Repeat. Repeat. Repeat

Grain Magazine is celebrating its 50th birthday and I was the prose guest editor for the upcoming anniversary issue. I sifted through a couple hundred fiction and non-fiction submissions and selected just over a dozen for publication. (Pro tip: sometimes these special issues are larger than usual and more pages = more acceptances.) One weakness I noticed, even in the strongest pieces, was repetition. Over and over and over again. (See what I did there?). If you’re fine tuning your own writing, here are four things to watch for:

1. Commonly, it’s individual words. For example, the word surprise or look or choose showing up three or four times in a paragraph.

2. It could be a specific description: the grandfather clock keeping the beat like a metronome. Finding the simile once is delightful but twice reads as a mistake.

3. Beware the synonym list. Do you really need four words when one will do?

4. Have you said the same thing five different ways? This form of repetition is the most difficult one to spot, often because it’s camouflaged by beautiful prose.

Repetition is a tool that can be used to great effect. Try to be intentional. And delete the rest.

Take the wheel

In my 20s, I took up pottery. The classes were held in a shed, at the bottom of a blousy garden, where three of us students hunched over our wheels while our instructor walked around in an old pair of dungarees and chatted about the raccoons who were terrorizing her household.

Pottery is a physical act; you have to put your whole body into the effort if you’re going to keep the clay centered. More often than not, we novices found the clay controlled us, spinning itself in unexpected ways. A bowl stubbornly flattening into a plate. A vase becoming a mug. A mug shrinking to a pinch bowl.

Our instructor, a professional potter who’d been at this two or three decades, praised our creations, claimed there was a looseness to inexperience that experts could never replicate. I thought she was just being kind. Now, I know better.

Most of my clients have had little, if any, formal instruction in creative writing. They write instinctively, with the particular freedom that comes from not knowing the so-called rules. Unfettered by the shoulds and musts and can’ts, their stories are ambitious and experimental and interesting, uninhibited in the way mine used to be, with an unaffected playfulness I can’t recapture.

One thing about new writers: they are often surprised when I point out what they’ve written. In the same way my attempts at vases ended as miniature plant pots, there’s often a gap between the story the writer intended to tell - or thought they were telling - and the one they actually wrote. Without fail, the unintended story is the juicier one. Sometimes it winks out from the subtext. Sometimes it’s right there in black and white but the writer hasn’t noticed.*

The conscious brain is censorious. The subconscious though? Oh, she knows how to spin a yarn. This is true for experienced writers too. (A couple of months ago, after reading a draft of my new novel, my writing group pointed out that one of its central anxieties is money. Huh, I said. You’re right.) The only difference is experienced authors know the unconscious is also at work and, if we’re smart, we’ll lean into whatever gifts it might offer.

When I first start working with a writer I always give some version of this speech: You are in the driver’s seat. I’m only riding shot gun. I have a map. It might not be the correct one. I’m going to make suggestions but you make the calls. Lately, though I’ve been thinking I should amend this pep talk. Let the story take the wheel for a while. Find out where it takes you.

*You don’t need to spend a cent to find out what you’ve written. Ask someone you trust and who has never heard you talk about your work (that part is crucial. It must be a reader who is coming to it fresh and has no preconceived notions about the plot or characters or theme or what you are trying to do) to read what you’ve written and then tell you point for point what happens in the story and what it’s about.

But if you do want professional guidance, I’m here.

How to revise your novel (part 5)

Originally posted: September 14, 2020

The last several posts have tackled the most common issues that plague manuscripts - beginnings, endings, dialogue, characters, pacing, conflict, flashback, interiority and action, and that old cliche: show vs. tell. To conclude, I’m going to offer some more general advice.

1. Read your manuscript out loud. Each and every word. Pay attention to your annoyance and your boredom, the passages where your eyes glaze over. Pay attention to the cadence of your sentences, the unintended tongue twisters, prose that trips you up.

2. Set the manuscript aside for a few weeks or a couple of months. Come back to it afresh.

3. Every scene should reveal character or advance plot. Better still: do both.

4. At every stage along the way think about specific details. Julia cuts class and lounges in bed with a book. Julia skips calculus and lounges in bed with the new N.K. Jemisin. See?

5. Most manuscripts would be improved if 70-90% of the direct dialogue was removed. You can quote me on that.

6. A common blunder is to repeat the same word on the page, often in the same paragraph. A keen eye and a thesaurus are your friends here.

7. Watch for other forms of repetitions: characters repeating themselves in dialogue, the narrator giving the reader the same information two or three or seventeen times, scenes that are re-enacted. These repetitions are a sign you aren’t trusting the reader.

8. On that note: resist the urge to over explain. The delete button is your friend.

9. As the author you must know all, far more than what is on the page. Hemingway’s iceberg theory is a useful metaphor: the reader sees only the tip of the story; the rest they intuit. Or, said another way: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless.” (ps. most of what Hemingway writes in that piece is absolute tosh but there are a couple of gems if you’re willing to have a scavenge)

10. Every author has their own cache of ticks - words and phrases we tend to overuse. (Look and relief are two of mine.) At some point at a late stage in revision, cull the ticks. I keep a running tally of tick words in my notebook so that right before an important draft (say the one that goes to submission), I’ll do a quick search and replace.

11. Speaking of ticks, here’s my hands down, numero uno pet peeve: smiles, nods, and eye rolls. Give yourself a cap, say no more than seven smiles, three nods, and one eye roll allowed per manuscript.

12. Exclamation marks should be used sparingly.

13. For God sakes, make sure you haven’t written a rotten egg.
    

If at this point you’re feeling overwhelmed by the work ahead, take heart. The trough of disillusionment is a normal and necessary part of the process. And if you still feel uncertain or would like a fresh set of eyes and specific editorial advice, drop me a line. This series has only skimmed the surface of my expertise.

How to revise your novel (part 4)

Originally posted: September 7, 2020

This is the fourth post in a series about novel revision. Part 1 considered characters and pace. Part two covered conflict, flashbacks, and thought vs. action.  Part 3 tackled beginnings, endings, and dialogue. Today it’s that old saw: show don’t tell.

SHOW NOT TELL

Here it is, the single most common weakness of every work-in-progress: too much telling, not enough showing. Sometimes we tell instead of show. Other times we show and tell, illustrating a scene in perfect detail only to explain to the reader the very thing they’ve just witnessed. That’s how worried we are that the reader won’t get it. In the case of the latter, the solution is a quick backspace. In the case of the former, the work is more difficult.

Adjectives and adverbs are telling signs. Instead of saying Mary eyed Bob suspiciously, describe what’s suspicious in her manner. What does suspicion look and feel like? Instead of the adverb, show us the feeling or action.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but: you don’t need adjectives on dialogue tags. He said furiously. She asked anxiously. They cried dolefully. STOP. Stick to he said and she asked. If dialogue is accompanied by an emotion, find a way to embody the emotion.

BE SPECIFIC

Abstraction is another telling sign. First drafts, by their nature, tend to lean heavily on words like suddenly and something. I think of these as placeholders we drop in the ground as we write toward a first draft. In second and third and seventh drafts though it’s important to return to those placeholders and fully articulate the suddenness or what the something is. Don’t tell the reader the lights went out suddenly. Make the lights flame out in a way that feels sudden for character (and by extension reader). Hot tip: most of the time you can just delete the word suddenly without doing anything else.

Ditto vague descriptions. You could tell us there were eagles in the sky and rain on the way, sure. Or you could show the eagles “beating muscled wings, threading in and out of black thunderclouds” as Valeria Luiselli does in her Lost Children Archive. You could tell us Edgar feels vulnerable or show him grasping opposite wrists as Ian Williams does in Reproduction. Weeks after finishing the novel, this visual has stuck with me, more importantly the feeling of tenderness it inspired has lingered. That’s the power of specificity.

FILTERING AND MEDIATION

Stories are most immediate and immersive when they can get right in close. But too often writers filter the story through an unnecessary lens. Compare two versions of the same scene:

“Outside, Gillian noticed two neighbours squabbling. She saw them jab their fingers at each other across their property lines and heard their voices growing louder.”

“Outside, Gillian’s neighbours squabbled. They jabbed their fingers at each other across their property lines, voices rising.”

There’s no need to tell the reader that Gillian is seeing and hearing the action. Remove the filter words notice and saw and what happens? The pace quickens and the reader is drawn closer to the action.

Here’s another telling move: mediating flashbacks. Compare two version of the same flashback:

“Jim thought of Blake with a smile, remembering how they first met on a plane to Mexico City. They were stuck in the middle aisle, sandwiched between two frat boys.”

“Jim and Blake met on a plane to Mexico City, in the middle aisle, sandwiched between two frat boys.”

IN CONCLUSION

Narration and exposition have a place in fiction but if that’s all you are doing, the reader will skim. Stick to your bones fiction is writing that reveals, that leaves room for interpretation. Let’s say you have this line: “Marty served his guests tea.” That’s fine but consider this version instead: “Marty’s mugs were a motley collection, branded freebies from conferences and radio station give-aways, the white ones stained with years of tea and coffee, most of them chipped.” The mugs show Marty’s mugs and the reader may draw further conclusions about his personality and home life from those mugs.

Writers have a tendency to worry too much about the reader. Take my hand, dear Reader, we seem to say. Allow me to be your tour guide on this journey. NO. STOP. Create the world, animate the characters, then get out of the way. Let the reader wander unchaperoned. Trust them to read between the lines and connect the dots. Be open to the narrative being understood in a different way than you intended. Your story will be stronger for a multiplicity of interpretations.

The next post (the last in the series) is a laundry list of advice.

How to revise your novel (part 3)

Originally posted: August 31, 2020

This is the third post in a series about novel revision. Part 1 considered characters and pace. Part two covered conflict, flashbacks, and thought vs. action. This post tackles beginnings, endings, and dialogue.

BEGINNING

If you are new to fiction, if this is your first novel, odds are good the true beginning of your story is lurking somewhere past the first few paragraphs/ scenes/ chapter. It’s very likely your prologue, beautifully written though it might be, is unnecessary. Especially if it spoilers the ending. Go find the real start of the story and then delete all the stuff that comes before.

Does your novel begin with a character waking up? (Mine does!) It might be fine but be warned that characters getting out of bed is a very, very common and cliched beginning. And now that I’ve told you this, you’ll start to notice it everywhere.

ENDING

I’ve blogged about endings before but it bears repeating: Do you need that epilogue? Really? Are you sure? Because 99.9% of the time, epilogues, like prologues, are unnecessary. In fact, the last sentence/ paragraph/ scene/ chapter of an early draft is usually redundant. Resist the urge to tie up all the loose ends. Trust the reader to get the story.

An earlier draft of Butter Tea at Starbucks had this final sentence: everything feels miraculous. Someone in my writing group suggested that last line was too on the nose so I removed it and sure enough, the ending was stronger.

DIALOGUE

A common issue in early drafts is an over-reliance on dialogue. It’s the rare, exceptional author who can successfully use direct dialogue to carry a story. Remember that there are many, many other ways to convey information to a reader including: action, narration, and scenery. And when you’re writing dialogue, don’t neglect summary and indirect dialogue.

Coming up next: show don’t tell.

How to revise your novel (part 2)

Originally posted: August 24, 2020

This is the second post in a series about novel revision. In part 1 we considered characters and pace. This post will tackle conflict, flashbacks, and thought vs. action.

CONFLICT

Or rather, lack thereof. After flat characters, lack of conflict is the second most common problem in manuscript after manuscript. Including my own! Being a published author doesn’t make you immune to shitty first drafts.

Are your characters too virtuous? Are they too obliging? Does every conversation end with everyone getting exactly what they want? Are you letting your characters off the hook too easily or too quickly? Put your characters in peril. Make them morally complicated and imperfect. Make the people in their lives intractable and difficult. Let bad things happen to your beloved protagonist. A common pitfall: dumping all the problems on the side-kick. That’s how hard we work to spare the protagonist! But now your sidekick has the more compelling storyline so why should the reader care about the supposed main character?

There is a scene in The Boat People where Mahindan is in a detention camp in Sri Lanka. The war is over and he’s trapped in a literal hell. In a very early draft, my writing group pointed out that in the entire scene, Mahindan was the only character who didn’t seem hungry/ in pain/ in physical discomfort/ scared. This was a huge failure of imagination on my part. I went back to the drawing board. Added hunger pains, insect bites, the ick factor of being without a bath, the hum of anxiety, the high pitch of terror. It took time to really settle into that uncomfortable difficult place with Mahindan. But writing is work. Suffer for your art.

FLASHBACKS AND OFF-STAGE

A while back I read a manuscript by a promising and talented author. Most of the scenes were framed inside a flashback. Now this framing structure can work well. The novel A Little Life is narrated in this structure and the device adds to the sense that life is happening in a circular way for the characters, blurring the lines between past and present. For that book, with its particular themes, and its excess of conflict and tension, the flashbacks worked. But that’s rare.

More often flashbacks, like minor characters, can be vestigial organs. You started writing without really knowing what was going to happen and mid-way through a scene you realized “oh, this important thing has to come first” and rather than pause the flow of your work, wrote that thing as a flashback. That’s a reasonable first draft strategy. But later, in revisions, scrutinize those flashbacks. Would the action unfold better in real time?

One sneaky way we writers avoid conflict  is by making it happen off-stage and/or in flashbacks. Flashbacks can be useful but they lack the immediacy, the heart-stopping quality, of real time events. So be sparing when you are utilizing it to relay senes of conflict. Similarly, if Banquo’s going to get knocked off, bring the action centre stage. Don’t fade to black just as the tension is rising and then have some characters recounting the big fight in the following scene. (Booooo! complains the reader)

THOUGHT VS. ACTION

Perhaps because the stories take place inside our own heads, many of us have a penchant for letting characters live too long inside their own heads too. Even if your main character is in a coma and the entire story is taking place in their dreams, there will still be action, right? The character will think they are out in the world running and jumping and having fights about the fence with the belligerent neighbour. And you have to convey those memories or dreams in such a way that it feels like it’s really happening.

Conversely, some manuscripts are all action and zero interior thought so that characters become puppets. The balance between inner and outer life will be different for every book but it is a balance. You can’t just have a character involved in a high speed car chase - say - without giving us some idea of what she’s thinking, how her heart is pounding, how her mind is racing, how her reflexes are taking over, why she’s doing this, what she hopes to gain, what she fears to lose etc.

The next post is about beginnings, endings, and dialogue.

How to revise your novel (part 1)

Originally posted: August 17, 2020

Manuscript evaluation is one of the things I do for a living. In a nutshell: I read someone’s manuscript and return detailed notes to get them started on re-writes. Every story is unique but there are several common issues that plague all our drafts (mine too). If you’re struggling to revise your manuscript, here are three things to watch for:

UNFORMED CHARACTERS

In early drafts most secondary characters are blanks and the antagonists are one-note. Protagonists might be morally complex and more fully formed but there’s often something still missing, usually motivation. What’s making them act destructive? Why are they so helpful? Why do they care so much about this issue/ person/ place/ thing? When it comes to characters, you need to interrogate them thoroughly until you know everything about them.

TOO MANY CHARACTERS

Squint at each character. Make sure they earn their place. Sometimes characters are vestigial organs. Though necessary at the start to help you understand the protagonist, you might find they’ve served their purpose by draft two or six. Thank them for their service and then let them go.

Two or more minor characters can often be merged into one. A couple of years ago I was reading my friend Jamie Fitzpatrick’s novel, The End of Music. There’s a character who appears on the first page, who sparks a nostalgic memory for the protagonist, Carter. Later, she re-appears unexpectedly as the manager at his mother’s nursing home. She’s a pretty minor character but plays a necessary role. In earlier drafts these had been two different characters but somewhere along the way Jamie’s editor advised him to merge them. The merger makes the story stronger. It gives the reader a little dopamine hit to meet the woman again and remember her from the first page. And her presence in both parts of his life strengthens the theme of nostalgia and memory (which his mother in her old age is losing).

PACE

When it comes to our own work, most of us are terrible judges of pace. But readers are very very good at sensing slow parts of the book. Does every scene advance plot and/or character (ideally both). If not, jettison the scene. Or strip it for parts to graft on elsewhere and trash the rest. Much of revising is also moving the puzzle pieces around. Swapping around scenes and chapters, shifting beats within a scene, passages of prose, action and so on. Think about arcs, not just character arcs, not just story arc, but the smaller arcs that happen within a scene or chapter or even a conversation. Are the stakes present early enough or do they arrive at the very end like a footnote. And if so, is this what you intend?

This is part one of a series on re-writing and revising. The next post covers conflict, flashback, and action.

Pay attention to your boredom

Originally posted: February 19, 2016

Podcasts are like opinions these days; everyone seems to have one. One of my favourites is Startup (the podcast about what it's like to start your own business). It's hosted by former NPR/ Planet Money guy Alex Blumberg and it's fantastic. If you haven't already listened, go have a binge.

“The first draft always sucks. Things want to be bad... the only way to get that stuff to be good is with editing.”
                                                           — Alex Blumberg

I was listening to this episode one evening and it stopped me short. Blumberg talks about how he and his team create their podcasts, how every second of tape is obsessively edited to catch and hold the listener's attention, to educate as well as entertain, and just how much effort goes into making that happen. Skip ahead to about 21 minutes in and listen to what he says about editing. If you're a writer, it will 100 per cent resonate.

"The first draft always sucks," Blumberg says. "Things want to be bad. Talented people with great ideas still produce horrible stuff and the only way to get that stuff to be good is with editing."

Let's savour that for a moment. Things want to be bad. The only solution is editing.

A few beats later, he says: "pay attention to where you are confused, annoyed, bored. A big part of editing is paying attention to your boredom."

If you listen to the episode, you'll see that much of what Blumberg and co. do in their edits is straight forward deletion, skipping past the verbal diarrhea, straight to the good stuff. And this is much of what I do in my edits too. Delete. Delete. Delete. Sentences, words, scenes, whole characters and subplots. Delete. Delete. Delete.

Originally, there were 50 extra (boring) words and the start of this post. Delete!

ps. Was this post helpful? If you’d like more feedback, specific to your project, you can hire my services. Get in touch for more info or a quote.