Tag Archives: editing

When Editing Is Done Well, Everything Falls Into Place Naturally

  By Eleni | August 30, 2012 - 07:00 | , ,
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As of August 24th, I finished my final pass of Jessie’s Song, and it’s now ready for a professional edit.  I even wrote a song to accompany the book which one of my daughters will sing.

Jessie’s Song went through several incarnations, beginning life as a high-concept screenplay I wrote for a screenwriting class. There were several instances where I wanted to drag the Final Draft file to the trash  because I didn’t like Markos Adams, the protagonist.  He began life as a hit man,  evolved into a police officer, and when I decided to do it my way, he found his authentic voice as a jazz musician. It was then that the story sprung to life and was one of the reasons I made the transition from screenwriter to novelist; I wanted to see what made Markos Adams tick inside.  As a side note: Unison also had its beginnings as a screenplay, with only two characters. Now it’s a full-blown epic with a large cast. Talk about story evolution!

LESSONS LEARNED

  • Never give up on a story, especially one with a strong concept and hook.  Once you get it to where it should be, you’ll be a truly satisfied—and  happy writer!
  • Don’t allow an instructor, or anyone else,  steer you away from your vision because that will only lead to confusion and A LOT more rewrites. I have fourteen Final Draft revision files from Jessie’s Song! That’s at least ten two many.  Take only advice that will help you advance in your craft. Incidentally, my screenwriting class was excellent, and I learned a lot from the instructor. I just wasn’t confident enough in my own abilities as a writer to make an authorial  stand.

During the last pass, I cut over 4,200 superfluous words and added a little more than 2000 that deepened the tone and characterization. Through this whole process, I noticed I was harsher on my work than my beta readers. They never took issue with the threads I ended up cutting. This all leads to my suspicion that if you, as an author, can maintain complete objectivity during an edit, you make your own best beta reader. I say this because it’s your book, and no one knows the story as well as you do. I’m not saying  beta readers aren’t necessary. They helped me find a plethora of typos and inconsistencies, but as far as the pacing was concerned, none of them took issue with it. Granted, I do have an extremely short-attention span that might have something to do with my sensitivity to pacing.  In real life, I’m a get-to-your-point-and-make it kind of gal, and that’s how I write my stories. During my final read through, when I sensed even the slightest bit of  drag.  I looked at each chapter and ended up cutting out four chapters.

  • Not necessary to the resolution or advancement of the plot.
  • The cost of the book. Unison’s final word count is at 534 pages! To use extended distribution for a physical book, it would cost eighteen dollars minimum to make a profit. I thought about cutting the word count, but this is the way the story had to be told for me to get my vision across…and readers would still pay more by having to buy two books anyway.  I decided to stall extended distribution for a couple of months until my Kindle edition comes out.
  • I want people with short-attention spans, like yours truly,  to ready my book as well!

MAKING THE CUTS

I reflected over  the book blurb to reconnect to the main idea of my story. Jessie’s Song is a paranormal mystery about Markos Adams, whose daughter is kidnapped, and the ransom calls for his suicide. While most of the journey deals with his search for the kidnapper,  Markos is haunted by visions that make him, along with all those close to him, doubt his interpretations of events. As Markos believes a childhood rival has something to do with the kidnapping, he reflects over his past.  He understands he may have to take his life and looks to his past in an attempt to uncover a motive for what’s happening in the present. These are the necessary plot points to tell the story effectively.

I had to nest chapters from Markos’s past in a way that wouldn’t break up the urgency of the plot. In my first draft, I arranged the chapters and threads on the big cork board seen here on the right. I erroneously believed the chapters would remain where they were, but my mid-point ended up coming in way too late. After I rearranged the chapters in this last read through, I took out a weak thread between Markos and a woman with whom he had a short fling.  Its function was to demonstrate how Markos had evolved from his past, but I realized it was no longer necessary because I depicted enough growth in the main thread.

As I got to the end of my edit, I took out a chapter that dealt with Markos’s estranged wife. I didn’t think that particular chapter would be chopped because she’s an important character. There was also some excellent dialogue.  While it worked well in the screenplay, it wasn’t necessary for the advancement or resolution of the plot in novel form, and it slowed down the third act.  Chop, chop, chop went another darling, and my mid-point ended up where it belonged…in the middle.

The more I write, the more I realize that storytelling is a precise science. Ensuring my structure is solid has become the most important part of an edit for me. When the plot  moves forward, without any distractions or going off-point,  everything  seemingly falls into place as if by design.

I’ve oftentimes joked about how it would be nice if I knew I wouldn’t need a chapter before I write it; however most of my over-writing ends up adding more depth to my characters. After I release Jessie’s Song, I’ll put up the chopped darlings on my website. One way or another, they will be read!

Love and light,

Eleni

Sculpting A Story

  By Eleni | July 24, 2012 - 09:09 | , , ,
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I started my novel, Unison, in February  of 2011, and officially wrote the end in June of 2012.  During this whole time period, I woke up with this story on my mind, and it was the last thing I thought about when I went to bed.   For a person with my short attention span, this is a long period of time to spend on one project!

It’s true that no matter how many times we polish our manuscripts, there will always be room for improvement. This is what makes it so difficult to know when to let go.

While working on my first draft, I concentrate on getting the story down, and I clean up as I go along. In my second pass, I do more clean-up; removing redundancies, overused words and grammar mistakes. In the third pass, I begin to sculpt the manuscript into what it’s intended to be. This is when I start to see the story come to life. I can sometimes spend hours shaping one paragraph. This is also the stage when the self-doubts about my story show up. When sentences don’t line up, metaphors sound contrived, or the third act doesn’t seem exciting or fulfilling enough, I start to wonder if I have it in me to finish. I ignore these doubts because the discomfort over an unfinished work is a normal part of the process of creating art.  It may sound simplistic, but it works for me, and it keeps me going.

 

My focus when sculpting a manuscipt:

1. Go with instinct

2. Make it sing

3. Wordsmithing

4. Connections

 

Go With Instinct

I don’t say this lightly, and I also go with instinct during the plotting and writing stage as well.  I’m currently in the polishing stage of Jessie’s Song, and I’ve already had plenty of moments where I got tired and wondered if all this time and effort make any difference.  This has been my most challenging story because it went through so many changes. It started out as a high-concept screenplay I’d written for a screenplay class. The main character was initially a hit man who later evolved into a police man in the third draft. My confusion came because I was taking a lot of advice from a screenwriting instructor, who is great at teaching the craft, but our personal styles were very different. This is why it’s essential, as a writer, to gain confidence in your abilities because if you rely on someone else to tell you how a story should go, you’ll be writing their story. I should state here most screenwriters must compromise their vision because there are others involved in the process. There’s a lot of team work involved, and unless you’re Woody Allen, you’re going to have to make adjustments to your work.

One of the reasons I started to write novels was because I didn’t want to compromise. I know where my story wants to go.  Because I gave myself the opportunity to see my story to the end,  changes made to my screenplay won’t bother me as much. I find it amusing how my ego kicks into play here, but I don’t view it negatively, in this regard. Our ego is the tool we use to experience the world. We can either use it to work for or against us.  I may write a blog about this topic soon.

While I was busy rewriting all the drafts to Jessie’s Song, my spiritual path forced me to change direction, and I couldn’t write the screenplay I started out writing. There was too much violence along with an incest thread. That was a whole other issue I wasn’t comfortable with. However, I liked the inner-journey of the story, and I didn’t want to give up on it, but I did…for a while.

After I completed my first draft of Unison, I decided to turn Jessie’s Song into a novel.  I changed the protagonist to a jazz musician and took out the incest backstory, replacing it with a childhood rivalry between two friends. This shift strengthened the theme in that the protagonist and the antagonist both were raised in a similar environment and yet turned out very differently. I found it fascinating to explore what makes one person deal with hardship in a productive way while another one gives up.  This leads me to my next point.

How can we tell if we’re going against our instincts?

If something doesn’t feel right, that’s one sign that tells me I’m going against my instincts. Jessie’s Song went through so many changes because I didn’t listen to my writer’s instinct.  Sometimes, the problem isn’t as obvious. When I first began editing, I ignored sentences that didn’t feel right, as long as they were grammatically correct. I started to notice that through each pass, these areas would continue to bother me…even though nothing was wrong with them! And then something hit me after I spent almost two hours on one paragraph. Words are like musical notes!

Make It Sing

Just like in poetry, from word to word and sentence to sentence, there’s a beat to the narrative and dialogue. I noticed if I put important words on the down beat, this solved a lot of problems with the flow of the text!

From [word] to [word] and [sentence] to [sentence], there’s a [beat] to the [narrative] and [dialogue].

In my example above, from, starts on the pick up, and the down beat lands on word.   All the nouns are on the up beat. When I first picked up on this, I knew this would help cut down  my editing time even further. It used to drive me crazy when I couldn’t figure out why a sentence didn’t work when there was seemingly nothing wrong with it. It was the rhythm that was off!.  Even when I play it back using text-to-speech, it follows the exact same rhythm!

Tip for non-musicians:  tap your hand on the table while listening to the problem sentence. Once you pick up the rhythm,  note when you hand lands on the table…that’s the down beat.  You may notice the focus words are weak.  Try adding and taking away words until the right words are on the downbeat.

Wordsmithing

Aside of the usual search for the best active verbs and strengthening of metaphors and meaning, I look for unusual verbs and nouns to ensure I don’t overuse them. I’m reading a book now where the author used the word, waft, seven times in the book, and I’m only fifty percent through. There’s nothing wrong with how the author used the word, but it did pull me out of the story where I  took the time to count how many times it was used.  Sometimes ordinary verbs work better to keep the reader involved in the story. It’s definitely a balancing act!

In Unison, one of my beta readers got annoyed over how many times I used the words, dome dungeon. When I read it the second time, I already noticed I overused  the words, but I hadn’t yet reached the stage of cutting out everything that didn’t feel right.  After the comment was made I went in and did some drastic cutting, and it flowed much better.

Connections

In addition to wordsmithing, I look for connections that I can use to link events together in a meaningful way. In many books I read, this is the most neglected area aside of mystery novels that are loaded with connections. Personally, I find connections to be one of the most important parts of sculpting a story. It’s what makes it feel like the sum of its parts. In my paranormal thriller, Jessie’s Song, my protagonist, Markos Adams, plays guitar, and he has a strong aversion to Gibson guitars. It started off as a joke, but the reason behind his aversion was revealed to me yesterday. His  displeasure for an instrument transformed a mediocre chapter ending into something extremely profound.

The little things in a story can also help make a reader connect with a character and add a level of sentimentality. A cup of Bengali spiced tea shared between Markos and his wife also took on a deeper meaning in my story. It’s within these little things that we can attach a bigger meaning.

Tip:  look through various props, idiosyncrasies and character preferences in your manuscript and see if you can use them in a larger way. Sprinkle them in throughout the whole story.

Reaching The Finish Line

After my story is sculpted, I send my manuscript over to my beta readers, whom I ask to be as brutal and nit-picky as they can possibly be. With Unison, I went over the manuscript a fourth time because it has various timelines going on, eight in all! I wanted to ensure I didn’t mess any of them up, and sure enough  I did. After I finished, I sent my manuscript to the editor, and when I got it back I did a fifth read-through, and this is when I realized my manuscript graduated into a novel. At this point, I wasn’t afraid to let anyone read it. That’s how I knew I was finished. The feeling of accomplishment was amazing because I didn’t compromise and stuck it out.   I’m going to use Unison as a benchmark for all future books.  It’s been an exciting, exhausting and fulfilling journey and one I want to travel as many times as I can in my lifetime.

Love and light,

Eleni