I often suggest that writers who are looking for fresh perspectives on their manuscripts take a bit of time away from their drafts and instead devote a little energy to some writing on the side: the same characters and settings and concerns, but approached in new ways.
Something that can be useful is a block of time devoted to I Remember exercises for different characters, using their voices or points of view. Stick with one character for a whole week, perhaps, adapting the prompt every day, e.g., I Remember School, She Remembers Her Mother.
I also suggest variations on this form of the list. A good One is I Can … or I Can’t …
Can: to be able, to have power to, to know. In this case, the simple verb form stresses a character’s powers – or limits. What strengths and talents or knowledge is the character endowed with, and what might that lead to? Or what is a character unable to do, and what are the consequences of that?
The cumulative energy of this form of writing, gathered at a pace in list form, sometimes like a chant, often taps into the unconscious mind and draws out powerful material. What surfaces is often surprising, or reaches whatever’s important quickly. It’s not always/often writing that goes directly into the project word for word, but it can help with focus, and also energise your writing with purpose when it is flagging.
As a writing experiment: For ten minutes a day for a week, use the prompt I Can for characters in your book. The following week, use I Can’t for the same characters. You can also try this as a one-off, when you get stuck.
Try the prompts as ten-minute sprints of free writing, without stopping, preferably writing pen to paper, connecting hand and shoulder and brain and heart and gut. Each Can is as long as it has to be: a couple of lines, a few words, a whole paragraph. And when that’s done, on to the next Can. Quick, quick – keep the pen moving, don’t stop; it’s just for ten minutes. Often some really juicy stuff comes around minute eight or nine – to be continued … Write for longer, if you wish.
And above: cookbooks, because I can cook. Sometimes I can follow a recipe, and sometimes I can’t. And sometimes I am successful, and sometimes I am not, and sometimes it’s related to being able to follow that recipe. But other times I can trust my instinct to, e.g., add add a pear but also less milk to pistachio-oat pancakes, and judging by this morning’s efforts I can safely say that trusting your own ability is a good thing to do.
A very simple exercise in looking for the Four Elements in writing – simple is so often best.
As a writing experiment, select an extract of your own writing and share it with a reader, or even better exchange extracts with a writing partner. Looking for the Four Elements in someone else’s work will help you develop this way of looking at your own writing too.
Ask them to tell you:
* What is its fire? Where does the energy of its voice rise and fall? (We can’t be high-energy all the time, after all.) Where does the reader feel the most energy in the piece, and why and how: which events or images or words grab their attention and make a difference in some way? What brings it to life?
* What is its water? How does the writing make the reader feel? And how might its emotional charge shift within a scene and the piece overall: how might the reader describe the emotional pitch at the start, and then at the end?
* What is its earth? What experiences of the material world are embodied in the writing? What sensory perceptions make an impact during the reading: visual images, sounds, smells, tastes, textures? What actions and gestures carry the piece forward? And what lingers afterwards?
* What is its air? What is clearly understood from this piece: what ideas have been conveyed, or what might it make the reader think about? Are characters and settings clearly distinguished from each other? Is the writing’s organisation and structure easy to follow – what might need clarification or focus?
Sometimes we get or need more detailed feedback, but it can help to keep things crisp and concise. One of the challenges of working with feedback and revising your work is getting overwhelmed, so finding ways to cut through to what’s important can be empowering.
The Zalon: what a great idea for Kellie Jackson to take her Words Away salons online with Zoom.
I was the guest at Monday night’s inaugural Zalon, when over 80 writers of the ever widening Words Away community (now playing simultaneously in California and Oregon and Portugal) showed up to discuss Revising and Editing.
Some things we talked about:
* The distinction between plotters and pantsers is one I don’t really believe in: any writing needs both planning and freer-style composition.
* And while we are at it, can I add that I truly loathe the words pantser and pantsing? They feel like demeaning descriptions for an intuitive and exploratory stage in writing.
* First drafts are not shitty, but precious – even if Anne Lamott’s essay ‘Shitty First Drafts’ is essential reading. No draft along the way is shitty if it gets you where you have to be: again, why cloud your thinking about your early forays with such negative terminology?
* Editing is just as creative as writing your first draft: a holistic approach.
* Clarify your intention: decide what the pay-off will be – for you in the writing, and for the reader in the reading.
* Really take the time to take stock of your narrative content (characters, settings, dramatic situations), and work out what’s at stake before you dive into detailed and committed work on narrative style and form – unless, of course, style and form are what’s really at stake, i.e., they contribute significantly to the pay-off. To help, sometimes it makes sense to do exploratory work on the side, away from the main body of your manuscript: writing experiments, freewriting, journal writing, reading.
* Understand the difference between writing and publishing. Something else I forgot to say: much about revising is about technique – commanding craft in ways that gives your writing greater energy and force. But, too, much in publishing is about taste, however much you polish your manuscript. If you are interested in being published, agents and editors will be assessing your writing based on personal preferences and fashions too.
* It really helps to find trusted readers with whom to exchange work: writing partners or writing groups. Not only do you get a fresh pair of eyes on your writing, but you develop editorial skills to bring back to your own work too. I wish there were a good place for writers seeking writing partners to meet, but social media often provides a starting point. To be revisited …
* Something I never got to say: of course we proofread our cover letters and submissions, but doesn’t it get a bit prissy and gatekeepery when, during presentations to budding authors, agents and editors scold writers about typos? Of course we know we have to proofread our work! But in the age of the autocorrect even the best of us make ducking mistakes. And we have to save something for the ducking copyeditor, don’t we?!
Be professional, of course. But to me it is far more important to pay attention to: not being boring, and writing something that makes us want to READ ON. When I am reading a cover letter or synopsis, I’m looking for signs of life, not carefully chilled prose.
Things I find more of a turn-off: comma splices and run-on sentences (which unless you’re writing stream of consciousness can suggest a lack of clear thinking): convoluted syntax; opaque writing (a catch-all term for many forms of dull prose); writers who are looking for ‘a blueprint for publication’ (a big red flag for me – my usual reply being ‘Sorry, I’m busy for the coming year slash rest of my life’).
Thanks again to Kellie for asking me along – I look forward to attending other Zalons, which are a great way of sustaining connection and community while we are forced to stay at home.
I hope to run an online course on revising and self-editing later this year – subscribe to my blog if you’d like information in due course.
Blog posts on revising and editing The posts linked below describe in more detail exercises useful in revising as well as other practical tips for drafting:
Tell Me A Story and A Book Is Not A Film – popular posts on my blog about choices in narrative style, which are often important decisions during revising
Resources and books useful for revising that I mentioned (or meant to) Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird Ursula Le Guin, Steering the Craft and The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction Stephen King, On Writing Nina Schuyler, How to Write Stunning Sentences Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey (a great exercise: applying its ideas to a favourite book or a work that somehow influences your own writing) Ronald Tobias, 20 Master Plots Susan Bell, The Artful Edit Scott Pack, Tips From A Publisher: A Guide to Writing, Editing, Submitting and Publishing Your Book (which includes an excellent discussion of models of publishing – not directly relevant to revising quite yet, but a context all authors need to grasp)
I saw Bhanu Kapil reading at the LRB Bookshop on Friday. An intense but joyful event – tales of migrants, tales of violence, tales of family, rites of mud and glitter. Also: birthday cake on the summer solstice: that magical.
Bhanu posed a question – two questions – directly, simply in her writing:
What did you inherit?
What did you reproduce?
Inheritance and reproduction: energies to seek out in our writing.
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I am reading Ocean Vuong’s debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. And O! It really is gorgeous. I also recently read the profile Ocean Vuong’s Life Sentences in the New Yorker, and noted the following description of his style:
The structural hallmarks of Vuong’s poetry—his skill with elision, juxtaposition, and sequencing—shape the novel, too, and they work on overlapping scales: passages are organized by recurring phrases, as are the chapters, which build momentum as a poetry collection does, line by line. Most of the novel centers on Little Dog’s childhood and adolescence, but Vuong roams in non-chronological circles through a wide field of intensified memory. The narrative occasionally extends backward, to visions of Little Dog’s mother and grandmother in Vietnam, before he was born, and it briefly reaches forward, in a few passages that signal that Little Dog has become a writer.
(Update 25 June 2019) I’ve since completed the novel. It really is gorgeous, and brilliant, and in so many ways. I’ve also since read a couple of reviews – one of which comments on how in the book ‘a lot of information … comes to the reader in a jumble, out of sequence, as remembrances after the fact’.
Now: this response suggests that this book might not be for every reader, particularly those who want their stories laid out clearly in the manner of representative realism.
But: for me these very dislocations and refusals are part of the book’s design – they are its essence. I think some things in this book – scenes, images, statements, fragments – operate outside of the usual conventions of rendering time and space, lacking obvious consequence.
And that’s fine by me. In fact, that’s more than fine. This is a novel that among other things is about the Vietnam war, immigrant experience, gay lives, and the limits of the body. It’s inevitable that such things leak out, resist definition.
Some writers might consider this in their own work with caution, perhaps. This is after all a novel written by a poet and some of its forms and gestures will feel more familiar to readers who’re comfortable with some of the conventions of experimental poetry. But I strongly feel there are matters here that any writer can consider: character, voice, story, and what happens when things refuse to be pinned down. This should have an appeal to any reader or writer who lets themselves be: open.
Desire plus powerlessness is momentous feeling. I wanted the characters to move a little and feel a lot … The [fiction textbook] is all about plot: what’s the plot, and secondly: what’s the conflict? That’s also the formula: you need a plot to move through, and you need conflict.
And I was very suspicious of that. Perhaps because I’m a poet, in many senses we are plotless. And I thought: I don’t know if that’s how I feel as an American, as a person. I wonder if I live in a linear plot? To me it feels much more like proximity. The way we sit beside our loved ones. The way we move through the world, meaning tension and drama happen simply by proximity. The way chemistry works, you have oxygen and hydrogen: fine on their own. Put them side by side and all of a sudden: water. That was how I thought of the structure of the novel. It was blind faith. It was not the go-to form.
But I wanted something more faithful to what it meant to live as an American, in which we move from space to space, and meaning, drama and the substance of our lives happens because we are side by side each other, not because we are in a linear plot device.
Whether you are writing something that’s non-chronological or something that’s more linear, have a go at this writing experiment:
* Take some index cards and some Post-it notes. (You could use Scrivener or some mind-mapping software, if you prefer, but I really do think there is a great value in physical interaction.)
* Use the index cards to write down the chapters and/or scenes of your book, identifying the key CHANGE that happens within that chapter or scene. What takes the story forward?
* Then lay the cards out on a table or desk. (Or if you have lots of cards or not enough desk space, do a few at a time, perhaps moving through a stack of cards you keep at your right then gradually stack to the left as you work through them.)
* Next, using the Post-its, identify the CONNECTING ENERGY that fills the space between each of the index cards, and how that energy is achieved. It might be an overt matter of cause and effect: what happens in one chapter might lead to the events of the next. Or it could be more subtle, or the jolt that comes from a twist, or an abrupt shift of setting or point of view that delivers some reward through juxtaposition, or the question that’s raised at such a point (it might be as simple as: why are we now here?). Consider, for example, the energy arising from:
twists
information gaps
surprises
unexpected changes
reversals of fortune
turns
recurrences
variations
juxtapositions
elisions
chronology
jump cuts
flashbacks
flashforwards
overlaps
frames
contrasts
dislocations
mosaics
fragments sitting beside each other
alignments
questions
inheritances
reproductions
expanding horizons
contractions in focus
refusals
leakages
reactions by characters
cause and effect
That last one – cause and effect – strikes me as an important one overall.
For these points, think about: spikes of energy; connections; questions that prick our curiosity. How are these scenes/chapters and connections SEQUENCED? How might a CONTRAST create a forward propulsion? I am also thinking how both Ocean Vuong and Bhanu Kapil are writing narratives of migration that are made up of smaller pieces, even fragments: how do your own stories possess a quality of MOVEMENT that arises from the whole being greater than the sum of the parts?
Do this for both scenes as well as chapters eventually. It’s useful to consider both the connections between bigger units of narrative, and also those closer up, scene by scene.
Once you have finished this exercise, you might want to spread out all the Post-its in order, and see what you have: what patterns emerge? You might want to tabulate the connections and energies you find into a list. Are there gaps that could be made into something more interesting, or could the very fact of their gappy nature be heightened and made into a feature of the work? Are there points where the writing feels a bit too chronological (ploddy): might it increase the energy to introduce a gap or a disruption between two chapters or sections? How can the larger work gather MOMENTUM? Consider the types of connections listed above, and others of your own reckoning. See what you can find.
What’s the mud and glitter that holds together your work?
If you want to take this exercise further: use your index cards and Post-its to compose an outline in narrative form of a next draft.
One of the most useful tasks that writers can give themselves during revising is keying in the whole text all over again: a Retype Draft.
I’ve actually met gasps of horror when I’ve suggested this in workshops. To which I usually say: lazy bastards! In fact, for many heavily changed drafts this work is not really a duplication of labour, and it’s probably more efficient to retype than scratching around in your own leavings, getting confused and failing to see what’s in front of you.
Also, don’t forget those poor Macless authors of yore scratching away with their quill pens or tapping at their typewriters; back in the day, producing a revision was even called ‘putting it through the typewriter again’. Imagine yourself as Ernest Hemingway or Truman Capote (now there’s a choice) or Dorothy Parker, clattering out a new draft.
Some writers of course still write by hand. I remember novelist and teacher Rikki Ducornet describing how she did seventeen drafts of her novel The Fanmaker’s Inquisition – by hand! Drafting and revising are vital to her creative practice; I remember her talking about doing a new draft as ‘pulling the writing through’, which is a lovely way of embodying revision as an intuitive process.
And, too, this is a physical act: your body (and mind and soul) will be energised. I’m always keen to find intuitive approaches back into writing and looking at your work afresh. Liberate yourself from attachments! And from being locked into the downward scroll of the screen, looking for edits on your last draft with a frown on your brow. Start afresh.
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So: try either of these writing experiments at an appropriate stage in your drafting:
* Allow your first draft to be a Zero Draft … And then embark on a Page One Rewrite for the next draft.
A Zero Draft is as much as anything a state of mind in which you allow your initial draft to lay out your content and reveal your story matter – as Terry Pratchett apparently said (please tell me where!): the first draft is just a writer telling herself the story. Let the story drift, find yourself in a few dead ends perhaps, see what surprises might surface. But too it’s fine to write and follow an outline.
Then print it out. You might want to make it look like a book or page proofs, i.e., single-spaced and justified, two columns or pages per A4 sheet, and using a bookish font such as Garamond or Baskerville. (And with page numbers, of course.)
Then read it. Maybe read it aloud. As you go, resist editing the text (refuse to engage in that way), but write any notes for the writer (yourself) in a separate notebook. You might even want to create a chapter and/or scene summary based entirely on what is contained in that draft, or to identify the gift given to the reader on every page.
Then put that draft away – in a drawer, in a safe. There is a good chance you might refer to it again, but there is a good chance too that you might not. I know of some writers who know they are never going to look at their zero draft ever again – simply surfacing their content this way was the important task.
Then embark on your Page One Rewrite. Using your notes, or perhaps drawing on your inner resources – for the book is inside you, after all – start your next draft in a new document: effectively, a rewrite from the beginning (a Page One Rewrite is, I gather, a term used in the film industry). You might want to write a new outline or treatment at this stage, or even several different outlines to help you explore variations.
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* Alternatively, your manuscript might gain from being retyped at a later stage: the Polish Draft.
The Polish Draft is useful, e.g., when you are doing a line edit on your prose and working on voice, smoothing out glitches and clunkiness, spotting repetitions, and dealing with redundancy and overwriting. It can be particularly useful if you have been making lots of stylistic alterations, e.g., shifting tenses or changing POV – it’s not only inevitable that some of the old text remains, but it’s also likely that here or there a deeper change is required, e.g., would a present-tense narrator even bother to pay attention to certain details that a past-tense narrator can accommodate?
Also, given that many manuscripts are assembled in a patchwork fashion and at different times, sometimes over a duration of several years, it can be useful to go through the text from start to finish in the order in which it will be read, digesting and reprocessing the text from the more unified perspective of that writer you are now. And so much cleaner than trying to make fixes in an old document!
Again, read a print-out of the previous draft, making edits on a hard copy: this time, it perhaps makes sense to go with regular double-spaced unjustified manuscript pages in clear, open fonts such as Times or Georgia (though maybe again experiment with a font you don’t usually use?). And you can even give yourself wide margins for adding notes and additions by hand.
Then reread, adding edits on the manuscript in pencil.
Then, sitting comfortably at your computer, and perhaps using a page holder or stand, rekey the edited text in a fresh (and clearly identified) new document.
It’s amazing what comes up, and also how easily you can start to see (and feel) things anew: simple word repetitions, or slips of the keyboard. Or garbled syntax. And yes – maybe your beta readers were right in saying that phrase was too cute, now you come to type it again. And you know – that scene is in fact too boring to retype, so maybe it’s just too boring?! There – a darling murdered more easily than you imagined. (Don’t be too brutal for its own sake, though.)
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Whether you’re doing a Page One Rewrite or a Polish Draft, the work you’ve completed soon mounts up, and with it a sense of achievement. Just doing half an hour a day can bring fresh life and greater certainty to a project quite quickly. Depending on your working style, it can be a great task to tackle on a retreat or during a lull in other activity, or when other demands stop you from embarking on something new. Or maybe it’s it the sort of thing you could accomplish during a quarantine?!
We discussed Retype Drafts in a Craft of Revising workshop in June 2018, where a number of people were enthusiastic about the idea. Isabel Costello, who attended that class, later made a post about her own experience of retyping a draft on her blog The Literary Sofa – A Novel Process – the ‘Re-type Draft’:
With the benefit of time to ‘marinate’ and the observations of my trusted advisers, re-typing prompted me to question whether what was on the page felt ‘true’ – anything which didn’t leapt out at me. Whether in terms of plausibility or language, there’s nothing like having to reproduce a line or paragraph to reveal whether it belongs (or is banal/clichéd/superfluous). It made me realise how easy it is to settle for what’s already there, the parts you skim over in revisions because they’re ‘good enough’.
Yesterday, on an impulse, I decided it would be fun to add up the ‘edit time’ on the five drafts of the book. I know, what was I thinking? The total (even after I remembered to convert minutes to hours) is so outrageous it can’t possibly be right, but I’ll tell you one thing – writers, you can thank me later – the second draft, which I retyped in its 90,000 word entirety, to many people’s horror and disbelief, amounted to the fewest hours by far, despite taking six incredibly intense weeks. Not only this, but it was so transformative to the development of story and character that I estimate it saved one or even two further drafts in the key mid-phase. Thanks again to Andrew Wille for putting me up to it!
And here is further testimony from a more recent convert in working with:
Some writers, of course, write very deliberately: John Updike, Marilynne Robinson, Cynthia Ozick, Eliot Weinberger. Or they write spontaneously: Jack Kerouac, apparently (though we know that is a bit of a myth). They are planners, or process each word emphatically as they come out, or they are geniuses. And good luck to them! But not everyone works that way – or can work that way, or wants to work that way. Some of these writers are after all long established in their practice, and other writers (such as beginning novelists) might need a different process.
Rewriting has negative associations – as if we’ve done something wrong in the earlier drafts. But it’s remarkably liberating to actively incorporate it into your process. Free yourself! Embrace rewriting, and freshen your work in the process. You could even consider starting each major revision in an entirely fresh document.
And of course if you are one of those writers who already write your drafts by hand you can just turn to the rest of us and say: Told you so.
