What Work Does It Do?

The first few drafts of a novel generally result in a large conglomeration of words. Here is a quick and easy way to initiate revisions.

1. Write a short description of each scene.
2. Note what work the scene does.

Scenes work by:

• advancing the plot
• introducing characters
• elucidating characters
• showing how characters react to their world
• eliminating characters
• laying a foundation for an upcoming event
• building or releasing suspense
• building or destroying relationships between characters
• laying a clue
• exposing a red herring
• advancing or thwarting the protagonist
• advancing or thwarting the antagonist
• ratcheting up the tension
• creating a turning point

If I missed something, please tell me in the comments.

If you can’t identify what work a scene does in about two seconds, the scene probably has to be cut. Go ahead, re-read that scene. Try again to answer the work question. Any luck?

At this point I often come up with excuses: It provides backstory. It has a great description. It’s funny. Bah.

If you want a tight novel, every scene has to work for a living. 

The Five Stages of Revision

1.  Wallowing. The writer has just re-read a first draft or received an in-depth critique. An overwhelming amount of work is required to turn this pile of words into coherence, let alone greatness. The mistake I often make during this stage is forgetting that the operative word in self-pity is self. No one cares how bad I think my manuscript is.

2.  Mud Wrestling. Ideas are slippery and hard to pin down. It’s easy to regress into wallowing. This is a time to experiment with new concepts and techniques. Anything that doesn’t work can go back into the murk. With determination, the writer can progress to …

3.  Running the Marathon. Points to remember:

• You can’t see the finish from the starting line.
• This is the land of The Tortoise and the Hare. It’s okay to change roles occasionally. It’s okay to take naps. Eventually the race must be finished.
• There will be dead-ends and detours.
• You may need to plot a new course.

4.  Rinse and Repeat. The marathon may need to be run again. And again. No one said this was easy.

5.  Spit and Polish. The novel has now has structure, real characters, six-pack abs and a killer ending. Where did all those needless words come from? Doesn’t that sentence need a coma? Find a place to read out loud.

On Practicing

Everyone has heard the old joke.

Q: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

A: Practice.

While practicing improves the performance of any skill, many of us resent, postpone or even shun practicing.

The ACT college entrance exam is given early in March, so I’m in tutoring crunch time. I tell my students that practicing on sample tests will increase their speed in answering questions. As few things are as mind-numbing as ACT practice tests, it’s safe to say that none of my students has ever done her homework.

Recently, I asked my son, Jeremy, how to get students to practice.

“Scare them,” he said.

“Um, what?” I asked.

“My guitar teacher writes a metronome setting, and I’m so scared, I practice until I can play that fast.”

That approach works for Jeremy because he owns the problem. He understands that becoming a great guitar player includes the ability to play fast with clean articulation. My students don’t see how recognizing an Oxford comma or a 3-4-5 right triangle will help them excel in college. Imagine that!

My mother used to say, “Practice makes perfect.” But how do writers practice?

Trunk novels: Few writers publish the first novel they tried to write. All those manuscripts languishing on my hard drive have honed my writing skills.

Writing exercises: I do fewer of these than I used to. Perhaps it’s time to revisit the literary version of scales and arpeggios.

Free writing: See above.

Revision: Re-writing and re-envisioning are essential. It’s safe to say I practice revising every day.

First Lines

Recently I was tagged in a Facebook game that challenged writers to post the first lines of the first three chapters in their work –in-progress then name other writers to do the same. I didn't play because I have a personal rule about not doing chain-letter type things. But I did examine the first lines of the chapters in my new project. They needed work.

It’s easy to begin a chapter with the time and place and a description of what the character is doing, but this game got me thinking about sentences that I wouldn't mind posting for all of cyberspace to read. Several of my first lines could be modified to become more compelling. A dull first line gives busy readers a chance to put the book down.

There is much written about ending chapters with a cliffhanger, a poignant moment or an unresolved subplot. That’s great, but an interesting chapter ending is only half the job. 

Blog? What Blog?

I have not abandoned Words and Pixels, but life has been busy. My older son graduated from the University of Michigan in Pure Math. My younger son completed his first year at the Berklee College of Music in Boston – and needed us to drive him back to Michigan. I’m doing the penultimate revision (before submission) of THE WIND DJIN, tutoring for the ACT, and noticing my garden is full of weeds. 

While I’m contemplating a real blog post, I’ll direct you to agent Jill Corcoran’s blog. Martha Alderson is offering a video series, “How to Revise Your Adult, YA or MG Novel.” I haven’t seen this video, but I did watch an excellent YouTube series by Martha on plotting.  

Also Deborah Halverson’s blog, Dear Editor, has a series of interviews with such luminaries as Marla Frazee, Jean Ferris, Joni Rodgers, Warren Fahy and Denise Grover Swank. These are definitely on my to-read-soon list.

Mark Your Calendars

The lives of most characters revolve around the school/work week or the seasons – depending on the genre. I like to use a calendar as a revision tool. I draw a grid and label it with the days of the week and the names of the months, scaling it to the time span of my novel. I note major plot events on the appropriate spaces. 

In my current project, timing is particularly important because my protagonist is a potter. My initial estimates of the time required to throw, dry, fire, glaze and re-fire pottery were too short. After I adjusted the pottery schedule, I noticed other time-related issues. Some events happened too quickly, while others were unrealistically delayed. 

A calendar provides a simplified view of a novel on a single page. I can trace the narrative arc without getting bogged down in details. A calendar is also a useful tool for tracking pacing. I can easily see how many events happen on a given day and how much time elapses between events. 

Recalcitrant Chapters

Some chapters fight back. They induce procrastination, or stall repeatedly. Some chapters insist on being boring, or they steer the novel off course. Some chapters get worse with every revision. 

It happens to everyone, and the reasons are plentiful.

• Nothing is happening in the chapter.
• Too much is happening in the chapter.        
• The subject is painful for the writer or close to a difficult memory.
• The chapter actually belongs in another book.
• The writer doesn’t yet understand what the chapter is supposed to achieve. 

My solution is adapted from a technique we used in the lab when experiments didn’t work. 

Figure out three ways to fix it, and try them all. 

• Brainstorm until you come up with three completely different approaches to the chapter.
• Outline all of them. (Forget the Roman numerals and indentations. Simply make a list of events and note character emotions and changes.)
• Compare the pros and cons of each approach within the milieu of the novel.
• Write the one you like best.
• If it still doesn’t work, try another approach you’ve outlined. 

 This is my world right now. Welcome to Chapter 11.

Writing Days

Today I’m off to the café of a local independent bookstore to have a writing day with at least one member of my critique group. These writing days are invariably productive. Sitting across from hard-working people tends to keep my brain on task. Also, going to a different writing location not only removes household distractions but somehow inspires new ideas. 

I’m currently working on a hard-copy revision. I print my novel then correct it with a red pen. Some problems are more obvious on the printed page than on the screen. I hope to get through the last third of the manuscript today.

Adding Details

Nothing beats firsthand experience for writing authentic sensory details. I know of two authors who walked barefoot in the snow, one who slurped raw turtle eggs, and another learned how to fire a flintlock rifle. 

In my novel, my protagonist must crawl through a tunnel while wearing a long skirt. The scene needed details. I considered crawling through a plastic tube on a kids’ climbing apparatus, but those tunnels are significantly bigger than the one in my novel. I constructed a small tunnel by balancing a sofa cushion over a chair arm and an end table. I put on my one long skirt and made the crawl. My first discovery was I couldn’t make it through on my hands and knees. I had to drop down to my elbows. My protagonist’s sleeves would get wet and dirty. Then my lower back hit the top, so I had to slide forward in almost a combat crawl. Her poor outfit! Then the knot I’d tied in the skirt to keep it out of the way came undone. Of course my furniture construction project was a cushier option than the stone tunnel facing my main character, but the details still helped me improve the scene. 

What have you done to make your novel realistic?

Value Added

I promised to post about the Value Added aspect of going through Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. First let me say the exercises are extremely useful. They also require thought, time and hard work. 

Between the exercises, Maass includes a page or two of explanatory material in which he explains his ideas and illustrates them with passages from novels. Usually when reading these passages, I realize that my novel could use a passage that is similar in some way. Character B never explains exactly how Character D makes him feel, or Character A needs a stronger reaction to [plot event], or Characters A and E need to have a bigger argument. I write all these ideas on a separate page, and when the exercises get too challenging, I go back and write these scenes. 

It’s working so far.

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words

Last week, I blogged about my protagonist’s decision making process. I noted the passages that referred to the decision and assigned them a numerical ranking ranging from -10 = pretending the problem doesn’t exist to +10 = sealing the bargain. That means, the lower the number, the more negative my protagonist is, and the higher the number, the more positive she is.

Today, I graphed the numerical ranking vs. line number. Deciding to embark on the hero’s journey was neither straightforward nor easy. 

Since my numerical analyses make some you crazy, here’s Herbie Mann covering If (a Picture Paints a Thousand Words) by Bread.

Speaking of pictures, that album cover was ranked one of the worst of all time.

Big Decisions

Commitments are tough, especially for protagonists who are faced with embarking on the hero’s journey. My main character is no different. A recent critique of my novel mentioned my protagonist’s inner debate was too short. 

After revising, I created a table to track my main character’s state of mind. I copied every passage that dealt directly this decision and pasted the quote into my table along with the chapter and page. Then I invented a scoring scale to monitor her feelings about the decision.  

0 = neutral
-4 = avoidance
-7 = saying no outright
-10 = pretending the problem never existed
+4 = waffling, but in a positive way
+7 = saying yes out loud
+10 = sealing the bargain. 

Of course some passages fell between these markers.  

I learned she spends over 1000 words considering the problem. (I’m still waffling about whether this is enough.) Originally, her decision was postponed twice by interruptions. (I got rid of one interruption to reduce scene similarity.) The table allows me to see how she makes up her mind. Often it’s one step forward, two steps back. Perhaps that’s normal, or maybe she’s doing the cha-cha.

First Lines and Last Lines

Yesterday at a writing day, I tried Anna J. Boll’s suggestion for analyzing the first lines of each chapter. The goal of the exercise is to keep the reader turning pages. 

I cut and pasted the first line of every chapter into a new document. Not only did I have a mini representation of my novel contained in a single page, I also got to compare patterns. I highlighted forms of the verb “to be” in yellow and references to time in purple. I underlined looser sentences. Then I started revising. In the end I rewrote most of the sentences. To be fair, I rewrote most of the opening paragraphs.  

Then I did the same thing with the last lines in each chapter, keeping an eye on how frequently I ended with a cliffhanger, irony or other enticements to keep reading. I found Anna’s technique to be an extremely effective revising tool. 

Also, thank you Gina and Juliet for posting another of my pictures on City Muse Country Muse.

The Three-Dimensional Solution

My Work-In-Progress involves an imaginary town with a road, a river and buildings. I drew a map and wrote the draft. Somewhere in the third revision, I discovered geography problems. Some of my characters were on the wrong side the river, and there is no bridge. I re-drew the map, but there were still issues. Finally, I decided I needed to see the town in 3D. I got a very old, very dusty set of Duplos from the basement and built the town. The model helped me identify where the problems were. Now I’m revising with geography and geometry in mind. 

Sometimes it takes more than a map. Here's some Duplo-building music.

 

Update

Just when I'd been happily ignoring my blog, it wins an award. Thank you, Juliet and Gina at City Muse Country Muse.

They are also going to use some of my previously unpublished pictures as writing prompts for their blog. I'll post a link when that happens, but don't wait to check out City Muse Country Muse. Their poetry is breathtaking.  

In other news, I've been a revising fool this spring. My goal is three chapters a week. So far, I'm managing.

The Giant Backyard Project continues. More pictures will be forthcoming. My poison ivy experiment failed: nothing died. My next attempt will be to cut the stems of the poison ivy and apply the Round Up to the cut surfaces. Stay tuned for updates.

The Heart of the Story

Authors are often asked what inspired their stories. Perhaps it is more import for writers to consider their personal connection to the idea. What was the driving force behind the time, effort and heartbreak of writing the novel?

It’s easy to forget the heart of the story when slogging through revisions. My spy novel failed because I lost sight of why the story was important to me. Several well-meaning critiques suggested I cut much of that material. Perhaps the concept wasn’t of general interest. Perhaps I hadn’t figured out how to tell it. Once my personal connection to the story was removed, and my main character was relegated to tag-along sidekick, the story wasn’t mine anymore, and the manuscript became generic.

I’m currently reading The Lost Crown by Sarah Miller (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2011), a history of the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra of Russia. I know that the tale will end with bullets and bayonets in a basement, but the heart of the story, the loving and realistic relationship between the sisters, keeps me turning pages.

Writing Tips and the Dreaded Synopsis

Yesterday Barbara O’Conner posted on writing for kids. It’s all there in a nutshell.

Her advice also applies to writing a synopsis, especially her question, What is the story about?

I had an interesting experience at the Whole Novel Workshop. We had to submit 20 pages and a synopsis of our novels. In some cases, the story described in the synopsis differed significantly from the story told by the manuscript. That sounds impossible, but it happened. Writing a synopsis is difficult, and it’s tempting to get distracted by subplots and tangents.

The part I found most disconcerting was that I tended to believe the synopsis over the manuscript, and based my critique on what the author said she was going to write instead of what she wrote. This was the wrong approach. Of course, some manuscripts (or maybe all manuscripts in early drafts) meander before they get to the substance of the story. Once we determined what the novel was really about, the direction for revision became obvious.