Writing is definitely rewriting

 

This is so true it has almost become a cliché.

I submitted a novel for consideration to a publisher yesterday.  On the online form I had to say whether it had been edited. Unashamedly I picked “yes” from the drop down list. I’ve been through it at least eighteen times. And I always check each section three times as I write. I always think that what you don’t spot in three readings at one sitting you’re not going to spot until you get some distance from the work.

It can seem daunting that when you’ve done all of this work an editor will still find something else to comment on. But the cleaner the text, the more effective the editor’s input will be and the more the text will shine afterwards.

I always concentrate on one aspect of the work each time I edit, though I will pick up other matters as well as I go through on every check.

Here is my checklist for editing my YA books:

1.      Is the overall structure sound?  - hook, inciting incident, increasing complexities, crisis, climax –

2.      Is the resolution satisfying?

3.      Overall time scale

4.      Check format and length against target market / reader

1)      Mixed genre

2)      Emotional closeness

3)      Leaving reader to decide

4)      Pushing boundaries

5)      Fast paced / high stakes

6)      Characters resemble young adults

7)      Bildungsroman

5.      Characters. Are they consistent? Do they develop? Do you know everything about them that you should?

6.      Is it convincing? Is there cause and effect?

7.      Is there conflict and tension? Are there peaks and troughs?

8.      Does the pace vary?

9.      Dialogue

1.      It should not be too natural

2.      It should only say important things

3.      It should differentiate characters' voices

4.      When angry, becomes childish

5.      Should take 2/3 of popular book

6.      Should convey mood, character and reaction

7.      Every speech should give information

10.  Detail and description should be slipped in small chunks.

11.  Point of View – is it consistent and if it “zooms” does it do so in a reasonable way? 

12.  Show, don’t tell.

13.  Kill off your darlings.

14.  Get rid of clichés

15.  Overall flow (read out loud)

16.  Copy edit

My Ten Rules of Writing

Everyone else seems to do this so I thought I’d better do it too. I wonder, though whether this changes from day to day and I’d imagine it certainly would over a period of time. I wonder also whether one or two items are actually constants. Here’s today’s list of ten, anyway.    

1.      Write every day

Yes, write absolutely every day. To me writing is like cleaning your teeth – I feel uncomfortable if I don’t do it. I actually have a two hour rule – write at least two hours a day. It used to be one hour and / or 1,000 words. I upped it to two hours and 2,000 words when I got a contract for a non-fiction book. 

I started the one hour / 1,000 words when I still had a demanding day job and two teenage children. I managed it somehow. I’d say to those even busier – start really small. Maybe ten minutes a day. You’re less likely to talk yourself out of it as you’re more likely to find the ten minutes. More often than not you’ll manage more.

And every day means every day. Today is Sunday and I’m on holiday in Scotland.   

2.      Don’t beat yourself up because you can’t manage it one day

Life happens. I have a day job – one that is very apt for a writer and keeps me in contact with writing. Sometimes, however, the demands of that day job are such that I don’t get time for my writing. I don’t fret if there is day on which I really cannot write. I know I’ll be able to again soon.  There is no question of not being able to.

3.      Don’t wait for inspiration

Because it probably won’t come. It doesn’t usually come, anyway, when I’m sat at my desk. That is really an info dump.  I’ve done all of the thinking elsewhere and else when. It’s surprising, though, what does start happening as you hit the keys. Other ideas creep in round the edges.

And even on days when I think I’ve got absolutely nothing to say, I just start typing and out comes the story.  

4.      Writing is mainly rewriting

Such a cliché but it’s so true. What takes me three months to write takes me up to eighteen months to edit.  

5.      Write what you know

Yet I write fantasy, science fiction and historical fiction. However, I would still say I am writing what I know. I submerge myself into the scenes I am creating. I become at one with them. It almost becomes a form of method acting. I am writing from what I know, from what I am when I confront the monster, when I visit another world and when I’m in Nazi Germany.

6.      You never finish, you just abandon

There comes a time when you have to meet the deadline, when you have to send your work out into the world, when it has to become public. If you had more time you would write it even better. We are perfectionist and we never achieve perfection. Thankfully we continue to improve. Be pleased that all of your work leads to your best work. Treat earlier works kindly.

7.      Write what you love

Write what you are passionate about. Take care not to become a disillusioned jobbing writer. If you don’t like the compromise the market forces on you, then earn your daily bread another way. Don’t compromise, anyway. Find a third way that suits both you and the market.

8.      Don’t ever give up

You can make it as a writer if you really want to. It’s a big “if”, however. You’ll have to face rejection, self-doubt and even disappointing reviews once you are published. Keep faith with yourself.

9.      Take the time to do nothing

You can’t give and give and give. You need to nourish your own soul. You need some experiences to feed your writing. Take a stroll in the park, walk through a colourful market or sip a hot drink in crowded café.

10.  Read, read, read

You’ve probably picked up most of your writing skills by a form of osmosis from reading. Now that your inner editor has developed you’ll probably not enjoy reading quite the same way you used to.  You’ll notice the misplaced apostrophe, the clunky sentence and the strained dialogue but you’ll also notice the well-drawn character, the strong sense of time and place and the tightly written prose. Whether you label what you read as good or as bad writing you will still learn from it.                                      

Rewriting: more about addition or subtraction?

Which is it?

I was fascinated by a debate recently about whether editing / rewriting was more about adding or taking away. One of my MA students recently said that once he had edited his text it would be slightly over the 12,000 words required and that currently it was slightly under.  Mark Twain famously said that if he had had more time he would have written less. In the debate I followed, some writers were saying that their edited drafts were longer than their originals. Others said the opposite. So I started watching myself very carefully. I was already convinced I did both.

What tends to make drafts longer

It’s usually where I’ve been telling instead of showing. Of course, sometimes it’s okay to tell and an experienced writer has a sense of how to get the balance between the two right. We take short cuts in the 21^st century anyway as we don’t need as much detailed description. Say “New York” and even people who have never been there get an image. But the scenes I need to extend are usually the ones where I’ve been lazy. I need to show my reader that my character is uncomfortable by the way he acts and / or thinks. I need to create a film in my reader’s head similar to the one I have in my own.

Sometimes a whole scene is missing. It’s almost as if I’ve forgotten to spell something out to the reader. We are hampered by our intimate knowledge of our characters and stories. An extra scene can sometimes help to ground the reader more.

Sometimes I want to avoid using the word “said” too much. I certainly don’t want to substitute it with another word other than maybe “whispered” or “shouted” and I may have those there already. Yet the speech needs assigning. At that point it’s useful to have the character who speaks perform a relevant action:

 “I’ve no idea.” Barney frowned and looked away.  

What tends to make drafts shorter

Sometimes I discover that it’s just not necessary to say something. I do like to have my young adult characters say one thing and think another. But sometimes it’s obvious that that’s what a character thinks from a previous action.

I tend to use “seemed to”, “was ….ing” and “suddenly” too often. A more direct language is often more effective. “Suddenly he seemed to be sitting on the sofa,” is stronger as “He sat down on the sofa.”

Sometimes a whole scene is not needed at all. This happens especially near the beginning of a novel or a story. So often those opening paragraphs / chapters are there simply to help the writer into the story.

We’re all guilty from time to time of expanded sentences: “It was a great disappointment to him that the museum was closed on Wednesday afternoons.” Why not just “He was disappointed that the museum was closed on Wednesday afternoon.”?

All of these, though, stay if they’re part of the character’s voice. It tends to be fine in conversation anyway.

Just changing

This is usually about finding something better than the accepted cliché.            

The clay-modelling analogy

My second and subsequent drafts d tend to come out a little longer than the first ones, despite there being more examples of reasons to extract text than to add it. I guess those scenes that need to be shown rather than told account for that. In fact, though, I take away almost as much as I add. I reshape a fair bit too.

It is a little like clay-modelling. The first draft gets out the basic shape. Then you add a little clay here, take a little away there and reshape as you go. You know about what needs to be done with your text the same way as you know what needs to be done with the clay. In the end it is intuitive rather than rule-bound.