Editing Out In The Open #1 - A Short Story

I'm going to start something new on the blog - Editing Out In The Open. I'm going to take a submission, post  a portion of it, and edit it.

My goal is to show you that editing isn't scary. That it's helpful. That it makes a difference.

Normally, I use Word for my edits, allowing me to use margin comments along with inline edits to put together my thoughts. Because there are no margin edits here, I'm going to use two colors:

Red for inline edits, blue for comments.

Here now is a few paragraphs of "Sway" by Tracy Barnett, who is awesome.

Some weak yellow light filtered through the trees. Gave me barely enough light to see, and that's about all. (It's easier to start off in the positive about what you do have, especially if you're trying to hook a reader and set a tone so people know what they're getting into) . Way it scarcely hit was hitting the ground almost not at all was eerie. Was almost Almost like a haze hung over the tops of the trees what kept all but the general feel of light from making it to the ground. (Are we talking about how the light was and what it was or wasn't doing, or how the scene should feel?) Wasn't no proper light, you ask me. (At the end of the first paragraph, we've established a few things - 1 the narrator is somewhere in sight of trees 2 the narrator is likely southern (if American), but otherwise unpolished and "country" in their speech pattern 3 the lack of light is spooky)

Wasn't for me to worry about much, though. (Then why did we just spend a paragraph talking about it? I'd flag these first two sentences for a re-write) The bigger part of my mind hung on to the plan of keeping one foot front of another, just moving forward. While that happened, I guess the smaller part of my mind kept on the same line it had been thinking, trying to figure how I could find her. Trying to figure what I'd do if couldn't. (Again, I'm flagging a lot of this paragraph because the "southernness" of the narrator is actually getting in my way of understanding the new information -- so it's about finding "her", whoever she is, and the narrator has been thinking about her since before the story started -- but now we're talking about how it takes a lot of mental power just to walk, so maybe "she" is less important since she's not front-and-center in the narrator's mind? What's the important part(s) of the paragraph that I should take away here?)

Seemed it hadn't been long since I'd seen her last, though I couldn't say proper exactly how long. (The southern-isms are now getting ridiculous. The flavor of them should come across not ONLY in narration, but through the setting, which aside from trees and light, has gone so far unmentioned. There's more to a southern sound than some y'alls and shuckses and tarnations, right?) The start of it all stuck out bright in the center of my head. (You just spent a whole lot of words telling me that you were devoting a lot of mental power walking and a little mental power thinking about finding her, but now there's this third reserve of mental energy to power the memory of her? Do you want me to focus on the walking, her loss or the memory?) I'd been working was in the barn, same as most days, and she'd been playing in the hayloft. Despite my telling her not to play up there, she did it anyway. She was always so hard-headed about that, and really, even with the warnings and the headshakings, I couldn't say "no" her very often. I'd tried to stop her doing that, but she was always a bit hard-headed, and I could never say "no" for long enough to keep her from what she wanted. She screamed while I was racking tools against the wall. I turned fast, saw her hit the ground, and I was running to her. Spooked the hell out of the horse. Next thing I knew, it was night and I was cleaning blood out of my eyes. So there I was, racking some tools on the far wall, when I heard her scream. It didn't last long. I turned fast and saw her hit the ground. I ran, fast as I could, and must've spooked the horse, 'cause next thing I knew, it was night and I was cleaning blood out of my eyes. (Now if you look over the course of this paragraph, there's a TON of "I" all up and through it. That's okay for conveying facts, that's alright if we're looking to sound simple or childish, but too much "I" and we're moving somewhat out of the story to focus on the construction. Big things happened in this paragraph, and we've started seeing tension build up (she screamed, hit the ground, blood in the eyes at night, etc), so the focus should be there, not on the southern-isms or the number of "I"s - by now we NEED to be into the hook and meat of the story).

I sat up (weren't you running over? when were you seated?) , tried to clear my head. (this suggests you were confused or foggy or something that you haven't mentioned yet, and likely should, since I would love to know how you felt in addition to WHAT you felt) I wiped some more blood off of my face and looked to where I'd seen Emmy land. Nothing there. I shook my head to loose some cobwebs, and fell back down with the force of it. Last thing I saw that night was a small shape out in the field, walking away, east. "Emmy..." I tried to say, but the word died in my mouth and everything went all black. (I'm flagging the whole remainder of this paragraph because I have no idea what you're intending to say. What you've actually said is that there was blood on your face, you stood in the location where Emmy - now she has a name - should have been and she wasn't there, but somehow there was a shape in a field and it was walking away. The presumption here is that it's either Emmy or some kind of body-snatcher-slash-killer, but that's way unclear. A few setting details, maybe some context on the rest of the scene as this experience was happening to you, would better clarify where you want the reader's focus to be. Also, the progression of action - A to B to C seems really unclear - is it You were racking tools -> she screamed -> she hit the ground -> you were wiping blood from your eyes -> you ran over -> she was gone -> there's a shape in the field -> you said Emmy -> things go black ? Way too many things are unanswered for us to connect to the narrator and feel that sense of Emmy being important, of the narrator being in shock and/or driven on a quest to find her. This is rewrite territory.)

After I woke up, I scrambled around, trying to find her. (Well now you're just repeating yourself, and if you're still in that pseudo-recollection flashback mode, it's unclear since things going black AND it being a new paragraph generally mean we're back to the present moment, where you're walking under difficulty) Didn't see  much but my own blood on the barn floor, and a track leading off east. So, I walked. Didn't think about it much, just gathered a few things and set out to find her. (Wait, you wanted to go find her, it's important to go find her, you didn't think much about it, BUT you had time to pack? How would you know what to pack? Are you tipping your hand to the reader, or just being convenient about why you're going to use tools later?)

***
So that's my first pass editorially on a few paragraphs. I'm cutting it off there because I don't want this post getting too long, and the focus really is on how the editorial process works, rather than on this specific story. What I'd do next is attach the completed file (or however much we agreed upon editing) with comments and edits to an email, wherein I'd detail a few big broad concepts that Tracy can keep an eye out for when he rewrites and moves the story forward. For the sake of argument, let's pretend you're over my shoulder as I write that email.

It would look like this ...

Tracy,

Attached please find the first chunk of Sway edited. There's a few inline edits for structure made, but the majority of notes are comments. Here are the highlights.

1. Your setting is sparse. Outside of naming Emmy and mentioning trees, a field, a barn, a hayloft and a rack of tools, I have no idea where you are, what is or isn't important, or how "real" the story feels. There's not a lot of ground details here.

2. I don't feel really invested in the story. I'm interested, but there's a difference. Interest comes from wordplay and concept, the demonstration of ideas and the setting up of scenes. It makes me say "Ooh, that's nice, I like that". Investment though, is about connecting to the narrator (especially in first-person) and sharing the same feeling(s) they do - so if the narrator misses Emmy, we should know why and we should miss her too. Especially critical in first-person is the sense of discovery, that we're learning new info at more or less the narrator is. Yeah, you can say that you're telling this in the past tense, so really you're recounting the story after the fact, but the narrator-within-the-story and the reader should more or less be on the same emotional footing. Invest me, make me care about Emmy's not being there.

3. How critical are what I called the "southernisms"? Are you trying to show the narrator as a yokel, a mountain man, Slingblade, a farmer or a hick who is overcoming some superior force? Why do I need to know he (I'm assuming it's a he) litters his speech and thoughts with colloquial expressions? There are other ways to show us the character, and you don't really need to keep showing us the same facet over and over.

Talk soon, looking forward to Part 2,

John

***

It's my goal in this series to make editing more accessible to people, and to answer their questions about what exactly they're getting into when becoming part of a writer-editor relationship. And I like the transparency of doing it on the blog, even though it's generally slower and without some of the trappings I'm used to.

Yes, you can totally point out things I missed, as no editor is perfect, but before you get all critical and discount the value of an edit based on the fact that I may have missed a comma, remember too that if he rewrites things based on the suggestions, the grammar will change. And right now, the story is greater and more important than the sum of the punctuation.

I've received a few more submissions for Editing In the Open, so expect more to come.

Happy writing.

Some Tips on Voice-Finding

Today we follow up on what I wrote earlier this week.

Jeremy Morgan asked:

"I fear that my voice (my worldview in particular) will come out as a 'tell' and that it will be off-putting to readers. (I know, I know, be true to yourself and write!) But the fear is still there. Any tips on conquering (or at least allaying) that fear?"

Now, Jeremy's answered this question partially - that the key to this is to be true to yourself and write, but I know there are a lot of people saying, "Easier said than done." So let's talk about it.

For starters, it may be easier to say to be true than it is to actually be brave enough to be honest and write without a veneer or cover, but it's doable. Everyone can do it. We may not all do it at the same time, it may come easier to some and harder to others, but everyone can do it. 

The Fear
The fear can be found in the second half of Jeremy's first sentence: "that it will be off-putting to readers" Lots of things can be off-putting to readers, and it's up to the reader(s) to choose whether or not the thing you've written is upsetting to them. 

Sure, there are topics that lead to that choice faster than other (religion, politics, racial commentary), but whatever you wrote is just words. Words have only the power imbued, so the interpretation is wholly subjective. 

The point: The reader chooses whether or not to be offended. Do not make that decision for them. Do not pretend to have already made that choice for them before you start writing. Just write. Write and be brave. Write and be honest. 

To fight the fear, I have some tips.

The Tips

Write as if you're the (only) audience. I often tell people to think of their audience when writing salescopy or promotional material, so that they can find a sympathetic rather than an aggressive starting point. Here, I ask you to write as though YOU are the audience. I don't mean write to yourself (No, "Dear self: blah blah blah", that's a different exercise), I mean write as though you're the sort of person who the material targets. What would you say to someone exactly like yourself?

What's the worst that could happen? Let's say you write whatever it is you're writing. What's the worst case scenario? That it never gets published. Then you'd never have to worry about your voice upsetting people. Let's assume it gets published. Are you really going to care at that point though if ten people from the middle of nowhere didn't like it? You've had one book published, you may be well on your way to a second, so what's the worst that could happen? (The trick here is to distinguish the practical possibilities from the irrational -- people not liking your work is not the same as starting a controversial global discussion about whether or not pigs fly or whatever your work is about)

Remember why you're writing. Are you writing because you have something to say or some story you want to birth unto the world? Or are you writing to please others? Note: one of those two questions is a path to frustration and disappointment, choose wisely. Writing for the right reasons is critical. What are yours?

I know I promised a dozen tips Jeremy, but I think those 3 are going to be the ones you want to keep close at hand. 

Happy writing.

Editors Are Not The Boogeyman

Special thanks to Tom Cadorette for prompting the discussion that lead to this post. One day I'm sure he'll out-ninja me in our immortal editorial duel. No not really. Tom is awesome and much like the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang, we'll totally join forces to fight off the Manchu dogs. Or something.


I'm an editor. I make my living editing things. That means people (individuals, companies, agents, groups) send me their creations (novels, games, plays, scripts, manuals and even cookbooks) and I help make them better.

Notice that I didn't say that I live under the bed and terrorize small children. Or that I live under a bridge and consume goatflesh weekly. No, I'm an editor, editing is what I do.

The word and concepts of editing carry such weight, such anxiety and such stigma that I often wonder about what people are thinking when they engage or don't engage an editor. So I asked a lot of people this last week that question, and the answers really stuck with me. I'll address the concerns in this post.

Editors won't understand what I'm trying to do, they'll just ruin it. This idea, I think, comes from some sort of pride or ego and suggests that whatever you've created, you think it so good and so brilliant that no one can understand it without your explanation or patronizing hand-holding. What it screams at me is: "I'm afraid of sending my work to an editor because they'll suggest changes."

What that thought doesn't talk about is that engage an editor is a conversation, not supplication. When you retain me to help make your project better, we talk about it before, during and after the edits. In fact, I won't edit something if I don't understand it, so it's up to you to be able to explain to me what the manuscript is trying to accomplish before I jump in there and help it do that.

As nice as it would be for you to genuflect and offer your work to me and my ego on some humongous platter along with a steak (rare) and a milkshake (chocolate), that's just not what I do, and the idea voiced above demonstrates a lack of investigation.

Yes I'm saying it's totally fine, well and cool for you, authors and creators, to ask an editor questions about HOW they work, so that they can demystify the process. Investigate before you act. Don't avoid taking that step forward because you're operating under a false premise.

Also give us some credit. We might not have been there for the genesis of your creation, but if you are able to explain what it is and what you want to do with it, I'm sure we'll figure out the best way to help you.

Editors are so expensive. Well, yes, you're going to pay money for a professional to do their job and improve the situation, hopefully. Were this not about a manuscript or creative effort and all about a clogged drain or a busted washing machine, you likely wouldn't think twice about calling a service technician to come out and address the problems, and you likely would accept that paying them for their time and labor is part of the deal.

So why can't you have that same sort of concept for an editor? Sure, we don't wear coveralls and lug a toolbelt around, but we do work on diagnosing and fixing problems in the things you care about.

Is it a commitment? Yes. Is it sometimes pricey? Yes. But if your goal is get this creative endeavor out into the hands of consumers and customers, why wouldn't you do everything possible to get there? And why wouldn't you pay to get the best help possible to make that happen?

But I want to get my product out to the market now! If I wait, I'll miss "the window". This is pure and raw impatience. This is sort of like starting a course of antibiotics and wondering why you're not all better after you swallow the first dose. It takes time. It doesn't take lifetimes, sometimes it's days or weeks or months to get something edited (depends on what it is, who's working on it, and what their schedule is like). While you can mitigate some of the time by doing things like working on how you'll market the creation once it's out of editing, or you can start gathering ideas for the next idea you want to develop, or you can just plain go sit down and take it easy. Have a cup of coffee. Go for a walk. Things will get done and get very exciting for you soon enough. Savor the downtime.

Rushing a product out to consumers is a disaster-in-the-making. A rushed product may lack the necessary or desired layout as well as contain errors large and small that an editor would have caught and flagged. Not only does a rushed product hurt itself, it impacts all the future products that may also occur...a dangerous precedent for production. (Because it raises the question: "Do I want to buy the next thing they make if that one thing was sloppy?")

Guidelines, guidelines, guidelines. Okay, please find me the person who says you have to only use Deep POV to get a book published. How about the person who wants all stories to be romance tales? I'll wait here.

Okay, so this idea comes from the assumption that you can only publish a book by going through the "traditional" model (agent to publisher). Lots of publishers have guidelines as to what they accept and what they reject. They're detailing in the Writer's Market, for example. I've got my copy open to page 309 for instance, and I'm looking for the paragraph ANYWHERE on the page that says "We require Deep POV, omniscient narration and no puppets." It's not on that page. Or 310. Or 311. Why?

BECAUSE what a publisher wants is a book to publish. That's their job. Your job, author/creator is to produce a book of a publishable nature. And part of shaping that story is to get it edited so that it can be published. That's all. What you do with it after publication is entirely up to you. The nuts and bolts of the book are important because they need to work towards the goal of making the story enjoyable or stronger or better crafted, but your authorial success is not measured by how well you turn a phrase (unless you're one of the douchey people who live and die by journals and literary snobbery. Or that one Lit professor I had).

I don't need an editor because I'll never be a success story. With that attitude you're right.

I don't know where to find an editor. You can ask me. I can give you the names of quite a few editors who you may be interested in.

Look, editors are available to you to help you make your creation into a reality for other people. That's all. Sure, the process of finding one, working with one and seeing your work marked up is difficult, but the end goal remains the same - to get the best stories out to hungry audiences.

Ultimately the choice is yours.

See you guys after GenCon. Follow me on Twitter or Like Me On Facebook for updates while I'm at GenCon.

Ask An Editor: Plot, Similarity and Length

In the last two weeks, this blog has really taken off. Part of me wants to say this is because all the seeds I planted about it are finally bearing fruit, but more than likely, people are responding better to the more honest tone I've been taking.

One of the new experiences I have to acclimate to is this idea that I'm now getting a lot more mail. Now while some of this mail isn't great (really, people still send trolling hate e-mails in 2012?), a lot of these messages ask the same things, which has led me to start this new post on the blog, "Ask An Editor".

Now, some disclaimers:

1. The answers I'm giving ARE NOT to be etched in stone, and they're not the be-all or end-all of information. They are a combination of many years experience and my opinion, melded together to help you.
2. My answers are not sugar-coated. I...don't really like to sugar-coat things, and quite frankly, it doesn't do you a whole lot of good to get a pat on the head when you may sometimes need a kick in the rear.
3. You don't have to believe what I'm telling you, you're very welcome to think I'm full of shit, but please consider at least reading what I have to say and then filing it away for later - you may surprise yourself.

Onto the questions (note: If you said it was okay to use your names, I'm using them. Otherwise, they'll get  reduced to initials.)

Plot

C asks:  I've been working on this novel for three years now. I've written and revised this plot so many times because a lot of the rejections I'm getting say my plot is too complicated or "too much". But I read published books all the time where the plots are WAY more complicated...what gives?

C, I have no idea what your specific plot is about, and please, don't go send me an email explaining it. It's not important to the answer I'm giving you here. No, really, I'm sure you've put a lot of detail and love into it, but in explaining it to me, you're not going impress me with it. We have to start with some basics:

i. "Too much" is shorthand for either "boring" or "too complicated". Suppose you're writing a multi-generational romance saga with three eras of family members grow up, find love and experience life. And now suppose you add some quirks into this story like time travel, maybe some lasers and magical tap-dancing fairies. You know, to spice it up. The plot hasn't changed really -- it's still going to be the story of character 1 going through plot points A to B to C and then character 2 going through their version and so on. But all those bells and whistles? Well, that's not plot detail.

Here's how you find your plot -- strip out all the names for people, places and things. Boil down all the verbs to their most simple and active. Using really simple nouns and active verbs, spell out what happens in the story. That's it. No rocket science required.

Here's an example of a complicated, congested "too much" plot:
Sally Heaven is a hard working college student who graduates from school and moves into her ancestral home, only to find that because she is the fifth daughter of a fifth daughter born under a full moon, she is also the sole heiress to a vast fortune of pirate treasure, assuming she can figure out the map before sunrise on her next birthday.

Here's the same plot concentrated:
A young woman learns she can inherit a treasure, assuming she can find it before her birthday.

But, I hear you say, you've taken all the "spice" out of my story! It sounds boring that way, story-ruiner! And before you come to my door bearing fire and pitchforks, I want you to learn something -- SPICE IS NOT PLOT. Plot is just an expression of the problem(s) the characters are challenged by over the course of the story.

ii. You don't have to 'give it all away' in the query. No, seriously, please don't. The query, as I've said before, is just an opportunity to lead the reader into the manuscript. It acts as bridge, seductress, chat up line and movie trailer...not Cliffs Notes version. We should want to / have to read the manuscript to find out more details than those offered in the query. If you tell us how it begins and ends in the query, why should anyone bother with the manuscript?

Similarity

Next, we have a message from Thomas who writes: "I've been following a lot of agent blogs and re-tweeting a lot of agent tweets lately, but none of them are really talking about what I need them to. My problem is that I've written a story and well, it sounds a lot like three other books that just got published. How big a deal is that?"

Thomas, we need to first figure out what "sounds a lot like" means. Are you saying you and these other authors wrote exactly the same story? Or are you speaking more generally, because if we look at all stories from a wide enough scope, we'll see similarities. If I zoom out far enough, all stories share the same set of traits and genealogy, all we're ever doing is putting new skins and spins to them.

Yes, it's very tempting to concern yourself with the ideas of originality, that whatever you're created be the only one of its kind...but we've been telling stories for millenia, and while the foundations are universal, look to use that originality on whatever springs up beyond the foundations.

Great, it's a story about woman overcoming Nature, (I know your specific book isn't Thomas, I'm just giving an example), but what element of Nature is she overcoming? How is she overcoming it? What's trying to stop her? What is she risking? These are the sorts of questions that sit on the foundation of "woman overcoming Nature", and this level is where you start to define your story against the backdrop of all these other stories.

To distinguish your story, we come back to the very commonly discussed idea of voice and craft - what do you do, author (Thomas), that other people do differently? What makes you stand out from the rest so that were I to pick your story out a hat (or crowded inbox) I'd know it had your fingerprints all over it. That's the sort of "deal" readers/agents/publishers/your grandmother is looking for.

I say again: No one wants you to or expects you to re-invent the wheel. And if you feel that you have to do that in order to get published, please leave all pursuits of writing behind and go take a knitting class or learn all about cat food or something, because you've entirely missed the point of writing and you'll continue to miss it every time you charge up these batteries of "scarcity" "pressure" and "publication equals success".

The reason why people say things like, "Just tell your story." or "Just write the f#$king thing." or "When in doubt, write." is not to get you thinking about all that crap that publishers and agents and publication want you to swallow in copious amounts. Yes, writing's hard. Yes, writing's scary. But it's a thousand times harder and scarier when you're writing your guts out AND worrying that you sound too much like other people.

Believe you have the story in you to tell. That's step 1. Transfer the story from your brain to some format. That's step 2. Step 3 involves getting your story read, your craft honed and your first taste of feedback and revision. You're going to repeat Step 3 for a while, until the story is complete and told to the best of your ability. Publication and an agent don't even factor into most of step 3 so long as you're still working out the story that you're trying to tell. Also, you don't always need one (the agent) to get the other (published), and I'd seriously look twice at anyone who stills holds so doggedly to that maxim.

And while we're at it, what do you think the point of Twitter is? Retweets are not yours. You're just passing on someone else's thoughts to your audience. Now while I'm all for shouting to as many people as possible, every once in a while I like to have my own thoughts mixed in there, not just a grocery list or an update about what I did in the last two hours. When I say thoughts, I mean YOUR thoughts on publishing. Your fears. Your anxieties. Put it right out there in 140 character sandwiches for us to nibble on. It's yet another way to tell YOUR story.

Length

And lastly we come to a quick note from M, whose message I'm paraphrasing because they've written it with a lot of emoticons and acronyms and I'm not sure I've got the patience to figure out why M is laughing at the end of every second line.

M writes: "I'm writing a novel. Can you believe it? (see, this is where there was a LOL, mind the gap) But I'm stuck. How come there are so many different listings for how long a novel should be? (also a LOL here)"

Okay, I'm going to let you behind the curtain and give you some special writing secrets. Are you ready? Are you sitting down? Here's your answer M.

Your story will be as long as your story needs to be in order to be complete and told to the best of your ability.

Now before you get snippy and say I didn't answer the question because I didn't mention that there's about 250 words to a printed page, or that the average book is 300 pages in paperback, remember that you're in charge of this story. If it's coming up short, that's not some random publisher's fault. That's on you, dear author. (Yes, I will further argue that you can't really have an idea of "short" because it's grossly subjective.)

The reason people can't agree on what's "right" for a novel is because thanks to the wonders of publishing, there can be more than one "right", and they're all acceptable. You may talk to Agent X who says a book should be a certain length, while Publisher Q says it should have twice that, and maybe Editor H says you have eight times too much, cut it back.

Who's right? They all are. But that doesn't mean you have to agree with them. They're not the boss of your work. Yes, you may hold onto the notion that they're "gatekeepers" and they're opposition for you on some kind of publication-chessboard, and you may also think that editors want nothing more than the cackle gleefully over the charred remains of your life's work.

Your story (novel, novella, piece, manuscript, baby, whatever) is however long it needs to be. Rather than worry about some label when people ask about it (or what you're doing) tell them ABOUT what you're doing. It's way more interesting to hear that you're writing a story about a man who wants to build a golem out of cereal than to hear you're writing a novella.

Find those opportunities to talk about your love, so that you can grow your love and make new opportunities.

I hope people found the answers to these questions useful. I'd really like to make this a regular blog feature.

Happy writing.