And what a glorious Friday it is! Weather like this should be available all year round. With the possible exception of Christmas Day, which I prefer to be more wintry. December 26th would be a great first day of spring, though.
So I've been encouraged by your responses to my plotcarding post, both by the "you-can-do-its" and the "hey-cool-I'm-going-to-try-its". This community thing continues to abound in coolness.
So let's take it the next step. Let's say you've already found every single plot hole, dangling idea, inconsistency, and extremely pointless scene. How do you proceed from there? One chapter at a time? One scene at a time? One character arc at a time?
What if you find a storyline (secondary, presumably) that simply doesn't work. As in, not at all. Do you pull the whole thing and patch up the holes? Rewrite it? Throw the novel into the furnace and begin afresh?
I think it's important to keep thinking ahead, keep processing where we're going and where we want to be. As someone stated in the comment box yesterday, it's what separates the "writing for fun" from the real thing--the career writing. There's a whole lot of sweat-n-guts that go into a novel, way beyond the creative rush that brings the story forth.
Let's continue to talk about our processes.
Meanwhile, I'm going to take advantage of this awesome day and maybe work on my plotcards in the great outdoors. Far away from dirt and bugs. Rather close to somewhere serving coffee. With comfortable seating. And nobody smoking nearby.
Cheers!
I caught something similar (minor storyline not working) in the manuscript I just finished the first draft of but it took awhile to realize it. I wrote it, and it kept bugging me until I realized that it needed to be pulled completely. Once I made that connection though, everything else fell into place, was a wonderful feeling. Had to do a lot of deleting and re-writing and will concentrate on that area as soon as I sit back down to start editing to make sure I cleaned up all the loose ends. Sometimes, it takes a lot of work, but that's the whole sweat/guts thing you mention...
ReplyDeleteCongrats on finishing the first draft!!
I'm trying to new 'editing technique' this time...I've asked my usual 'readers' to read the first draft (rather than waiting until I've edited it a number of times) knowing that the feedback will be a lot 'harsher' on something 'raw.' If it works, great, if not, I can ignore everything they tell me and edit as normal :) Though, to be honest, waiting for them to finish reading the thing is killing me...
I'm taking all my notes. Then notes from beta readers. I'm adding them in text using MS Word comment feature, then I'm going to print out the document with all the notes on it. Then I'm reading through all the notes and fixing the concerns.
ReplyDeleteAfter that, I'm going to make a goal, probably to cut 5k words, maybe to cut 10k. I'm also going to use the find/replace function to find and highlight all my overused words (like was, just, that). I'll print another copy and edit that for style.
Then...maybe a few more test readers...but I hope to be done!
First off, I go through it scene by scene when I'm editing, and make notes of changes that will affect later scenes.
ReplyDeleteStoryline that doesn't work: It really depends what it is that doesn't work. Maybe it requires rewriting, or maybe it has to be deleted and patched up. I've had to do both with my wip, but I'm glad I did (even if it was a lot of work). It's much better now.
Based on the rejections I've received on my project currently out with agents, I'm really focusing on characterization this time round (yay for Manuscript Makeover). Fortunately I learned a lot while making significant improvements to my last project, so hopefully everything will be much stronger earlier on this time around. ;) One of my writer friends (who's also in my crit group) is going to read the story all the way through and focus on the overall picture and the characterization. For the last project, the group tended to focus less on the overall picture and more on the immediate stuff. We've all become better critters since those days.
I tried to start of by reading my first draft straight through in one sitting. That never seemed to work for me as I'd wind up editing instead of reading. It also meant kept missing the plot holes.
ReplyDeleteWhen I finally forced myself to read it start to finish, I realized what I thought should be a major character (and the plot) disappeared about half way through.
I'm currently working on making the beginning of the book to match the ending. So far I have over fourteen pages of cramped notes on things that need fixing or rearranging. Critiques I've received as I'm revising have also proved invaluable.
I think it's so easy to get lost in the details. What helped me was to stay focused on the big picture issues until they were resolved, and the story was sound. All those pointless scenes? Some of them had a point, I just overshot, or stopped short. Same with subplots. Mostly I kept asking myself, "What's your point?" and then made sure every single scene danced around that point.
ReplyDeleteDonald Maass's The Fire In Fiction has helped me shape the story more than any other book I've read. He talks about how to make turning points in your scenes and how the true meaning of conflict isn't bad things happening to your character, but when your character is conflicted on the inside by what is happening on the outside. And I just got this from a blogging friend - Cheryl Klein's blog on the emotional heart of your story - http://chavelaque.blogspot.com/2009/07/four-techniques-to-get-at-emotional.html
And lastly, I just read on Verla Kay's website about synopsizing the story from each character's POV. Just one page.
These are all things I'm doing right now and they are helping so much!
In art school, my Hungarian teacher used to Zsa Zsa Gabor back and forward between the canvasses and say:
ReplyDelete"From ze jeneral to ze partikular, darlinks".
You are always going to develop plotholes. It's par for the course. But that is a particular you can kill later on.
An editor of mine once poohooed a fellow author as getting fewer m/s's accepted because that person sat on a high horse and refused to bend and to analyze her own work, and to go along with perhaps a fresh eye (one that knows what is going to annoy/sell/advantage etc.).
I tend, along with the plot board, to have a ideas book and make notes. One of my characters I worked out his age in relation to the plot and thought I had it, but later two people picked up the flaw in that. It's a nuisance yes but only a solvable problem after I'd written 'the end'. Had I stopped to fix it up at the time, I would have literally lost the plot to my own detriment. So plotholes are fixable later when you are up to the particular after finishing the general.
Another problem I decided was going to be the premise on which I'd based the story. ie., I had to sit down and destroy a brilliant concept. That really hurt but it was going to stop any editor from accepting the m/s. Maybe had I been famous it would have been different. Fergie gets to write crummy stories about helicopters - really...!!! but let's face it. I'm not famous - however I'm practical. Out it went and I'm trying to re-edit this new version back to the magic I felt I had before.
Be merciless with yourself. I say if something isn't working then it's going to end up being a disadvantage. If you can jettison early then do it. If not, highlight in yellow and move on and later from a higher point just say "of course". As the saying goes - can't see the forest for the trees.
Don't give the m/s too early to a reader. Unless they are a glutton for punishment, admit it. You are probably suspecting the m/s isn't working. If you suspect you have a career in writing you will know very well what isn't working and will spot it yourself. Outsiders (those not in your head) might try to attempt to mold you in their own ideas which are not the ones that started your plot and characters from your first beginning. Let them see your end product - that which you are wanting to submit to agent/editor and then take on board what works and what doesn't.
Don't patch. It's the cheap way. It's never as good as the original is. It's like knitting. You drop a stitch four rows back and decide I'll fix it later. Then when you've finished the sweater, the only thing your eye can see is not the pleasure of a job well done but a sweater with a huge ZIT of a missing stitch and you will never be happy.
Got to agree with you. There are times I impress me. It's a wow moment when you come across the brilliant you. These are like when you find a fifty dollar note in a pocket of a coat you haven't worn since last winter.
Pennyoz
A great question - and one that doesn't go away, I think. I've met a couple of widely published authors who still have moments when they're just not sure, or who go down story paths that end up having to be junked after months of work.
ReplyDeleteMy way of editing is to read once, then go back over it making notes on an A4 pad, then put it onto the computer. For me, that makes it easier to pick up those snagged threads. If there is a storyline that doesn't work, sadly, the thing to do is pull it. (If you are sure that it doesn't work, that is! From my experience with agents, the parts I was least sure about were the bits they highlighted for praise. Very confusing.) What makes that difficult is the number of characters you may have to murder, the sparkling dialogue that no longer has a place... Terribly upsetting. The best thing to do with that is probably to cut it and save it somewhere in a file marked "Brilliant things I don't know where to put" (might as well encourage yourself!). Then draw an outline of the overriding story arc and see how it goes with and without that pesky subplot. If it really was irrelevant, it might be that there are very few gaps to fill; or you may have more space to expand the juicy bits. If the holes are really obvious, there is probably a more general problem.