Category: editing

March 7, 2019 / 4 Comments

The Outline Experience

Hey everybody!

(Hi, Doctor Nick!)

I’d like to thank you all for your patience while I was off finishing that book.  I went through a brutal last week of work on it.  I decided to change the last five chapters and then still squeeze in another polish draft.  Because why not, right…?

And I’m assuming you’ve all been patient.  For all I know this was the last straw and you all said screw it—Victoria Schwab just tosses out great writing advice on Twitter.  Why am I wasting time waiting for this guy to come back?

I may just be writing into the internet void.

Ah, well.  I’ll give it a few weeks to be sure.

So, speaking of the void, a couple months back I talked about outlines, and how my attitude toward them has changed over the years.  And it is so weird to say “over the years.”  I’m still amazed I’ve been doing this for as long as I have.

Anyway, I talked a bit about outlines and promised to revisit the topic because… well, this book I just finished was the first time I’ve done a book with a really full, complete outline.  The analogy I made was going from roughly planning out a trip to having an hour-by-hour itinerary.  And since my previous attempts to work with an outline hadn’t gone so well, I thought it would be worth talking about what I did and how it all worked out in the end.

First off, as I mentioned before, the outline for this book was huge.  Forty-two single-spaced pages, almost double what I’ve ever done before with this kind of blueprint.  I had everything broken down by chapters, I had notes of which chapters were done from which points of view.  And I had another four page document that was just notes on characters—names, backgrounds, wardrobe.  I could probably say I had fifty pages of this done before I sat down to start actually writing it.

Remember that last bit—we’ll come back to it.

It’s also worth mentioning that I spent almost five weeks working on this outline.  More than a month.  There were many false starts.  There was feedback.  I pretty much went through drafts of my outline.

Was it worth it?

Well, taking the holidays and a week with a bad back into consideration, I finished up a first draft in just under nine weeks.  That’s pretty good for me.  My first drafts are usually somewhere between two to three months, so this one basically scraped right up against that, on the quicker side.

But…

It’s also worth noting that this was a much, much tighter first draft than I usually do.  I’ve joked about the number of notes I’d usually leave for myself in a first draft.  MAKE THIS SOUND COOLER or ADD A CHAPTER EXPLAINING THIS.  Usually, I’d have ten or twelve of these in a first draft.  This time around I had… four?  Maybe five?  And only two of them all that big.  So my second draft took just over a week, if memory serves.  About eight days, altogether.  In the past, that’s been a three to four week process, patching over all those holes.

Now… let’s crunch some numbers.

I’m sure one or two of you are seeing this as a brilliant validation of outlines.  They make things go so much faster and easier. Three months down to two?  Three weeks down to a little more than one?  Fantastic! I shaved 33% or more off my time.

 Did I though…?

I mean, as I mentioned above, once I add in the five weeks of work for that outline, the overall work period is just about as long as it used to be.  It went much smoother, yes—much less head-banging-on-keyboard—but I’m almost tempted to say it took a little bit longer.  Not drastically longer, but I’m not sure it really saved any significant time in the long run.  I just used the time differently.

Also worth mentioning—what’s that old chestnut, no plan survives contact with the enemy?  Same thing here.  No outline survives contact with the actual story.  As things are building and fleshing out, they change.  These are no longer those characters, able to carry out those actions.  One character in this book had a complete 180 personality change from first to second draft, from angry yelling guy to eerily calm smiling guy.  Which worked so much better for the story and made one of those fill-in-the-blank sections turn out completely different than I originally planned.

That’s also why the ending changed, as I mentioned at the start.  I rewrote the last five chapters of the book.  The last seven, really, because once the characters were well-established and the pace was set… well, I came to some realizations.  One was that some of my ending was pointless conflict—just drama and action for the sake of drama and action, nothing else. Also, I had a much clearer view of how some characters would react, and those little tweaks changed how some things needed to happen.

One other thing to keep in mind that I’d never considered—using a really dense, detailed outline can be a bit brutal if you’re someone who likes tracking their word count.  Every day I’d type out 1500-2000 words and feel really good about myself.  And then I’d delete all the notes for that chapter, which would knock the overall word count back by 500-750 words.  Yeah, I still wrote the same amount, but… well, if those numbers mean a lot to you, it can be kinda disheartening.

What does all this boil down to?

Well, not much.  As I’ve said in the past, an outline is a tool for my writing arsenal, but there’s no law that says I have to use that tool.  For me—someone writing on a hard deadline as part of my full-time job—yeah, I think I may try using this tool again.  For you, maybe not.  Maybe you’re still at a point where you can take the time to just feel your way through the story.  Maybe you just don’t want to deal with an outline and have that much planned out for you.  These are all fine things.  Like so many things on the writing side, it comes down to what works best for you.  That’s the Golden Rule I mention here so often.

And those are my thoughts on outlines.

At this point I’ll toss out the reminder that my latest book, Dead Moon, is currently available exclusively from Audible.com.  It’s set in the Threshold universe, so if that’s your thing you may like it.  You may like it anyway.  Please check it out, and if you already did reviews are always appreciated.

Also, if you’re in the southern California area, this Sunday is the Writers Coffeehouse at Dark Delicacies in Burbank.  We’ll be there noonto three chatting about exposition and types of contracts.  As always, it’s 100% completely free (no fees, no dues, no sign-ups, no emails, nothing), and much like this blog, it’s kinda entertaining and semi-educational.  Feel free to stop by.

Next time…

Well, it’s been a while.  If anyone’s had a topic gnawing at them, please let me know in the comments.  Otherwise I’ll just babble on about spelling or superheroes or something.

Until then… go write.

CoffeehouseDead Moondraftseditinggolden ruleoutline
January 22, 2019

Tom Gauld

comedyeditingGauld
August 30, 2018 / 4 Comments

If I’m Being Honest With Myself…

            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.
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August 23, 2018 / 5 Comments

Slow Motion

            Wanted to take a few minutes and talk a little bit about a way that writing and publishing overlap.  It’s not my usual sort of thing but I figured… ehhh, it’s been a while since I talked about this.
            There’s a lot of pressure to be as fast as possible with writing these days.  More than a few would-be gurus—and even some small publishers—push  a business modelof quantity over quality.  Why take the time on one book if I can rush through half a dozen or so and get the same result?  Selling a hundred copies of ten books is the same as selling a thousand copies of one, right?
            On top of that, the ease of electronic distribution has pushed the idea that moving slow is clunky and antiquated.  Any person or publisher that moves at such a pace gets compared to… well, dinosaurs.  
            This need for speed creates an awful sense that time’s being wasted if I write something that doesn’t sell.  That spending time on editing or revisions is wrong.  And with the raw amount of stuff being e-published, I think all of us have a lurking fear that if we don’t get our idea out there now, someone else is going to beat us to it and have it out there tomorrow.
            I know there are folks (some of whom I know and like a lot) who advocate publishing everything.  Trunk novel?  Throw that up on Amazon.  First draft no agent or editor would accept?  Kindle format for a buck-ninety-nine.  Get it out there because somebody might love it, and at the worst you make fifteen or twenty bucks off it rather than nothing.  You’d pick up twenty bucks if you found it laying in the street, right?
            And I get that this is a really appealing idea.  We want to get paid.  We should get paid.  I’m a big fan of artists (of all types) getting compensated for their work.
            But…
            We also need to acknowledge there’s a learning curve. 
            It shouldn’t be too much of a shock that the first thing I put down isn’t going to be that great.  Or the second thing.  Maybe even the third. 
            Sure, there’s always a chance that my first book is pure gold on the first pass.  Scientifically speaking, there’s some chance almost anything could happen.  I mean, I wouldn’t put money on any of those things but, hey… there’s a chance.
            Because of this—he said, bracing for angry comments—I often find myself really doubtful when people say they wrote a book in four or five weeks.  I completely believe a draft can be written in that amount of time.  I wrote the first draft of 14 in about six weeks, and that was around 150,000 words.  But a finished book manuscript?  Something ready to hand off to an editor?  Or put up for sale?
            I just don’t buy it.  Sorry.
            Writing takes time.  It can take a lot of time.  It takes time to learn how to do it right and then it takes time to do it right.  I can’t expect the first thing I write to compare to something written by someone with years of experience.  I can’t rush through one edit draft in a day and expect to get the same results as someone who spends weeks going over their whole manuscript line by line. 
            Simple truth is, the majority of us aren’t ever going to put out material that doesn’t need work.  Not later in our careers.  Definitely not at the start of our careers.
            Yeah, ourcareers.  This holds for me, too. I wrote a lot of stuff that never got published and probably never will.  Why?  Because it’s bad!  It’s that first attempt at making chocolate chip waffles or trying to grill Ahi tuna.  It may be edible—barely—but no one should be asked to pay for it.
            I’ve mentioned The Suffering Map here a few times.  Okay, a bunch of times.  Consider this… when you pare away all the time where I worked on other projects, it’s probably fair to say I spent two, maybe two and a half years on that book.  My first 100% completed novel.
            Any d’you know what I’ve done with it?
            Nothing.
            Oh, sure, I submitted it a lot at the time.  It got some interest.  But everyone passed on it, and (lucky for me) most of them offered a few suggestions of where it needed work.  And they were right.  It did need work.  It had some real problems, and I’m glad it’s not out there hanging on my career like some kind of literary albatross on a cursed mariner or something like that.
            Or consider the book I just turned in.  That took seven months, start to finish. And that’s considering I’d plotted out a good chunk of it years ago  It went through four drafts before I even turned it in to my editor, because there were lots of things that needed tweaks and adjustments to make the book as good as it could be.  Believable characters.  Sharp dialogue.  Solid pacing. 
            And that’s okay.  Really.  The important thing is for me to write something good.  Churning out 8000 words every day or 400 pages for NaNoWriMo is an achievement, yeah, absolutely.  But in the end it’s always better for me to have 1000 good words or 100 polished pages.
            Now, going slow isn’t an ironclad rule.  Sometimes everything just lines up and my third or fourth draft only takes a few days.  No two projects are the same and no two writers are the same. 
            But if every draft of every project I work on goes fast… maybe I should take an effort to slow down for a while and see how it affects my writing.
            Because the goal for all of us is to be great.  To write the best thing we can.  Not to rush toward “okay” and stop when we get there. 
            Even if it makes us fifteen or twenty bucks.
            Next time I’d like to come clean about a couple more things.
            Until then, go write.
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