Category: drafts

Yeah that’s right. I’m late posting this. And we all know the rules–that mean I get cut from the team.

Also, Bennett, you’re cut. Adamson, you’re cut, too. Belicynski, cut. Harper, cut. Brannon, Moody, Richmond, Young, McLeod–you’re all cut.

Brown, you’re still good.

Wait–J. Brown? No, you’re cut.

Everyone who’s left, let’s talk about this week’s topic.

One of the most common complaints I hear from people (in person and in various places online) is that it’s impossible to cut anything from their work. There’s just no way to make their novel less that 600,000 words. It’s a miracle they’ve squeezed the screenplay down to 190 pages. The manuscript cannot be any shorter. All too often, they’re saying this after the first draft. Heck, some people talk about their manuscript getting longer as they do successive drafts.

Y’see, Timmy, writers have to make cuts. They have to make their manuscript leaner, meaner, and cleaner. Readers prefer it that way. Editors prefer it that way.

So, a few painless ways you can make a few cuts and maybe trim a few hundred words from your writing…

Adverbs— When it comes down to it, adverbs are the Shemps of the writing world. We try to pretend they’re important, but they can always be replaced. As most of us get caught up in the flow of words, the impetus of a scene, and the thing that slides by most often is the all-but-useless adverb. For example…

–She excitedly tore open the present and happily said “This is the best Christmas ever!”

–They shouted loudly at the team.

–“Maybe I saw something, maybe I didn’t,” said Wakko coyly.

Do any of these adverbs add anything to these sentences? Three out of five times if you’re using an adverb, you just don’t need it. The fourth time odds are you’re using the wrong verb, and once you find the right one, again, you won’t need the adverb. And that fifth time… well, maybe it’s only one in six. If you’re using your vocabulary well, there aren’t many times you need an adverb.

Writer/ Editor Pat LoBrutto once tossed put a great rule of thumb I’ve mentioned a few times. One adverb per page, four adjectives per page. It’s only a guideline, granted, but if you’re averaging six or seven adverbs per paragraph maybe you should give them all a second look.

Hey, speaking of adjectives…

Adjectives—People often create compound adjectives from hell to describe things that tend to be pretty mundane when you think about it.

–She had ocean-like dark blue eyes.

–His armor was made of polished, meticulously-engraved, glossy-black ceramite.

–The tall, majestic, awe-inspiring cliffs of weatherworn, charcoal-gray stone loomed over them.

There’s an odd habit I’ve seen among fledgling fantasy writers to use dozens of adjectives per page, if not per sentence–often redundant ones like “obsidian black hair.” It’s part of that purple prose I mentioned above. It’s not exclusive to that genre, but frequent enough I felt it’s worth mentioning.

Of course, we all go a little overboard now and then (anyone who says they don’t is lying to you) because we’re convinced this person, this place, this thing needs more description. Yet we all know too much description brings things too a grinding halt.

That—This is a word people tend to drop into their writing a lot, and a good four out of five times their writing would be tighter without it. I used to be a that junkie until someone pointed out how unnecessary it often is.

–He ran off in the same direction that Wakko had.

–She believed that once the button was pressed, the world would be saved.

–Yakko knew once Dot saw the puppy that she would want to take it home.

On a recent manuscript I was working on, I cut over 1000 that‘s–almost a solid four pages. Use the Find feature in Word (it’s up there under Edit), search for uses of that in your writing, and see how many of them are necessary. Odds are you’ll find at least half of them aren’t.

“As you know…” –This is probably the clumsiest way to do exposition there is. Really. Think about it. Just by saying “as you know,” I’m stating that you–the person I’m speaking to–already know the facts I’m about to share. So why am I repeating them? As a writer, why would I have two characters engage in such a useless bit of dialogue?

When a writer puts in “as you know” or one of its half-breed cousins, it’s a weak attempt to put out some exposition through dialogue. If you’re using it, almost across the board there’s either (A) a better way to get the information to the reader or (B) no need for this information because it is already covered somewhere.

If you’ve got a really solid manuscript–I mean rock-solid– you might be able to get away with doing this once. Just once. As long as you don’t do it your first ten pages.

Useless Modifiers — I’ve also called this Somewhat Syndrome a few times. This is another one I wrestle with a lot, although I like to tell myself I’ve gotten better about it. It’s when you pepper your writing with somewhat.., a bit…, slightly…, and other such modifiers. Nine times out of ten they’re not doing anything except adding to your word count and slowing your story. Use the Find feature again, see how many of them are doing anything, and look how much tighter and stronger your writing is without them.

Appeared to be… –This is one of those phrases some people latch onto and use all the time. Problem is, most of them don’t understand it. It tends to be used as an introduction of sorts, leading the reader into some purple-prose description. This phrase sometimes disguises itself as looked like or seemed to be or some variation thereof.

The thing is appeared to be doesn’t get used alone. It’s part of a literary construction where the second half of that structure is either an implied or actual contradiction to the appearance. So when you’re saying…

–Phoebe appeared to stand six feet tall.

…what you’re really saying is…

–Phoebe appeared to stand six feet tall, but she was actually closer to five foot five without her stiletto heels.

And what you meant to be saying all along was just…

–Phoebe stood six feet tall.

If you aren’t trying to establish a contradiction, using appeared to be and its bastard stepchildren isn’t just wasted words– it’s wrong.

Long Names – If you’ve got a lot of characters with names like MacMortimerstein or Vandervecken, they’re going to take up a lot of space as their names get used again and again. They’re also awkward for the reader to juggle and keep track of. Plus, several of them will die as other characters rush to blurt out “Dear God, Doctor MacMortimerstein, look out for that… ahhhhh, too late!”

Try using simple names like Mort or Van, which are easier for readers to keep track of as well. It’s also human nature to shorten such names when we speak, so it makes for better dialogue, too. True, this will not lessen your word count, but it can shorten your page count, which is the next best thing.

Keep in mind, if there’s a solid reason for your alien cyborg billionaire midget to be called Bannakaffalatta and not Ban, stick with it. But if it’s just a background character you’re using for two chapters or three scenes…

Anyway, there’s seven quick, relatively painless cuts. Try them out and see if you can drop a few hundred words or more.

Next time, we’ll deal with this rampant ignorance, even if I have to explain everything using small words.

Until then, go write.

Bloody hell. Is it Thursday again already?

Whose idea was this ranty blog, anyway…?

Anyway, what I wanted to toss out this week was a rough outline of how I generally go about things. I’ve given lots of general suggestions, but I thought it might be cool to actually show a step by step, solid example of how I take a project from a rough idea to something I’ll show friends to something I consider worth showing to publishers/ producers/ contest readers/ and so on.

Plus it’s an easy one to write up and I’ve got to do one more article and a sidebar before the weekend.

As always, before going into this, I want to remind everyone of the golden rule. Just because this works for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. There’s a better than average chance it won’t, in fact. But maybe it will spark a few thoughts or make you look at things in a new way

1st Draft— For me, this is just the “get it done” stage. I don’t worry much about catching typos or crafting every subtle moment in the plot. I just want to finish this draft with a beginning, an end, and the majority of points in between.

I tend to skip around a lot in the first draft, which means I could start with almost anything. I’ll scribble down random beats or dialogue exchanges that occurred to me while the idea was fermenting in my head and drop them more or less where I think they’d go. I talked a little bit last week how I got started on Ex-Heroes.

At this early stage, if I get stuck on something (an awkward conversation or complex action scene), I’ll just skip it for now. I know I can work out exactly how Yakko convinced Wakko to give him a pistol later, so I’d rather keep moving than stay on this point too long and risk getting blocked on the whole thing (too long being a completely subjective, case-by-case term). Again, for me, the most important thing is to get it done. It’s a lot easier to think about the little things when the big things aren’t looming over you.

I also don’t hold back here at all. I let dialogue, descriptions, and action scenes go on forever. I know I’ll be cutting eventually, so there’s no reason to worry about length now. I mean, if you wanted to find a pound of gold, you wouldn’t dig up 1.1 pounds of soil, hope for the best, and just call it a day.

No one sees this draft but me.

2nd Draft— Now it’s time to smooth it out. All those little bits I skipped I need to go back and fill in. All those awkward knots need to be worked out. A lot of the time I’ll find that, because I can now see a lot of these elements in relation to the whole story, the answers to these problems are more apparent.

The goal now 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.

Keep in mind this doesn’t mean I do show it to people. It just means I should be able to. Really, the only person who might see this is my lady-love, and not even her always. Sometimes she has to wait.

A few people have argued with me these two drafts really just amount to me doing a first draft in two stages. That may be true, but they’re not writing the ranty blog, are they?

Okay then, so… now I step away for a couple of days. Maybe a week. Don’t look at it, try not to think too much about it. And then…

3rd Draft–Stephen King says to start cutting on draft two, but as I said, my draft two is what some people may call a solid first draft. As such, I usually wait until draft three to start slashing. This is where I hunt down adverbs, adjectives, pointless dialogue descriptors, and so on. Two fun rules I’ve mentioned before–

2nd draft = 1st draft – 10%

one adverb per page, four adjectives

One thing I really go after here is the padding phrases I tend to drop in (sort of, somewhat, kind of, more or less) that don’t really do anything. As I’ve mentioned before, one of my regular editors at work has dubbed this awful habit of mine Somewhat Syndrome. Feel free to pass that one along.

By this time I’ve gone over the whole manuscript at least twice, so some bigger cuts should be visible. That rant Wakko gives about socialized medicine. Dot’s flashback to the first time she got drunk in college. That long, meticulous description of Yakko loading his pistol. That’s some beautiful writing there, but is it actually doing anything?

This is also when I can usually spot structure issues. In larger stories, it’s not uncommon to have “floating” events that are important, but aren’t tied to a solid point in the script. This one may be here right now, but having all of the story in my head lets me realize it would work better there, and it would be a more solid fit.

If I haven’t already, this is when I let the lady love have a look. She’s my first set of eyes to let me know I screwed up something and I’m too close to see it.

All things considered, this is usually two or three weeks of full-time work for me.

4th 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 character arcs still smooth? Logic chains are still complete? Are the transitions still good? Are the parallels parallel? Did this character turn into a man for a few minutes in the middle of the chapter? Did Yakko just pull a gun out of nowhere?

When the fourth draft is all shiny, this is the one I show folks for comments. I generally send it out to five people. They’re a carefully selected bunch, all of whom have some level of literary background, and I don’t think there’s one among them I’ve known for less than five years. One’s actually been reading and critiquing my work for over two decades now, and she still doesn’t cut me any slack. The key thing is they’re all people who will give honest, useful criticism. There won’t be huge, unexplained X’s across the page, meaningless feedback, or cartoons in the margins.

Well, not often, anyway.

This goes off into the world and it may be a month or two before I look at it again. The trick here is to resist messing with it while those people are looking at it.

5th Draft— Now I’ve gotten notes back from whatever folks I cajoled into reading this thing. I sit down with all the comments and go through the whole thing page by page. What did everyone think of page one? What comments were there on page two? How’s page three look? As I’m doing this, I’ve also got my own copy of the 4th draft that I’m using as a “master document.” This way I can get all the notes assembled in the relevant place and make whatever changes are required. This document is more or less the 5th draft, and it can take another two weeks or more to finish it with a full book manuscript.

I mentioned above that I try to get five people to make comments for me, and that’s partly so I can get a broader sampling on each issue that comes up. If four people like something but one doesn’t, odds are I’ll call that good. Nobody’s going to get every joke or like every chapter. If three don’t and two do (and of course I do, or I wouldn’t’ve written it), I’ll sit and give it a good look. And if none of them like it, well… I’m smart enough to know when I’ve screwed up something doesn’t work.

6th Draft— This one’s yet another smoothing, polishing draft. Now that I made those tweaks and changes from my reader’s notes, I need to make sure everything works again. So, yet another line by line reading, tweaking and adjusting as I go.

And honestly, at this point… this is when I give up. There is 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, as the Brits so eloquently put it, you’re just wanking. If it’s not ready to show to a publisher by now, it probably means I screwed up something right at the start on a very basic level. Perhaps when I first thought I could adapt Pilgrim’s Progress into a hardcore gothic romance.

There’s also a danger that if you keep trying to come up with reasons to do another draft, you’ll keep finding them. I’m sure we all know someone who’s just been working on the same manuscript for years and years and years because they’ve got another one or two drafts to put it through. After a while of that, your story stops looking like a coherent tale and a bit more like the Winchester Mystery House.

This pattern may not work for you. Everyone’s going to handle things a little differently. I got to talk to Kevin Smith a while back and he said that he wrote screenplays on a scene-by-scene basis. He’d write a few pages, read, revise, read, smoke a bit, revise again, read, polish it, and move on to the next few pages. So by the time his script was completed, he’s reached what I’m calling the end of draft four.

Y’see, Timmy, the important thing, as always, is not how you do it but that you do it. It’s annoying as hell, and all-too-often used as an excuse, but there is something to that old chestnut “writing is re-writing.” You can’t expect something to be publication-ready the moment it leaves your fingertips. Doing this professionally means going over a piece again and again rather than mailing off your first draft while you move on to your next glorious and epic-worthy idea. If you’re not willing to put the extra effort into your writing, it’s always going to end up in that large pile on the left.

Next week, Booboo, I want to discuss those picnic baskets the campers have. Sort of.

Until then, go write.

Or rewrite.

A bit early this week to make up for the time off.

Anyway, let’s return to that mechanic analogy I used a few weeks ago. I’d like to explore it a bit more, because it works really well.

Let’s say you get up tomorrow morning and your car won’t start. The engine will turn over, the headlights and radio work, but that’s it. Unless you happen to be very repair-minded yourself, odds are you’ll contact a mechanic, because working with automobiles is what he (or she– we’re progressive here) does for a living and they know a lot more about it than you do. Car repair is, after all their field of expertise, and they’ve been working in it for a while.

Now, when the mechanic tells you the car’s head block is cracked and it needs major work, would you start to argue? Would you say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Or she doesn’t understand your car and then march off in a huff?

What if you took your car in for a tune up and the mechanic told you the brakes were shot and the steering column was dangerously close to failing? Would you ignore the warnings and head out on that cross-country road trip? Perhaps take the car to your cousin Chris, the butcher, with the hopes he’ll give you an answer you like the sound of more?

Hopefully not. It would mean you’ve probably bought a lot of cars in your time. And maybe had some hospital visits in there, too.

If you ask someone with more experience than you for an opinion on something, it’s kind of silly to then ignore that opinion. If an expert gives you advice from their chosen field, you should probably at least consider what they’re saying.

And yet… how often have you heard the angry amateur writer complain the editor/ professor/ contest judge was an arrogant so-and-so who didn’t get their story? That these people were so hung up on perpetuating the system– with stupid, inconsequential stuff like spelling and dialogue and believable characters –they didn’t see the inherent ART!!!

Now, some folks may argue that writing and auto repair are quite different, so my analogy doesn’t really hold up. Writing really is an art, after all, and art is more subjective and gray than, say, fixing a cracked head block, which is pretty black and white. You can’t apply hard-fast, black and white rules to writing.

Well… yes and no.

Based off my own experience (which is not gargantuan, but sizeable enough I feel safe using myself as a reference), I would guess about half of most rejections are because of the small, basic elements of writing—and those are black and white. Spelling and grammar. Punctuation and dialogue. Characters that are little more than cardboard cutouts. I’m not talking about the odd typo here or there—that’s completely understandable. I mean the ones where your eyes are bleeding two pages in.

A short story…

I once ran the builder port for an online text game. At its simplest, we were constantly writing dungeon room descriptions, like the ones for old D&D modules. “This chamber has been carved from the living rock of the mountain, and in places the walls are still raw stone.” That sort of thing. The game amounted to tens of thousands of individual files (a simplification), each one containing five or six (or more) hopefully-coherent sentences forming a solid description. Being who I am, I held the rest of the builder staff to a pretty high standard when it came to spelling, grammar, and continuity. A few of those folks read these little rants, and I’m sure they can tell you I was close to a dictator when it came to such thing.

Well, one time I got an application from a fellow who ignored all our forms and just sent me a huge list of stuff he had done for other games. His first room description had six typos in it. There were seventeen grammar mistakes on the first page. Two days later he began asking when he could start on the builder.

When I explained he couldn’t, and why, he was furious. Where did I get off saying his writing was no good? It was good enough for other games he’d worked on, wasn’t it? And when I tried to explain why– what gives me the right to tell him he needed to work on his spelling?!

Needless to say, after his passionate and strongly worded response, I did not invite him to try again later.

Now, there is a flip side to taking criticism. When it comes down to it, you shouldn’t listen to everyone, and there are some people who you should ignore altogether. Not every single opinion should count. You should be considering who you’re asking and what their own relationship to the material is (you may remember a while back when I talked about the downside to getting opinions from certain folks). Neither of my grandmothers is really qualified to judge rap music or torture porn films. My best friend is not the guy you go to for a review of your girly young adult romance novel, and he’ll admit that, too.

Another story…

Years ago I had this one client, a beautiful woman who wanted to write a specialized exercise book. Well, who wanted me to write an exercise book for her. I tried to explain non-fiction books are more about pitches and proposals, but she really wanted to see a manuscript. And she was paying well. So, over the course of a month or so we did lots of interviews where she talked at length. Then I would go home to edit, do some research, and arrange it into drafts I could show her.

The problem arose when she would then show the draft to someone else and take their opinions as gospel. Her husband the real estate lawyer. Her best friend. A personal trainer she knew. So every time I came to talk to her, she had a new list of things that “needed” to change in the book. Once she even insisted on showing a copy to an acquaintance of hers who was a literary agent—a copy we’d covered with red ink and editing notes. I begged and begged her not to, she did, and much to her surprise (but not mine) the agent said it looked like it still needed work. The six drafts I did for her ended up being six page-one rewrites.

At least, as I said, she was paying well.

So, a few helpful hints when it comes to criticism.

First, ignore anyone who can’t give a why or how for their opinion. Just toss their notes out the window, delete them from your inbox, or turn up your iPod if they happen to be sitting in front of you. If someone’s just going to say “this sucks” or “you suck” or “you’re a sucky writer”… shrug it off. It’s tough, but let it roll off your shoulders. An opinion needs to come with a few concrete examples to back it up if it’s going to have any weight. “This doesn’t work” doesn’t help you at all. “This doesn’t work because you didn’t set up a relationship between Yakko and Wakko” is constructive criticism, because it lets you look back at something specific.

Second, once someone’s given you specifics, pay attention to them. If someone explains a problem that runs through A, B, and C, look at it. You don’t have to agree with them, but if they’ve taken the time to list a handful of what they see as particular trouble points, you should at least have the decency to look at what they’re talking about. This is one of the biggest problems I see—people who are closed to receiving any type of constructive criticism.

Third, be clear on the different types of feedback you’re going to get. Some things you will have to change. Spelling. Grammar. Formatting. Structure. These are the black and white things we talked about up above, and that I often talk about here. There are no maybes or howevers here. You can yell ART as loud as you want but apostrophes still have nothing to do with possessives and black hair cannot compliment blue eyes.

Other things are more fluid. Story elements. Characterization. Locations. And that brings us to…

Fourth, take suggested changes with a grain of salt. Especially those story and character-based ones. In the end, you’re the one telling the tale. It really doesn’t matter if your best friend thought Yakko and the nurse should’ve gotten together in the end. Or if another one of your critics felt Dot should’ve killed Wakko because of that thing with the girl. Or if somebody expected the story to be about zombies and it turned out to be about clones, so it didn’t seem as good. These are personal preference matters. You’re the person writing the story, and if in your story Yakko and the nurse go their separate ways, Wakko lives, and there’s a swarm of clones wandering around… then that’s the story being told. There are lots of other manuscripts floating around out there in a variety of different formats. Just because your story wasn’t what someone wanted to read does not mean your story is wrong.

On which note, shouldn’t you get back to writing that story? You want to polish it up before you show it to anyone, right?

One of the contests I was reading for recently is not anonymous. That means quite often I could see the screenwriter’s name on the script he or she had submitted. And the next script they submitted. And the one after that. And the one after that.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with multiple submissions, but what struck me was how many of these people were consistently just above average. Not enough so that they’d make the next cut, but enough that you could see a seed of actual talent. Alas, none of them bothered to focus or polish that talent—they just pounded out a screenplay and then moved on to their next idea.

On a similar note, I visit a few message boards run by different publishers. It’s not unusual to see people talking about their latest trilogy or the epic series of novels they’ve written over the past year. They haven’t even sold their first book, mind you, but they’re already working on the fourth or fifth sequel.

Now, logic and statistics would seem to tell you that multiple manuscripts means multiple chances to advance. Which would be true if getting a screenplay or story selected was just random chance. Granted, with some of the stuff in theaters and on shelves these days, it’s understandable that people would think random chance was a major factor…

The reality is, out of more than a dozen screenwriters I saw who submitted more than one script to the above-mentioned contest, only one went forward to the next round. And did so with both of his scripts.

One writer out of fourteen (to make it simple) is a little over 7%.

Those are not great odds.

There’s a publishing fact I mentioned a while back, and I personally think it holds with screenwriting as well. Only one out of 100 people who call themselves writers ever finish something. Yep, out of all those folks who are working on a novel or beating out a screenplay on the weekends, only 1% of them will actually produce a completed manuscript.

So if you’ve got the enthusiasm and ability to write over 2000 pages of anything a year, you have a better-than-average shot at making it as a writer. Probably not a Stephen King/ William Goldman/ David Koepp level writer (there’s only room for so many of them), but there’s a definite chance of you being published or produced.

So, here’s a suggestion. Next time you’re thinking of multiple submissions to a magazine, a screenplay contest, or an anthology, stop and count them up. For every additional submission you plan on making, put your favorite manuscript through another draft. Don’t just run it through the spellchecker and call it a draft. Take your time and do it right. Then submit it, move on to the next one, and repeat.

For example, if you were planning to submit four screenplays to a contest (not as unusual as you’d think) take the main one and take it through three more drafts. Look at some of the random hints and tips I’ve posted here over the past few months. Go through your manuscript and tighten up dialogue. Then get some feedback, go through it again, and cut a bunch of those excess words. Maybe triple-check all your spelling line by line or polish your characters on the third time through.

Once you’ve done all that, submit it. Then look at the second script. Well, there are still two more past that, so this one has to go through two more drafts. Tighten. Polish. Feedback. Cut. Check. Submit. Repeat.

Now, I can already hear the low rumble of complaint. How’s the writer supposed to get all this done in time for the contest? Script number four’s never going to make it in time. Heck, there’s a chance script number two won’t even be done in time. Following this advice means most of the other scripts won’t make it into the contest.

That’s right. They probably won’t.

The point here is to focus your efforts. You don’t want to submit a double- handful of rough drafts. Quantity is not the key here, quality is. You want to put out a single, polished, meticulousy-revised manuscript that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt cannot be improved. If you had the time to submit four mediocre, second-draft scripts, what you’re really saying is you have time to submit one phenomenal one.

So go write. Write a lot. Just try to focus some of that writing.