character development isn’t enough of a purpose.

Look carefully at the scene in question and determine if it’s mostly or entirely serving only one of these purposes—and if it’s serving #1 and/or #2 at all.

So, let’s say you’ve gone through the scene line by line and you’ve determined that there is absolutely no other way to convey this information—but the scene still isn’t doing enough. You need to make that scene matter.

Making scenes matter

When you truly cannot cut the scene, what do you do? You make the scene matter.

First of all, look at the list of scene purposes above (and add to it if you really need to). How can you add those purposes to your scene?

When I’m trying to make a scene matter, I ask myself these questions:

  • What is the character’s goal for this scene?
  • How can things get worse?
  • How can I raise the stakes?
  • What is the source of conflict in this scene and how can I make the conflict bigger?
  • How can I weave in the antagonist, the plot, a subplot or a character turning point?
  • Who is the worst person who could walk in right now?
  • What would happen if this scene took place somewhere else?
  • What is the character feeling and have I shown it enough on the page?

In a second post on this topic, Janice Hardy also offers a list of things to look at to help make your scenes matter (and there’s some overlap, but I wrote out my mental list after reading her first post):

  • What is your protag doing?
  • Where does this scene take place (setting)?
  • Who else is in the scene?
  • Where structurally does this scene take place (act one, midpoint, act two, etc)?
  • What happens right before this scene?
  • What happens right after this scene?
  • What’s your theme?
  • What are the stakes?

With all these questions, mine and hers, we want to look for ways to make the scene more integral to the story. Incorporate the themes or the subplots more, heighten the conflict and the suspense, etc.

When I was rewriting the book that will be my first published novel, I knew I needed to amp up the mystery plot (and tone down the romance plot a bit). So I went through each scene, specifically looking for a way I could increase the tension and suspense, raise the stakes and bring in the antagonists more.

And you know what? Even though I’ve written four books since that one, I still have to do this. Last month I did the first revision on my most recent manuscript, and I had to look for ways to make the scenes more interesting, state the characters’ goals and tie in the suspense more.

For a more specific example, in the last week, I reread a book I wrote almost 3 years ago as the first step in revisions. I’ve already edited it a bit, so just about all of the scenes are in there for a good reason (though I can see I hadn’t really grasped scene goals at the time). However, some sections of the book really drag, so I’m still brainstorming how I can draw in the antagonist more, how I can keep the threat present and how I can raise the stakes.

One really good example I’d like to share, though, is at a major turning point of the book. It’s the midpoint. Things are looking pretty bad for the future of the romance, and the hero goes home and basically mopes. (It’s my own writing; I can be harsh if I want to.)

This is the midpoint of the book, a major turning point. After the midpoint, says Larry Brooks, the character is ready to go on the offensive. The third quarter is all about the attack. But my character basically rolled over and played dead after the midpoint.

When I reread my midpoint scene, I thought, “NO! He does not MOPE! HE WILL FIGHT!” (If you feel like either quoting The Incredibles or singing some Peter Cetera, feel free.) And suddenly the entire third quarter made sense. I still have a lot of work to do to implement these changes, but suddenly this scene matters so much more.

In my example, yet another scene of the hero mourning his losses didn’t add anything to the story, except that we found out he’d gone so far as to buy an engagement ring before they broke up. (This does not help to make him less mopey, LOL.) In my new vision for the scene, we’ll still get that information—which wasn’t vital to the story in the original version. But now, that ring (which will actually be offstage), plus the events of the day, will help my character to a turning point.

And I can’t wait to see him fight.

What do you think? How do you help to make scenes that aren’t doing a lot for your story really integral?

Photo credits: delete—Mixy Lorenzo;
question mark—Alexander Drachmann; sad sack baby—J

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Technique

Suspense fixes

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This entry is part 20 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

Fixing the suspense of a story can be a lot tougher than upping the tension in a single scene. Looking at suspense requires us to look at the big picture—and increasing the tension in several scenes can increase the suspense, too.

If you’ve gone back and fixed (or planned how to fix) the tension in several scenes, it might be time to reevaluate your suspense. Rerate your new scenes on tension and redo the EKG. If you’re really lucky, you may not have to do anything.

grip knucklesBut then again, you might. Just as tension springs from conflict, suspense is created by anticipation. So the same things that fix scene tension might not fix story suspense.

Suspense is also harder to give general fixes for because it can be a lot more story-specific than tension problems (but I will offer a few 😀 ). Only you can tell what’s right for your story (and even then, we usually need help). I can’t just give the blanket “when in doubt, kill someone important,” axiom because that might work for many stories, but if that’s not going to be a focus of your story, it’s more likely to distract and derail than help.

Take a good, hard look at the places you don’t have anything major moving the story along. (Those unhightlighted sections of the scene chart.) You’ll probably have to rethink some of those scenes. (I’m rethinking an entire quarter of my book.) Be open to new ideas—especially when you’re doing other things. Be open to letting go of the things you worked so hard on.

That doesn’t always mean you’ll have to lose your favorite parts—but you may have to find very different ways to get them in there.

What do you think? What are your favorite ways to keep your readers in suspense?

Photo credit: Alex Schneider

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Technique

Make sure parallels pack a punch for suspense

This entry is part 14 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

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

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Technique

Assessing your suspense with pacing and promises

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This entry is part 13 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

If assessing your own tension is hard, critiquing your own suspense level is even harder. But there are a few things we can try to look at objectively to help us find the places where our suspense gets weak. Examining the pacing, the promises and the parallels can point us to places where we need to punch up the suspense.

Pacing

The first place we can look is at the pacing. At Edittorrent, Alicia Rasley once defined pacing as “a measure of how frequently important plot events happen in your story, how closely occurring they are.”

To examine this, make a list of the 10-20 most important events in your story (things like Plot Point 1, the Climax, the Dark Moment, the Resolution, the Inciting Incident). Then go back to your scene chart and highlight those scenes (note that some of them may take more than one scene). Literally—select the whole row in the spreadsheet or draw a big, fat star on the card with a marker.

Then look at the whole—zoom out until you can see all the rows on the spreadsheet or layout the cards in order and stand back. Where are the big gaps between important events? That may be a point where the suspense is starting to wear thin—so take a careful look at those long stretches of unhighlightable scenes. Make sure they’re giving the reader something to look forward to, some reason to move on to the next scene—like a promise.

Promises

Promises are key to creating suspense. Suspense is all about anticipation—and when we promise the reader some event, we put them in suspense. You can add another column to your scene chart of promises made in a scene, and another for promises fulfilled. (In the example below, I used lettering to keep track of the promises, and rated the importance/tension of the promise on a scale of 1-10, to make things easier and keep track of the relative importance of the promise.)

Scene Promise Fulfilled
7 She’ll meet him at dawn (D)—6 A fulfilled
8 – C fulfilled
9 He’ll kill her (E)—10 B delayed
10 – D fulfilled; E denied

Note that not every promise we make must be fulfilled in the next scene, or the next time we come to it. In fact, delaying promises, while reiterating that they’re coming and how important they are, is a great way to increase the suspense. (Plus, this handy chart makes sure we don’t forget anything 😉 .)

Those in-between sections from the highlighting exercise can be a great place to look for these (since the important events are probably already setting up and fulfilling a number of promises). So has it been a long time since we’ve seen any promises made, fulfilled, delayed or denied?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at how parallels can show us places to punch up the suspense.

What do you think? How can we look at our pacing? What else can pacing and promises show us?

Photo credit: John Bounds

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Technique

Putting the tension in your self-editing

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This entry is part 12 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

When you’re editing yourself, it can be hard to see which of your scenes are low in tension. For tension, a scene-level edit is a definite must. For each scene, ask yourself:

  • Character’s goal: Is it clearly stated or irrefutably implied? (That scene goal in the scene chart thing? Yep. Plus, a scene chart and/or spreadsheet is a really convenient here.)
  • Bring on the conflict: Can/should I cut to where the conflict for that goal starts? Is that the worst conflict I could use here?
  • Bring out the conflict: Have I stated why this is a difficult/delicate situation?
  • Length: Is the scene an appropriate length for its significance? (That applies to both word count and the passage of time in the scene.)
  • Setting: Could another setting lend more tension to this scene?
  • Purpose: Does this move the story forward? Is my reason for having this scene good enough to justify this scene, or any scene at all?
  • Ending: Does the scene end with a disaster for my POV character’s goal? Do we cut away at the worst possible moment, something that will induce the reader to find out what happens next?
  • Finally, rating: as Noah Lukeman recommends in The Plot Thickens, rate the scene tension on a scale of 1 to 10.

Another method here is to read the story backwards, scene-by-scene. Or, I guess, you could jump around as long as you made sure you covered everything. That way, you know each scene will stand on its own—but if you change anything important, especially near the beginning, you’ll just have to go through and fix all that again. (Which can cut both ways, of course.)

Of course, this whole method requires brutal honesty. No rating a scene higher because your heroine gets off a few zingers, no keeping a scene that doesn’t serve any real purpose because it has that beautiful paragraph that it took you a month to write. Cut and paste your favorite parts (or the whole scene) into another document and you never have to actually “lose” anything.

Finding and fixing low tension scenes is just the beginning of making sure your story keeps your readers hooked. Tomorrow we’ll look at finding problems with the overarching suspense in your story. (Gulp!)

What do you think? What do you look for to find low-tension scenes?

Photo credit: Samuraijohnny

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Technique, Works

How do you write?

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I have to admit it: I’m one of those writers who doesn’t really do much of anything until I absolutely fall in love with an idea—anything from a character to a scene to a setting. My ideas come from dreams, friends, books, movies, TV, etc. But until an idea really grabs me, I can’t sustain my interest enough to spend three or four months on drafting.

light fire matchesBut man, when that idea strikes, it’s hard to make myself do the normal day-to-day, keeping-the-house-clean, being-a-mom stuff. All I want to do is write, and yet no matter how fast I write (my record is 5000 words in a day), it’s not fast enough. The rest of the book stretches out in front of me, scenes and lines and snippets that threaten to slip away before I can get there. So I race on.

An idea struck three weeks ago. So far, I’ve gotten down almost 23,000 words. (Woot! Check out my progress bar in the sidebar.) I’m excited to be drafting again (first time since April), and if I finish the draft by October 21, I’ll have drafted three books in a year. That’s pretty cool.

It’s interesting how different each book is, you know? Not just plot-wise or character-wise (although these three books have the same hero/heroine), but process-wise.

This time around, I’ve accepted that what I like to get in there are people, action, dialogue and plot twists. Cool. On my last MS, I tried to get everything in there on the first draft—sensory details, settings, character descriptions, etc. etc. This time, I’m embracing my favorite parts—I mean, I’ll put in the other stuff as needed, but if a scene is all dialogue/action, and it takes place in a vacuum, I’m not going to cry about it in this draft.

inspireFor me, that’s stuff I can add later, in each layer of editing. In fact, I’m taking this week off drafting to go back to the first MS I wrote during this year to add in more of those descriptions and sensory information, since the second half of the book is rather bereft of those (silly me, thinking all the character and setting descriptions were established in the first half, and we wouldn’t need anymore after that!).

How about you? What inspires you? Do you try to get everything in one draft—and if not, what do you leave out to add in later?

This week is probably going to be a bit of a catch-all week as I try to get things done between editing bouts and housecleaning—and, of course, working on the PDF from our website series. But next week, we’ll start another new and awesome series. I think 😉 .

Photo credits: matches—Kicki; inspire—Mark Brannan

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Technique

Self-editing and Revision presentation by Julie Coulter Bellon

Highlights of the presentation by Julie Coulter Bellon

CLAW—the 4 secrets for self-editing

Check off your basic editing checklist
Let someone else read it for you that will give you good feedback
Always print it out and read a hard copy
Walk away for a few hours, days or weeks and come back with fresh eyes.

Check off your basic editing checklist:
Never rely solely on your spell/grammar check (“Misspellers of the world, untie!”; see also “Always print it out and read a hard copy”). Watch your tenses and subject/verb agreement.

Avoid too many adverbs/adjectives [emphasis mine: some people read this advice without reading the examples and think you can never use adjectives or adverbs. Also note that repetitive adjectives like “green grass” below are also something to watch for]—laundry lists of description: Julie called this “the laziest writing”:

  • “It was a beautiful sunny June day and the lush, emerald green grass reflected the bright yellow sunlight and hurt my eyes.”
  • “She desperately wanted to kiss him passionately.”
    • Telling versus showing!

Shun redundancy and repetitiveness [I am HILARIOUS]—on the micro level (crutch words, using obscure/unusual words over and over, and empty words “just,” “actually,” “really,” etc.) and the macro level (do you have two chapters that serve the same function? Cut one).

Balance: break up really long paragraphs (never more than a page!!), balance narrative and dialogue. (But leave out unnecessary dialogue tags.)

Let someone else read it for you:
Get more than one brutally honest reviewer—no mothers or grandmas!

Always print it out and read a hard copy [To which I add: read it OUT LOUD.]
Changing the font can be helpful [Also helpful, from Stein on Writing: change the author’s name to one you either love or hate.]

Have a pen with you to jot down notes as you read [and also as you were writing—change a character’s backstory on page 127? Make a note of things to fix and fix them in this edit].

Walk away for a few hours, days or weeks and come back with fresh eyes
Take time to enjoy having finished. [Dance of joy!] But seriously, leave it alone—the changes will come to you.

Leaving it can also give you the emotional distance necessary to cut anything that doesn’t advance the story, even if it’s your favorite part. (Julie points out that you can put deleted scenes on your website!)

Now what?

The deep edit: down & dirty with the editor’s checklist

Looking at the big picture with the editor’s checklist:

  • Show us what your character is experiencing in that moment
  • Avoid passive voice
  • Stick to one POV per scene, please!
  • Make sure you have hooks to keep them turning pages, especially at the beginning and end of chapters
  • Does each character have a motivation? (villains, MCs, not so much a concern for secondary characters)
  • Does the setting contribute to the piece?
  • Is the story timeline consistent?
  • Does the conflict keep the tension throughout the story? (don’t resolve things too quickly)
  • Natural flow—nothing contrived [no deus ex machinas!]—to keep believability, don’t pull the rug out from underneath your readers. [That makes people throw books.]
  • Is there a balance of narrative, action and dialogue?

The drive-thru edit vs. the seven-course meal edit
The combo meal story: a string of clichéslike ordering your usual at the drive thru: you hardly have to look at the offerings anymore. It’s like an editor’s slushpile. They will spot your combo meal story a mile away.

Critique partners/readers describe it as “familiar” and “predictable.” Lots of unnecessary “fat”—characters that aren’t vital, characters that are one-dimensional, too much description, loose ends.

To fix the combo meal story: give it a twist, dig a little deeper. Expand your writing menu. Conversely, be prepared to cut extra words, descriptions, narrative, even characters, even if they’re good. Instead, use active, powerful scenes and action verbs.

On the other end of the spectrum: 7 course meal story: some of later courses smelled so good your mouth watered, but you couldn’t enjoy it because you were too full. Lots of characters, twists and turns, complexities—lots of places to lose your reader (and yourself in your editing!).

To fix the seven-course meal story: Again, cut unnecessary words, descriptions, narrative and characters. Strive for simplicity and clarity—and focus on the compelling story. Maintain a character notebook.

When do you stop editing?

  • When you’ve done CLAW and a deep edit
  • When you’ve addressed your readers’ concerns
  • When you’ve gone through it for plot, continuity and characterization and setting errors
  • When you’re sick of it.

Find a happy medium

  • enjoy what you’ve created
  • dont’ beat yourself up over mistakes [Do you get the self-referential joke I put in there? Totally on purpose 😉 ]
  • realize that the writing and editing process is a journey and some trips are longer than others.
  • Keep learning—figure out your weaknesses and now to combat them—be willing to do the work

A polished piece with an author who is still teachable is valuable to an editor, agent and publisher. [Aside from the great editing advice, the word teachable was my biggest takeaway from this session. It’s something I know I need to work on—and I guess acknowledging that is a good start!]

I put my MS back together—where do I go from here?
Pat yourself on the back, remember that writing—and editing!—can rejuvenate and SUBMIT IT!

About the conference: LDStorymakers is a writing contest geared to LDS writers. The conference covers both the niche, regional publishers that cater to the LDS market as well as national publishers.

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