Category: cuts

At the Writers Coffeehouse this past weekend we talked a little bit about starting a book, which is something I blabbed on about here just a few weeks back.  I thought it might be worth going over one particular aspect of both discussions.

There’s one thing any writer needs to understand if they want to be successful. It took me  a while to get it.  Really get it. 

Ideas are cheap.  Ridiculously cheap.  They’re a dime a dozen.  I’d guess on an average day I have at least a dozen random ideas for books, short stories, screenplays, or television episodes. 

Now, in my experience, beginning writers tend to hit one of two problems when it comes to ideas, and they’re really two flipsides of the same issue. 

One type of writer laments that they never have good ideas.  Yeah, I might have a couple clever thoughts, but they’re not, y’know… book-worthy.  Not like some of the stuff out there. Wanderersor  Middlegame or Black Leopard, Red Wolf or… I mean, all that stuff is so good.  On so many levels.  The ideas I come up with all feel kinda average.  They’re not worth writing about, so I don’t write. I wait for the good ideas to strike.

If I’m the second type, I have too many ideas.  I’ve barely finished writing my third screenplay this month but I’ve already got an idea for a series of epic novels.  Which leads me to a comic book series.  And a podcast.  And a collection of linked short stories. I can barely keep up with all the ideas I have.

In either case, I’m probably suffering from a misconception.  The same one, really. I think anything that goes on the page has to be pure, award-winning gold.  The difference is that the first type of writer won’t put anything down because they know it isn’t  gold, whereas the other folks are assuming it must be gold because they put it down on the page.

Make sense?

The catch, of course, is that most of the stuff that I put down isn’t going to be gold.  It’s going to be rewritten and edited down and polished.  I shouldn’t be thinking of story ideas as gold, but more like diamonds.  When I find a diamond in the wild, it’s a crusty black lump.  They’re not sparkly or faceted, and they definitely don’t look like they’re worth six or eight thousand dollars per carat.  Diamonds need to be cut and recut, measured and examined, cut again, and then polished some more.  That’s how they get ready to be placed in a setting and shown off to the world.

So that first group of writers is tossing out all those black, coarse stones because none of them look like engagement rings.  The second group‘s busy sticking the crusty lumps on gold bands and asking you to pay three months salary for them. 

Hopefully it’s easy to see why neither of these is the right approach.

What’s the trick, then? Is there a way to know which ideas are the good ones to spend time cutting and polishing?  How can I tell if it’s an idea with potential or a bad idea or maybe a good idea but just one idea too many?

Well, y’see Timmy, the ugly truth is… a lot of the time, I can’t tell.  I just need to do the work.  I might go through a hundred pages or a solid week or three of outlining and realize there’s not really anything there.  A fairly successful friend of mine spent months working on a novel.  He got almost 70,000 words into it before he realized… it just wasn’t working.  So he stopped and moved on.

Sure, yeah, he probably could’ve cheated a bit.  Tweaked a few things, maybe tossed out a deus ex machina or two, but in the end it didn’t work because it didn’t work.  No clever phrase or substituted word or literary sleight of hand was going to change that.

I know a lot of folks have trouble accepting this, even though we all understand this sort of thing happens in a lot of other jobs. Chefs come up with cool recipes they never get to use.  Engineers design things that never get built.  Hell, do you have any idea how many unproduced scripts there are floating around Hollywoodthat have Oscar-winning screenwriters behind them?  Every creative person puts out a lot of material that never gets seen by anyone.  We do a lot of work and it gets cut or replaced or just… not used.

Don’t get paralyzed wondering if your ideas are gold.  Odds are they aren’t.  But you’ll find some diamonds in the rough, and once you know how to spot them it’ll be an easier (and quicker) process to find them next time.  For now, take what you’ve got and work with that.  There’s a chance there’s a shiny diamond or two in there somewhere.  If you put the work into them.

Speaking of cutting out excess material, next week I wanted to talk to you about recycling.

Until then… go write.

            Okay, look… there’s a good chance this post will piss you off.

            Two things I ask you to keep in mind, going in.

            First is that this comes from a place of kindness.  If you’re reading this, I want you to succeed.  All of you.  Well, okay, not him, but the rest of you, absolutely.  So I’m saying these things because… well, they need to be said.  And you need to hear them.

            Some of you really need to hear them.

            Second is that everything I’m going to be talking about is something I’ve personally experienced.  Not that I’ve seen another writer doing it—I’ve done it.  I’ve believed it.  I’ve been the person needing that smack in the face.

            And I learned from it.  And got better because of it.

            Writing’s tough.  It’s hard work.  I know this, because I’ve been doing it for a living for over a decade now.  When someone tells me how easy and wonderful and fun writing is, I’m often tempted to point out…

            Well, look.  There was a point when I thought writing was easy and fun.  It was back when I wasn’t taking it seriously.

            My writing ability started making huge leaps when I was finally able to admit a few things to myself.  I think that’s true of most people in most fields—if we can’t be honest about where we are, it’s hard to improve.

            That being said…

My first attempts at writing will suck—This sounds harsh, yeah, but… well…  Too often when we’re starting out, we just can’t get past the idea that something we wrote isn’t good.  I know I couldn’t.  My work was typed.  It was a full page long!  My mom liked it!  Of course it deserved to sell.  It deserved awards!  International awards!

            Seriously, there was soooooo much writing before my “first novel.”  There was Lizard Men from the Center of the Earth (two different versions).  A trope-filled sci-fi novel.  Some Boba Fett and Doctor Who fan fic.  A fantasy novel  fuelled by a sudden influx of hormones during my teen years (enough said about that).  The Werewolf Detective of Newbury Street, The Trinity, The Suffering Map, about half of a novel called Mouth.

            And then…Ex-Heroes. 
            It’s just against human nature to spend hours on something and then tell yourself you just wasted a bunch of time.  Why would I write something I couldn’t sell?  Obviously I wouldn’t, so my latest project must deserve a six-figure advance.

            The problem here is the learning curve.  None of us like to be the inexperienced rookie, but the fact is it’s where everyone starts.  Surgeons, chefs, pilots, astronomers, mechanics… and writers.  Oh, there are a few gifted amateurs out there, yeah—very, very few—but the vast majority of us have to work at something to get good at it.  And we can’t improve until we accept that we need improvement.

My first draft is going to suck—There was a point where I’d fret over my first draft.  I’d spend hours laboring over individual words, each sentence, every paragraph.  I’d get halfway down the page and then go back to try to fix things.  It meant my productivity was slowed to a crawl because I kept worrying about what had happened in my story instead of what was going to happen.

            The freeing moment was when I realized my first draft was always going to suck.  Always.  And that’s okay.  Everyone’s first draft sucks.  Everybody has to go back and rework stuff.  It’s the nature of the beast. 

            With those expectations gone, it became much easier for me to finish a first draft, which is essential if I ever wanted to get to a second draft.  And a third draft.  And maybe even a sale.

            No, needing another draft doesn’t make me a lesser writer in any way.  Every single professional writer I know (and I know a lot of them at this point) does a second draft.  And usually a third and fourth.

My writing needs editing.  Lots of editing—As I mentioned, I’ve been doing this for a while.  Surely by now I’ve hit the point where my stuff rolls onto the page (or screen) pretty much ready to go, yes?  I mean, at this point I must qualify as a good writer and I don’t need to obsess so much over those beginner-things, right?

            Alas, no.  Like I just said, my first draft is going to need work.  We all make the easy first choice now and then.  Things slip past us.  We misjudge how some things are going to be read. I’m fortunate to have a circle of friends and a really good editor at my publisher who all call me out when I make these mistakes or just take the easy route when I’m capable of doing something better.

            As I mentioned above, part of this is the ability to accept these notes and criticisms.  I’m not saying they’re all going to be right (and I’ve been given a few really idiotic notes over the years), but if my default position is that any criticism is wrong then my work is never going to improve past the first draft. 

            Which, as I mentioned above, sucks.

My writing needs cuts—Sticking to the theme, if I believe my writing is perfect, it stands to reason all of it is perfect.  It’s not 90% perfect with those two odd blocks that should be cut.  When I first started to edit, one of my big problems was that everythingneeded to be there.  It was all part of the story.  Each subplot, every action detail and character moment, all of the clever references and in-jokes.

            The Suffering Map was where I first started to realize things needed to be cut.  I’d overwritten—which is fine in a first draft as long as I can admit it in later drafts.  I had too many characters, too much detail, subplots that had grown too big, character arcs that became too complex.  It took a while, but I made huge cuts to the book.  It had to be done.  Heck, I just cut a whole subplot from the book I’m editing right now.  About 2500 words gone, snip-snip, in about five minutes.

            And the book it better for it.

My writing is going to be rejected –Know what I’ve got that most of you reading this will never have?  Rejection letters.  Paper letters that were mailed to me by editors.  I’ve got dozens of them.  Heck, I’ve probably got a dozen from Marvel Comics alone.  And since then I’ve got them from magazines, big publishers, journals, magazines, ezines…

            But when that first rejection from Marvel came… I was crushed.  Devastated.  How could they not like my story?  It was a full page!  I included a colored pencil rendering of what the cover should look like.  Did I mention it was typed?!

            It took me weeks—whole weeks, plural—to work up my courage to try again, and then they shot that one down, too.

            Granted, I was eleven, and those stories were awful.  I mean… really awful.

            Rejection is part of the process.  I still get rejections today.  I expect I’ll be getting then for the foreseeable future.

            Which is a good time to mention…

Rejection does not automatically mean my writing is bad—Getting that email is tough, like a punch to the gut.  It’s easy to let it get under the skin and fester.  Self-doubt feeds on rejections, so it’s important to think of it as “still looking for the right home.”

            Like I said, I’m still getting rejections today, even with the fairly solid list of credits and accolades after my name.  Editors and publishers are people too, and nothing is going to appeal to everyone.  Getting rejected became a lot easier for me when I realized it didn’t show up on my permanent record and it wasn’t a personal attack  It was just a person who didn’t connect with that particular story for some reason.

            Now, there’s a flipside worth mentioning here…

Rejection also doesn’t automatically mean my writing is good—There’s a lot of memes and recurring stories and a few general mindsets that push the idea that if my work gets rejected by an agent or editor it mustbe good, because all those people are idiots.  And it can be a comforting thought.

            It’s also kinda close to conspiracy-theory reasoning, if you think about it.

            Going right back to the beginning of this little rant, there’s a decent chance my work just isn’t good.  No big deal.  Like I said, I had dozens and dozens of rejections before I started to get some sales.

            But if I refuse to back away from the idea that it might be me—if I take dozens of rejections as proof the system is stupid rather than admit the possibility my manuscript wasn’t ready to go out—then I’m never going to improve.

            If I can admit these things to myself, it can only make me a better, stronger writer.  It’s not a flaw or a weakness.  In fact, if I look at the above statements and immediately think “Well, yeah, but none of that applies to me…” it’s probably a good sign I’m in denial about some things.

            And that’s not going to help me get anywhere.

            Speaking of getting anywhere, if you’re in the Atlantaarea I’m at Dragon Con this weekend.  Come find me and we can talk about books and writing and is Clark Gregg coming back to Agents of SHIELD or what?

            Next time, I’d like to put a few things in context.

            Until then, go write.

            Okay, yeah. That’s a friggin’ lazy title.  

            I’m pressed for time.  Sorry.

            Why am I pressed for time? Well. I’m trying to pack up my apartment (and my office), while at the same time finish a final polish on this book and write the ranty blog and prep for a Writers Coffeehouse this weekend and holy crap San Diego ComicCon is in two weeks.

            Now that I think about it, it’s kind of amazing how well I’m keeping up with this…

            Anyway, while you read this I’m finishing a draft of my current project and it struck me that I haven’t talked specifically about drafts in… well, a couple of years now.  So it’s definitely a topic worth revisiting.

            Some people hate doing drafts.  Others get caught in this endless loop of writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and…well, you probably know someone like that. And there are folks who skip “drafts” altogether, convinced their words are NYT bestselling gold the minute they’re set down.

            What I wanted to do here is sort of a step-by-step guide of what I do to get something to the point that I’m willing to turn in to an editor.  And by “editor,” I mean “someone who will give me money for these words I’ve written.”  This is final step stuff. Here be dragons. If you think of editors as scaly, fire-breathing folks.

            Of course, all that mother of dragons stuff being said, it’s important that we all remember the Golden Rule

            I’ve mentioned once or twice or thrice before that we all have our own methods of writing.  Doing drafts this way helps me a lot, but it’s not a guarantee of success for anyone except me.  You might need to modify these steps a bit.  Or a lot.  But all things considered, I think this is a good base to start from.

            So…

            Here’s what I do.

            While I’m working on a book, I’m usually scribbling down random thoughts about the nextbook.  Characters, dialogue, action moments, reveals… all sorts of different elements.  I’ll shuffle these around into more or less the order I think they’ll end up.  Over the past two years or so, I’ve become a bigger fan of outlines than I used to be, but not enough that I’d say “This is the one and only true way! Bow before your meticulously outlined god!!!!”  I shuffle things around, maybe plan a few extra beats, and get a sense where I want to start and where I’m going.

            Once I’ve got all that and the current project is done, I dive into…

            Draft One—So, for me, this is the “just finish it” draft.  I just want to this draft to go from beginning to end with… well, most of the points in between.  I don’t worry about typos or crafting nuances here.  It’s just the “plow through and get it done” phase of writing.

            At this early stage, I don’t hold anything back.  I let dialogue, descriptions, and action scenes run on a bit longer than they probably should.  I know I’ll be cutting eventually, so there’s no reason to worry about length now.  For this stage, it really is quantity over quality. 

            Also, like I hinted above, if I get stuck on something at this point… I just skip it.  Seriously.  My first drafts look like old silent movies with the little “Scene Missing” card that pops up for twenty or thirty seconds. I know I’ll be able to go into the exact details of that conversation or this sequence later, so I’d rather keep moving forward and leave that stuff for Future Peter to deal with.  Again, for me, the most important thing is to get the overall framework done.  It’s a lot easier to think about the little things when the big things aren’t looming over you.

            Depending on the book, this process takes me anywhere from two to three months. I had one book take about six weeks, but that was pretty rare for me.  If I factor out the time I lost to some personal stuff, this last one was just over three.

            A key thing to remember.  I don’t show this draft to anyone. Not my girlfriend, not my agent–nobody.  The first draft isn’t meant to be seen, it’s just meant to give me something to work with

            I may work on something else for a day, maybe even take the whole weekend off, and then it’s right back for…

            Draft Two—So, all those problems I left for Future Peter to deal with?  I’m him now. Those need to be dealt with.  Gaps get filled in.  Characters get fleshed out a little more, and sometimes renamed.  All those awkward knots get worked out.   Now that I can see a lot of these elements in relation to the whole story, I’ll usually find the answers to these problems are more apparent. 

            The goal with this draft is to have a readable manuscript.  No more little notes to myself  or trailing paragraphs that need to get connected somehow.  Someone should be able to pick this up and read it start to finish without thinking they lost a few pages or only got my notes on a chapter.

            Again, keep in mind—this doesn’t mean I do show it to people.  It just means I should be able to. 

            For some writers, this would really be their first draft.  That’s one of those personal preference things—again, advice over rules.  Personally, breaking it up like this takes a lot of pressure off me, and I think that’s a good thing when you’re trying to treat writing like a real job.  No one likes a high-pressure job.

            Okay then, so… now I step away for a couple of days.  Maybe as much as a week.  I’ll watch movies, work out a little more, maybe even scribble up a few of these ranty blog posts in advance.  The goal is to push the manuscript as far out of my mind as possible.  Don’t look at it, try not to think too much about it. 

            Draft Three—And now, the long night of a thousand cuts begins.  Two great rules-of-thumb I’ve mentioned a few times—

            Yeah, the second rule (courtesy of Stephen King) goes off the previously mentioned assumption that my first clean, readable draft is my first draft.

            I spend this draft tracking down adverbs, adjectives, pointless dialogue descriptors, and so on.  One thing I also go after here is common padding phrases that don’t really do anything (sort of, somewhat, kind of, more or less).  One of my regular beta readers dubbed this somewhat syndrome a while back, and I still call it that.  I like to tell myself I’ve gotten better about it now that I’m aware of the problem.

            Hey, we all have the little lies that get us through the day.

            And this little stuff adds up fast.  In my current manuscript I cut 200 instances of that. Almost a full page gone, just by checking on one word.

            Again, to be clear, though—these are rules of thumb. They’re guidelines.  I want to stick close to them, but there’s going to be times I want a couple adverbs and a good double handful of adjectives. No editor will freak out if there are three adverbs on one page. But if there’s four or five on everypage… well…

            At this point I’ve gone through the whole manuscript at least twice, so a few larger cuts should be apparent, too.  Overcomplicated descriptionsthat slow down the narrative.  Awkward sentence structures.  Extensive character moments that add nothing to the character, the story, or the plot.  Many of these things get tightened or cut in this draft.

            I spend a week or two doing this. 

            The Fourth Draft–This is the first big polish.  I go through sentence by sentence, looking for words that come up too often or stilted dialogue.  I also make sure all the cuts and swaps from the last draft haven’t messed anything up.  Are the logic chains still complete?  Did I forget to change Gilford’s name to Gillyman anywhere?  Does Gordon have a pistol or a baseball bat in this scene?  Are there any odd character tics that I forgot to remove or add?  Does the whole thing have a good flow to it? 

            This draft doesn’t take long.  Just a day or two.  It’s just one slow, careful read of the story. And, yeah, sometimes I still miss stuff.

            Once I’ve got this clean draft, I send it off to my beta readers to get fresh eyes.   I generally use four or five friends I’ve know for years.  They’re all professional writers and editors who know how to give useful criticism.  Not to beat a dead horse, but by professional I mean… they have actual credentials.  Some folks may decide to hire a professional editor at this point.  Nothing wrong with that.  The important thing is to get an unbiased opinion I can trust, even if I have to pay for it. 

            A few folks might argue that editing is the publisher’s job.  Okay, sure, you could look at it that way.  I need to get a publisher first, though, and why are they going to bother acquiring my crap manuscript that wasn’t even edited?

            Anyway… this draft goes off into the world and it may be a week or three before I  look at it again.  For me, at this stage in my career, it usually depends on deadlines.  But I don’t look at it during this time.  I try to relax a bit, scribble down ideas for later books (see above), or flex different mental muscles.

            For example, as I mentioned before, right now I’m packing up a lot of my office.  Turns out I’ve got a ton of LEGO and Warhammer and Gundam models and comics all piled up in the closet here.  Who knew?
            Well, okay.  I kind of suspected…

            The Fifth Draft—So, I’ve gotten notes back from those wonderful folks I begged/ blackmailed/ paid to read this thing.  Now I go through the whole manuscript page by page with their comments.  At one point I did this with multiple monitors.

            So, page one… what did everyone think?  What about page two?  How’s page three look?  This way I can see all the notes at once and make whatever changes are required.  I’ve also got my own copy of the fourth draft that I’m slowly rewriting into the fifth draft as we go.

             I mentioned I ask four or five people to make notes for me.  That gives me a broad sampling on each note/ issue that comes up.  If four people like something but one doesn’t, odds are I’ll call that good.  Nothing’s going to work for everyone.  If three don’t and two do (and of course I do—that’s why I write it), I’ll sit and give it a good look.  If nobody likes it, well… I’m smart enough to admit when I’ve screwed up and something doesn’t work.

            This draft can take another two weeks or more to finish with a full book manuscript.

            The Sixth Draft— This one’s another polishing draft, just like the fourth.   I need to make sure everything still works now that I’ve made those changes and tweaks from my reader’s comments.  So, yet another line by line reading, adjusting as I go.            And at this point… this is when I’m done.  There’s only so much a given writer—in this case, me—can do with a given story.  There comes a point when further work accomplishes nothing and I’m just rewriting for the sake of rewriting.  If my manuscript’s not ready for a publisher (or film producer) by now, it probably means I screwed up something big right at the start. 

            Next time… well, if there’s anything next week it’ll be really quick. As you may have figured out, I’m moving, and the big day is a week from today.  And then the week after that is San Diego ComicCon!  Oh, hell– and the Writers Coffeehouse is this weekend.  If you’re in LA,stop by Dark Delicacies noon to three on Sunday.

            But, yeah, next time… I’m sure I’ll have something
            Anyway… go write.

            A quick post this time.  As I mentioned last week, I’m kinda in a deadline crunch and… well, this time nobody stepped up to bail me out. Thanks again to Kristi Charish for helping out.  Screw you, every other writer friend I have.

            Naaaah, not really…

            Anyway, what I wanted to talk about this week is a bad decision I see every now and then. I saw it a lot when I used to read for screenplay contests. And I still hear mentions of it now and then.

            So… okay, look, we all love the idea of getting published, right?  Of getting some kind of recognition—maybe even some kind of payment—for what we do. I mean, it’s the big goal.  The brass carrot.  The… something. 

            I’ve already run out of humorous mixed metaphors.

            As I was saying, back when I was reading contest scripts for ramen money, one thing I’d see again and again was people who’d done a clumsy, half-assed pass on their screenplay in a feeble attempt to make it eligible for a contest.  A few cuts here. A find-and-replace there. Maybe adding in a random scene or two.  Believe me, it was very clear that’s what happened.

            Plus, talking with writers at many points in their careers, I sometimes hear ideas and plans. Cutting this novella down.  Bulking that short story up.  Maybe doing another quick draft and playing up Phoebe as a bisexual half-Asian for this one magazine. Especially if Phoebe isn’t either of those in the current draft.

            It’s really tempting.  I get it.  We all want to get published, win the prize, get the recognition.  And we’re willing to do what it takes to get there.

            But…

            I probably don’t want to make sweeping changes or cuts to my story just to fit a market or contest or trend. If a magazine doesn’t touch anything over 8000 words and my short story is 8108… okay, maybe I can snip a bit here or there. But if they don’t want anything over 5000, well… my story’s probably out.  That’s almost half of it gone.

            Likewise, cramming in a romance just so I can try to get into a Valentine’s Day anthology… that probably won’t work.  Or some hamfisted references to God and angels so I can win some of that sweet faith-based contest money.

            And I know you’re probably smiling right now, but keep this in mind…

            I’m not making up random examples.  People do stuff like this.  All the time.  I read scripts for a faith-based contestand—in the course of two years—read no less than five sex-romp comedies where characters would suddenly, for just one scene, look up to the sky and beg for God’s help.  And one of these was—dead serious–for help getting the hot female supporting character out of her clothes.

            Because that’s funny and sexy and religious.  See? Triple threat!  How can it lose?

            (it lost)

            I saw someone in an online writers group just push for “cutting your story down to meet their requirements.”  This was a discussion about an 11,000 word novella being trimmed to meet the needs of a 8,000 word market. And an amazing number of people chimed in to say “yeah, go for it.”

            Y’see, Timmy, once we’ve been doing this for any amount of time, we start to get a feel for ideas.  Some are great for flash fiction or short-short stories. Others are made to be novellas.  And some are just waiting to be fleshed out into books.

            And, yeah, some books are bigger than others.  The book I’m wrapping up is a solid 100,000 words, but I know Chuck Wendig recently finished a monster almost three times that size, and another friend who has one coming in at a nice tight 85,000.

            My point is, if I rewrote and edited and polished and my final story came in at 12,000 words… there’s a chance it’s a 12,000 word story.  And cutting 25% of it will make it… well 25% less than a good story.

            In my experience, most editors aren’t interested in 25% less than a good story.

            Likewise, if I can make major changes to a character and it has absolutely no repercussions anywhere in their story… maybe I don’t have a great character.  If making Phoebe bisexual instead of straight doesn’t change anything in my story, it’s doubtful this is the kind of story a niche market is looking for.

            As always, there’s no absolutes here.  Maybe I really can afford to lose three or four thousand words.  Perhaps my story does need a different viewpoint to excel.

            But…

            I should think long and hard about forcing a story to meet a new set of requirements.  Length, style, content, whatever they may be.  When I’m done, it may not be what it was.

            Which would suck if it was good.

            And this has turned into a much longer rant than I planned.  Apologies.

            Next time… well, I just finished a draft.  Maybe I’ll talk a little bit about that whole process.

            Until then, go write.