Fascinating Authors

We’ve just finished a scene, chapter, short story or novel. Yes!

Now what? Play a round of golf? Have a cocktail? Go out for dinner? We all celebrate differently. None of us wants to look at the manuscript for six months.

But within days we’re back at it, figuring a few cosmetic revisions will do. Until, that is, we begin reading our stuff and realize that the editing process is going to take a resolute act of will. Oh, the drudgery!

“Opportunity disguised as work” gives us a pretty good definition of revision. The word itself—re-vision—provides a clue. Editing not only enables us to correct minor mistakes of misspelling, diction, punctuation and the like, it also allows us to rethink many aspects of our work. A series of questions helps. Can this or that character be better defined? Should he come across as evil as he does, or should he have a few more redeeming qualities? Should the heroine be so pure? Would a little wavering in the face of temptation make her more realistic and a stronger person when she prevails?

We can pose such questions for every facet of the work in question. Let’s look at a few of them.

Voice and tone. Are they appropriate? Are the diction, dialogue and narrative consistent, or do they contain conflicting elements? Have we used humor appropriately and in the correct situations? I recently read a thriller manuscript about a new ebola-like virus decimating African villages. The writer describes in horrific terms a young African girl dying, her eyes bulging out “like an elephant was posing for a picture on her stomach.” Aside from the poor grammar, the grotesquely comical image of the simile is out of place and destroys the tone and tension the writer is trying to convey.

Similes and metaphors. Are they suitable? A more basic question, are there too many? Rule of thumb: start chopping if we have more than one per chapter. They bring attention to themselves and make it tougher for readers to maintain their willing suspension of disbelief, which is always fragile. A while back, I read a manuscript that sometimes had three or more similes on a page, most of them outlandish. Faulkner advised writers to get rid of their darlings. Similes and metaphors are a good place to start.

Pace. Does the story move along? Readers want some ebb and flow. Three hundred pages of action wouldn’t work, nor would an interior monologue of such proportions, James Joyce notwithstanding. We shouldn’t introduce a character in a scene and then go into a two-page back story in order to explain everything she’s going to say and do for the rest of the story. Worse, let’s not interrupt an action scene with back story. And interior monologues are fine so long as we keep them brief, interesting and germane to the story.

Dialogue. Does it snap and crackle, or is it wooden and predictable? Does it move the plot forward? Reveal character? Get right to the point? Too much small talk? Do all the characters sound alike, or do their speech patterns differentiate them? Dialogue makes or breaks every scene. We need to study dialogue intensely and put it to work. This becomes critical during revision.

Showing and telling. It’s so easy to tell through exposition. And it’s so easy for readers to fall asleep while we tell them what’s going on. If we want them wide-awake, we’d better show them, through action and dialogue, what you want them to see. Ever wonder why movies are also called shows? Or why many people who never pick up a book are avid movie-goers? One answer to both questions: because movies show what’s happening. A voice-over may be part of cinema technique, but showing is the essence of the movie experience. How many people would sit through a movie listening to a voice-over with pretty pictures in the background?

Point of view. Third person works best for most writers. First person stands next in line, and omniscient should find a chair across the street and down the block, at least for beginning writers. Whichever we choose, we have to stay there and not lapse into the others. Doing so might be an easy way to get certain things across to readers, but it will also confuse them and keep them from getting immersed in the story. Although we can change our POV character from time to time, we should never do it within a scene. Never.

These are some high points. We write with heat, but revise with cool reflection so that our readers will keep turning pages. Self-editing is our single best opportunity to make that happen.