Category: editing

            See what I did there?  A clever play on words.  Not quite a pun, definitely not a pop culture reference, but… well, it’ll do.

            It’ll do, pig.

            Also, random note—I set up a Tumblr a while back.  If you ever want to ask a quick question, send anonymous insults, or whatever, please feel free to stop by.

            Anyway, I’m about to wrap up this draft of my current project and it struck me that I haven’t blabbed on about the drafting process, so to speak, in a while.  A lot of folks hate doing drafts.  Some folks skip them altogether, convinced their words are gold the minute they’re set down.  And a few folks get caught in an endless loop of writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and…

            So, here’s a basic step by step of how I go from bare idea to something I’m willing to hand to an editor.  And when I say editor, I mean “someone who will pay for these words I’ve written.”  That being said, this is also a good time to bring up the ever-popular golden rule.

            I’ve mentioned once or thrice before that we all have our own way of writing.  Working through drafts in 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 maybe a lot.  But I think this is a good baseline method.

            To begin…

            While I’m working on a book, I usually scribble down notes and 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.  These notes serves as a very, very rough outline, just enough so I can start writing on page one and go when it’s time to start…

            The First Draft—In my mind, this is the “just finish it” stage.  I just want to finish this draft with a beginning, an end, and the majority of points in between.  I don’t worry about catching typos or crafting every subtle moment in the plot. 

            Consider this… diamonds don’t come out of the earth as clear, faceted gems.  They come out as ugly blobs that need lots of cuts and polishing.  So if I dig up a ten-gram diamond, I can’t expect it to make a ten gram gemstone.  If I’m lucky, I might get three or four grams out of it.  It’ll shrink as I work on it, because that’s how I improve it (see below).  So if I’ve got a ten-gram diamond and I’m insisting on a 9.9 gram gem… well, that’s going to make a pretty crappy engagement ring, yes?

            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. 

            If I get stuck on something (an awkward conversation or complex action scene), I’ll just skip it.  Things might not be perfect right now, but 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 frameworkdone.  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.

            I don’t show this draft to anyone.  I may take a night off, work on something else for a day, and then it’s right back for…

            The Second Draft— Remember all those problems I left for Future Peter to deal with?  Those need to be dealt with now.  Gaps get filled in.  Characters get fleshed out a little more, and sometimes renamed.  All those awkward knots get worked out.   Because I can see a lot of these elements in relation to the whole story now , 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.

            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.  Usually she has to wait.

            For some folks, this stage would really be the first draft.  Those people have nice pages of their own somewhere out there on the web.  This isn’t one of them.  Plus, breaking it up like this takes a lot of pressure off, which I think is 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, or maybe even scribble up a few 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. 

            I’m just into this now with The Albuquerque Door, for those who care about such things.

            The Third Draft—Time to make like a slasher and cut, cut, cut.  Two great rules-of-thumb I’ve mentioned a few times—

            Yeah, the second rule 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.  If they can be cut, they get cut.  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 readers dubbed this somewhat syndrome, and I still call it that.  I like to tell myself I’ve gotten much better about it now that I’m aware of the problem. 

            Sometimes I also like to tell myself that I haven’t gained that much weight since college…

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

            I spend a week or two doing this.  This is usually when I let my lovely lady have a look.  She’s my first set of eyes and lets me know I screwed up and I’m too close to see it.

            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 Pash’s name to Veek anywhere?  Does Arthur still have time to get that pistol?  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.

            Once I’ve got a solid fourth draft, I send it off to folks to get fresh eyes.   I generally use four or five friends I’ve know for years.  All of them are all professional writers and editors who know how to give useful criticism.  Not to beat a dead horse, but by professional I mean they get paid to do this for a living.  They have actual credentials.

            Speaking of which, some folks might hire a professional editor at this point. Nothing wrong with that.  The important thing is to get an opinion I can trust to be honest, even if I have to pay for it.  A few folks might argue that this is the publisher’s job, but I need to get a publisher first, and why are they going to bother with my crap manuscript?

            Anyway, this draft goes off into the world and it may be two weeks to a month before I look at it again.  The challenge is to resist messing with it while those people are looking at it.  I try to spend the time relaxing a bit, scribbling down ideas for later books (see above), or flexing different mental muscles.

            More than once, I’ve cleaned my office.

            The Fifth Draft— Now I’ve gotten notes back from the folks I begged/ blackmailed/ paid to read this thing.  I go through the whole manuscript page by page with their comments.  If you’ve got multiple monitors, this is a great time to use them.

            Page one… what did everyone think?  What about page two?  How’s page three look?  As I’m doing this, I’ve also got my own copy of the fourth draft that I’m using as a “master document.”  This way I can see all the notes and make whatever changes are required. 

             I mentioned that 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, or I wouldn’t’ve written 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. I’m sure we all know someone who’s just been working on the same manuscript for years and years because they’ve got another one or two drafts to put it through.  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. 

            Maybe with my initial idea of rebooting the Laff-A-Lympics as a medical drama starring a gender-swapped, alcoholic Captain Caveman.

            Next time… well, if there’s anything next week it’ll be really quick.  I’ve got a flight on Thursday.  If you’re in Dallas next week, please swing by Texas Frightmare and say hi.  I’ll be in the Made in Texas room.

            Either way, go write.

            I’m kind of on a roll right now with the new book, so—if you don’t mind—I’m just going to make a quick observation and get back to it.  Next week I’ll prattle on for far too long like I normally do.

            So… said with the golden rule firmly in mind

            Worrying if all the words are right in a first draft is a lot like worrying if I’m getting a band or a DJ for my wedding when I’m not dating anyone.  It just doesn’t matter at this stage.  If I keep obsessing over those later elements, I’m never going to take care of the earlier ones.

            Write a first draft.  Perfection will show up in the later ones.  Honest.

            Next time, we’re well into screenwriting contest season, so I thought I’d talk about the stories contest readers hate.

            Until then, go write.

           I almost went with “Cheaper By The Dozen” for the title, but I figured there was no reason to make you all remember that little piece of pop culture.

           I’ve been watching people talk about editing lately in a few different online groups.  More to the point, about the need for more of it in certain corners of the industry.  A side-thread in one of those conversations was about one fellow determined to get his book edited by Thursday so he could get it up on Amazon by Friday.

            Anyway, that got me thinking about easy edits.  The type of stuff that we all let slip though while we’re writing and the experienced folks know to then get rid of in their first round of revisions.  I’ve mentioned some of them before in a broad strokes sort of way, but it struck me that maybe I could even boil this down further.

            So here are a dozen specific words I can cut from my manuscript.  Not all the time, but a fair amount of it.  A lot of them lead to other words, too—they’re indicating a larger problem—so once I get rid of these it’ll probably mean a few words on either side of them go away, too.  Which means I’ll end up with a leaner, stronger story.
            Yes, you’ve probably seen me mention lots of these before.  I even linked to some of the other posts in case anyone might want more explanation.

            Ready?

That—I’ve mentioned that a few times here, so I won’t bore you by explaining it yet again.  Needless to say, I always do a thatpass while I’m editing and end up removing about 80-90% of them.  While I was revising Ex-Purgatory, I cut over 130 thats—more than half a page of them!

Decided—This word is almost always filler.  Maybe not conscious filler, but it’s almost always filler that can be cut.  If Yakko decides to do something and then he does it, I’m just eating up words again.  We all make hundreds of decisions and choices every day, but most readers want to hear about the action, not the decision to take an action.  The action itself implies the decision was made. 

Listen/ Look—If I start a line of dialogue with look or listen, I’d bet that three out of four times that line either states something plainly apparent or it’s an infodump. Which means either these lines aren’t adding anything to the story or they’re adding something I could express better through subtext or actions.

Obvious—If something isn’t obvious, it comes across as arrogant to say it is.  So I shouldn’t use the word obvious, because the character (or writer) in question is going to look like a jerk.

            On the flipside, if something is obvious, they I still don’t need the word.  Things that are obvious are… well, obvious, so it’s just wasted words for a writer to tell us so.

Appeared/ Seemed/Looked – These three words show up in phrases like “appeared to be” or “seemed to be” or “looked like.”  Not always, but quite often. The thing is,  appeared to be and its siblings don’t get used alone.  They’re part of a literary construction where the second half of that structure is either an implied or actual contradiction to the appearance.  So when I’m saying “Yakko seemed like the kind of man you didn’t want to mess with,” what I’m really saying is “Yakko seemed like the kind of man you didn’t want to mess with but really he was a pushover who fainted at the sight of blood.”  And what I meant to say all along was just “Yakko was the kind of man you didn’t want to mess with.”

           If I’m not trying to establish a contradiction, using appeared to be and the others isn’t just wasted words– it’s wrong.  So cut them

Was – I always search for was, because it tends to point at weak verb structures.  It’s when I’ve got “Wakko was running” instead of just “Wakko ran.”  It’s a small tweak, but it’s one that gives my writing punch because it makes all my actions read just a bit faster.

            Also, this can save me from the awkward problem of simultaneous actions, when my chosen verb form ends up creating a chain of things happening at the same time rather than a sequence of events.

As you know—I’ve talked about these three words a few times before.  They’re awful.  Just awful.  I won’t say this is the worst way to get the facts out to my readers—I have full confidence there’s a writer out there now working on a worse way—but I’d put this in the 99-out-of-100 category. 

            If I’m saying “as you know” to you, it means you already know what I’m telling you… so why am I saying it?  Why waste words blatantly lecturing about something that you and I both know?  Yeah, you might have amnesia, but if you do then you don’t know… so why am I saying “as you know” to you?

            If these three words pop up together more than once in my manuscript, odds are I’m doing something horribly wrong.

            And there you have it.  A dozen words you can search for and slice away.  Editing made simple.  Well, some of the editing.  I didn’t even mention my more common somewhat syndrome words.

            Next time, it’ll almost be Valentine’s Day, so I guess I should talk about love and all that stuff.

            Until then, go write.

            As you probably noticed, there was no ranty blog last week.  All the publicity stuff for Ex-Purgatory ate up a ton of my time.  And this week is fallout from that plus a bunch of dental issues I won’t bore (or horrify) you with.

            Thankfully, Thom offered to dive in and make some helpful tips for editors, and for writers who might be suffering from poor editor-ship.

—————————

            Usually, Pete tries to talk about the craft of writing, and the many, many pitfalls he’s seen as both a casual reader and as a judge for some hifalutin’ screenwriting business. One of the things he’s asked for is a continuance of this tradition, but this blog will be a little different. If you’re reading this, Pete wasn’t only busy, but has allowed it.

            I’m talking to the readers today. Not your everyday, run of the mill readers, but participants in writer’s circles and beta readers instead. If you take time out of your busy, busy schedule to read for content and to provide meaningful critiques, I’m talking to you. If you’re receiving these critiques, I might be talking to you, too.

            During the course of these readings and critting, there are some phrases which make the rounds I wish to all that everybody, everywhere holds holy I could remove. They’re next to useless, and sometimes, downright insulting. If you use these phrases, but not in the way I’m about to mention, relax. Down, Simba. I’m not talking to you.

            You may have to forgive me if I become… animated during the writing of this blog. These things tend to get my hackles up.

            If this is the limit of your advice for any bit of a critique, you’re doing it wrong. Please, readers, if you feel the urge to spout this piece of… advice, attach an example of what you mean. Or at the very least, be specific about what it is you wish to see and not be told.

            For instance, if the writer has written “John felt nervous,” and your reply is SDT, throw your writer friend (or circle-mate) a bone and give some examples. Don’t you think if the author in question had thought of a way to show it, he or she would have?

            It’s so bad that in my capacity as editor, I find myself cringing when I come to an instance where I want the author to show something. Somehow I power through, but always, always leave an example.

            Yes. This one kind of sets my blood aflame. That was in an early critique I’d gotten; I disremember the reason. It might have been opening with a dream sequence. But the least helpful thing I read that day was, “This would work if you were Harlan Ellison, but you’re not.” You know what, you silly bitch? Before Harlan Ellison was Harlan Ellison, he wasn’t. The same holds true for Stephen King, for Clive Barker, for Cormac McCarthy, for goddamn anybody else. We all start small.

            I guarantee you, the guy up the street who has a woodworking shop wasn’t… uh, insert famous carpenter who isn’t Jesus here… the first time he picked up a hammer and saw. He was clumsy with his tools, and maybe if you look close, you’ll see he’s missing part of one of his fingers where he learned a bloody lesson. But now he has his own place, doing what he loves for a living, and fashioning memories for other people using those same tools he was clumsy with on day one.

            You don’t say. Man has only been telling stories for thousands of years. I would never have thought the same thing might pop up in more than one story.

            Clichés exist for a reason. They work. The work involves taking a pile of clichés and using them in a way that turns them on their heads, if need be, or exactly as they were intended. What? Yes. Sometimes it is a dark and goddamn stormy night. Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen, I’ve lived in Seattle. There most definitely is a calm before the storm. People don’t realize they’re holding their breath until whatever they’re holding it for is over. This really happens. And while some of these things are over-represented in fiction, that’s no reason to shun them.

            The same holds for monsters. As I’ve said before, not every instance of a monster needs to be a stunning new breakthrough in horror technology. Dracula hasn’t lost a scary step in 116 years; the vampire was done right the first time. (Yes, I know Dracula wasn’t the first. If you have to keep telling people this, maybe it’s because he was the first done really well.) The same holds for zombies and werewolves and man-made creatures of doooooom.

            For my money, the last worthwhile advance in horror technology came with “The Call of Cthulhu” and the idea of an uncaring, inhuman universe where we’re not the apex predator.

            But I digress. Things have been done before. If that’s your beef, maybe suggest ways the author could keep his or her cliché but use it in a better way.

            Not everything mentioned in a novel will be essential to the plot, or to the overall story, or to character development. While it’s true that a lot of the bestest books and movies tie everything together in a neat little bow, some of them do not.

            Look at The Blues Brothers. Everybody loves that movie. Don’t they? Well. I do, and that’s enough for me. Where was I?

            Right. Take The Blue Brothers, if you will. That movie is just full of so much win, and there are parts in the beginning that link to parts at the end, and little bits in-between that talk to you when you see them reappear. “They broke my watch,” I laugh and laugh every time I hear that.

            But there are unrelated things. “Did you get my Cheeze-Wiz, boy?” What the hell is that? Is it important? Does it shed some light on Elwood’s character that, yes, he did in fact bring the Cheez-Whiz? No. No, it doesn’t. “Orange whip?  Orange whip?  Three orange whips?”  Does it matter what he ordered? No, it only mattered that the VP of the company asked to be included, and John Candy is a funny, funny man.  “Fix the cigarette lighter.”  Did that ever come back to haunt them? Hells, no, it didn’t. “Breaks my heart to see a boy that young goin’ bad.” Did that kid come back and help out? Or hurt the cause? Or was he even in the sequel? It’s in this paragraph for a reason.

            No, that’s not one of the phrases, that’s just me, trying to figure out how to bring this to a clean-ish close. There are plenty more noxious phrases, but Pete doesn’t like these to be too long. Hey, if there’s reason, and he says yes, I’ll do another one. But for now, let me leave you with this.

            Beat readers and critiquers, you fulfill a vital part of the writing process. All the acknowledgements you read include people just like you, and authors rely on you to be straight with them, and to do what you can to help. From my own experience, the few works I do have out in the world would have been poorer indeed without the input of my beta team and the Permuted Pit and Pendulum critique groups.

            So, yes, you’re needed. Try not to be dicks about it.