Into The Self-editing Storm I Go…

UPDATING… WIP - I never finished this entry and am working on an update.

At present, the self-editing process occupies much of my attention. I’ve created a large draft amounting to roughly 232,000 words. Truth be told, the work would have been even larger had I not staged a rewrite to cut 20,000 words from the opening chapters early in the writing process. But I don’t lament the loss of the content. It helped me develop my characters and taught me some valuable writing lessons.

To explain what prompted the rewrite I’ll use an analogy.

If anyone has ever seen the movie “A Christmas Story” think on the scene where Ralphie’s teacher gives his class a school assignment to write an essay. He pours every effort into the essay, writing about the merits of owning a Red Rider BB gun. As he writes his masterpiece, his imagination drifts to the image of how he anticipates his teacher will respond to his essay. Day-dreaming, the scene cuts to his teacher berating all the poorly written papers until she comes to Ralphie’s exposition. Overcome with emotion, she writes an A++ on the paper and praises Ralphie for his exquisite piece of work.

That was me. I was Ralphie. When I wrote the first sixty thousand words of my book, I thought I was on the cusp of greatness. My story would instantly be recognized as a fine work of art. Though I may be exaggerating, I did think my story was good. I had enjoyed the creative process and how the story was evolving.

Reality check - As I immersed myself into writing, I recognized how new I was to the process and the industry. I contacted a published author through a mutual friend, and she was kind enough to put me in touch with a budding editor. The editor took me under her wing to provide some valuable feedback. I shared the opening chapters and she took painstaking time to review the work and send me constructive feedback. As in the case of Ralphie, I envisioned receiving a glowing report back from the editor.

Thought in truth, my purpose for consulting with her was to get a feel for the merits of my work - was I wasting my time, or did the story warrant continued development? She neither extolled or berated my writing. Instead she addressed several elements needing work.

First Element – Taking too long to get to the plot. I spent considerable time developing my character and hashing it out through his wandering of the land. Though the content provided excellent background for the reader and made the main character very likeable, it lacked conflict and direction. It was boring. So, I had to scrap much of it in the interest of moving the reader closer to the opening conflicts and plot.

Second Element – Passive vs Active voice. I had written much of my work using passive voice. Rather than have the characters experience things firsthand, I had them being acted upon by their environment. Such writing detracts from the immersive experience most readers crave. A reader needs to experience things through the eyes of the character so that they are part of the story rather than having it told to them.

Third Element – Closely related to the first element is the use of the words “was” and “were”. I was guilty of overusing the two words. I did a word count of the draft and had an excessively high count of the two words. Following is an example of original composition and the follow up improvement.

• Draft 1 (Original) – The work was done in about three hours and the road was now completely free for wheeled traffic to resume travel.

• Draft 4 (Improved) – After about three hours of effort, the four men successfully cleared the road allowing traffic to resume.

Fourth Element – Show vs Tell. I tended to tell a story rather than show it through the experiences of the characters. The editor recommended that I adjust my writing to create more of a first hand experience.

Examples:

• Draft 1 (Tell): Josephine felt sad.

• Draft 2 (Show): Josephine left the room, climbing the stairs out of sight of the others. She leaned her head against the wall and wept bitterly.

Fifth Element – Dialogue. The editor pointed out that I had a dearth of dialogue. In my defense, my mc was wandering a land with his horses, so the opportunities were fewer in nature. But I fixed this with cutting much of the wandering and pulling forward the encounters.

In closing I would make the point that you can’t be afraid to cut material to create a better product. I read in an article somewhere of an author who often wrote well over twenty thousand words only to scrap much of it just to flesh out the direction and nature of her characters. If you can imagine, early in my writing efforts I was flabbergasted by such a wonton disposal of crafted material. I could not imagine how someone could throw away written material, but now after the fact I fully understand the journey.

UPDATING… WIP