Category: Revision & Editing

Granularity

r-avatarWe completed the read-through on the music novel, and we also took care of all the minor notes we came up with along the way. Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game: stomp the weasels! The object is to make sure we’re not overusing the words we have learned that we have a tendency to overuse. We have a list of about three dozen(!) words, which are symptomatic of passive voice, wishy-washiness, and general wordiness.

Scrivener, our writing tool of choice, has some very nifty search capabilities that are making us more productive this time around. In the past, we’ve literally color-coded our entire text by doing find/paste, which is as tedious as it sounds. Scrivener saves us that hassle. For example, we can use its regex feature to quickly highlight all the -ly words, and with just a few tweaks to the regular expression we can tell it to omit things like “jelly” or “only”. We love it!

This is an interesting phase of our process, because it’s pretty much the only time when we work off the same monitor. Rather than splitting it up and each of us de-weaseling half of the book, we look at it together and discuss which instances of “that” should be removed. Sometimes it’s not as simple as keep/kill a particular word; sometimes we find whole sentences that can come out or need to be reworded. The level of magnification at this stage is much greater than on the read-through, so it calls our attention to different aspects of the text.

We’re still in the early part of this (very large) manuscript, but so far we’re quite happy to see that we have fewer weasels lurking on each page than with our earlier efforts. On the other hand, we were sort of counting on making a meaningful dent in the word count in the course of culling those weasels, which it seems might not really happen. But it is giving us an even tighter, leaner book. There are fewer weasels, but still too many. Fortunately we have our special boots for this very job.

They Say Size Doesn’t Matter

r-avatarAs predicted, we were not ready to start our read through of the music novel last week. The good news is that we started it last night! The main thing that slowed us down was the need to write imaginary record reviews. The first step in that process was accomplished ages ago when Jen developed the band’s discography. Next came discussions about the band’s sound. Then we had to find the right voices (the reviews aren’t all by the same person, natch). It turns out that music reviews are a completely different style of writing than straight-up fiction, even when the music itself is fictional.

All this to say that the second draft we started reading last night is 187,251 words long (!!!).

Gulp.

They say size doesn’t matter, but this is a bit daunting. Conventional wisdom has it that it’s hard to sell any novel over 100,000 words. There’s allegedly some wiggle room in that number when it comes to science fiction and fantasy, due to the need for more extensive world-building. And that we have in spades.

During last night’s session we got about 50 pages in and removed about 10 words. At this rate we’ll have it whittled down to a mere 187,000 by the time we’re done!

As we read we’ll be looking at the pacing, and the tension level. If those 187,000 words are all good ones, and they propel the story the way they should, then there really isn’t a problem.

At one point Kent predicted/worried that we might hit 200,000, and we still might. It’s unlikely that we’ll need to add any new scenes, or beef up existing scenes to the tune of 13,000 words, but there is still one aspect of the novel that’s not quite finished. In our other books we have epigraphs, snippets at the beginning of each chapter that expand the story world. This novel will (probably) not have epigraphs. Instead it has other supporting documentation that currently accounts for 20,000 of our words. Now that the second draft is so much longer than the first draft, we will require more of this supplementary material, which we lovingly call the Wingnut Chorus. We won’t know how much until we get the story part of the novel edited and divided into chapters.

To get a feel for the flow and pacing, we need to read quickly, like a real reader will. We hope to be done within a week. And then the next round of edits can begin. Luckily we have each other’s shoulders to cry on.

Squirrel!

r-avatarThings have been very slow in the writing cave recently. Ever since our triumphant return from our European tour we’ve struggled to get back into our routine.

It’s easy to come up with excuses. There were birthdays in the extended family. Our son plays in approximately a dozen different bands and orchestras, and they all have concerts this time of year. Spring finally arrived, and yard work along with it. Our puppy Lady Marzipan is an unholy terror if she doesn’t get two long walks a day. The TiVo’s getting full so we had to watch a movie (or two). Kent’s car gave up, so we’ve been shopping for a replacement. The teenager had tickets to a concert in Philly, so of course we both had to go along. I mean, there’s an IKEA!

What it comes down to is we’ve reached the stage with the music novel where we’re looking for any excuse to look away (have you seen this thing on youtube?). It’s a terrible feeling because we are so close (so close!) to being done. We’re each in the midst of a pass through the manuscript, looking for places to beef up certain aspects. If we can chain ourselves to our desks long enough to finish that, then I think we’ll turn a corner. The next step will be a read through, which (if we’ve done our jobs correctly) will be enjoyable. It will prove that all of this work was worth it.

Having a writing partner can make dealing with these slow times easier. We sympathize with each other when it’s frustrating. When one of us has a productive day it can inspire the other. And, with Lady Marzipan enforcing our walking conferences, we have someone to talk to about how little we’ve been getting done.

Goal: By next week’s collaboration post, we will have finished this round of edits.

Odds of success: It’s a longshot.

He Looked at Her Comma

r-avatarThe revisions on the music novel keep moving, not very fast, but moving. Our focus has been on heightening descriptions. Jen is concentrating on the characters, and Kent is working on the setting.

At least that’s the theory. Funny thing when you scrutinize your text, you keep finding things that could be better. Little sentence structure improvements, little punctuation tweaks, wordiness, these are all things you should be on the lookout for. Of course, they are a perennial distraction from the task at hand.

We sync up our edits verbally at the end of the night, which is a technique we find very helpful for keeping both writing partners hooked into the text as it’s evolving. Lately our work sessions have culminated in conversations like this.

Kent: “Add a comma after ‘her’ in the fourth paragraph.”
Jen: “Wow, that really makes the city come to life.”

Hard to pin down which of the five senses is invoked by a comma.

Synergistic Tag-Team

r-avatarWe’ve been beavering away on the revisions for the music novel, and we’re getting close to done with this pass. The ending has gotten a major overhaul and now kicks total ass.

The original ending is something we were happy with when we wrote it. Our critiquers mostly thought it was okay, but not awesome. They made some good points, which we were able to acknowledge once we had a bit of critical distance. So, as we turned the rest of the novel inside out we pondered the ending. Certain outcomes were nonnegotiable. The details of how they came about had quite a lot of flex.

Jen had the idea to work in one of the heroine’s character traits which had been underused in the old draft. It’s a pretty significant detail and we had just completely ignored certain implications of it. When Jen suggested we utilize it in the finale, we both had a “how long has that been there?” reaction. We’re obviously not going to spoil the ending, but imagine something along the lines of a character having a knife in her pocket and just not thinking to use it to cut herself free. Only it was us who forgot she even had the knife. We won’t put any of this on her, because she’s actually quite smart.

Something else that influenced — and complicated — the flow of concluding events was the inclusion of a different POV character. As we mentioned before, the rewrite gave point of view to a character who had not previously had it. Kent adopted this guy as his pet character, writing pretty much all of his new scenes. When it came to the ending, he had some great insights into what this guy would say and do, and the new stuff crackles with tension.

Kent wrote some great action and then Jen went through and beefed up the emotional content (yes, we’re back to our stereotypical gender roles). There’s been a lot of nitty-gritty back and forth on this pass, which is the whole reason to have a writing partner. They see things you don’t, and vice versa.

Save It For the Sequel

r-avatarAs we’ve been editing the music novel (hacking our way through dense word jungles with a machete, burning whole scenes to the ground, etc) we keep finding ourselves in conversations about ways to complicate the story world.

Believe me when I tell you that this particular story is complicated enough. We have eight point-of-view characters and a couple of subplots. The premise behind the story, the dark twist we’ve given our fictional reality, is one of those deceptively simple ideas. When it’s first explained it makes perfect sense, then you start to think of the implications and ramifications, and you drown in a tsunami of questions. That’s a good thing, because it gives us lots to write about. The characters get to ask those questions and propel the plot.

The Big Idea of this novel is truly expansive, and we could write hundreds of stories set in this universe. The problem is that right now we’re only writing one. That means that we need to keep it focused on one main plot and not clutter things up with every little idea we have.

As we mentioned, we do have plans for a sequel, so some of our Really Coolest Ideas™ will end up being used there. As we keep reminding ourselves.

Before we started these edits we had a debate about which project we should work on. We almost brainstormed and outlined the sequel instead of diving in on the edits, and it’s a really good thing we didn’t. I think we both overestimated how well we remembered the events of this novel, for one thing. For another, the discussions we’re having now are sparking a ton of ideas for the followup that I’m not sure we would have come up with otherwise.

We have a few more weeks of work to do on the music novel before we move on, but we’re both getting excited about the possibilities for Music Novel 2: Electric Boogaloo. It’s great to have a writing partner to share your enthusiasm with.

Rolling with role reversal

r-avatarAlong with “every word of this book is in the wrong place,” and “we must use every word, twice if possible,” one of the discoveries we made about the music novel was that our main characters’ relationship needed more tension. They get thrown into a harrowing situation that exposes myriad hurtful secrets about their past, and we had them moping for about ten minutes and then laughing it all off. (Well, not exactly. But it was too easy.)

Upshot: one of our jobs during revisions is to roughen up the emotional tenor of their conversations, and shed a little more light on the second guesses and loss of trust that accompany such upheaval. Weirdly, it’s falling to Kent to handle most of it.

We’ve talked before about how each member of a writing duo should focus on their strengths. It’s one of the selling points for having a writing partner: it’s someone who’s good at things you might struggle with. Traditionally, the Rune Skelley partnership divvies up the chores along appallingly stereotypical gender lines. Kent brings the jargon and the action sequences, while Jen humanizes things with emotional cues that are as subtle or as devastating as the situation demands.

That’s why this time through is weird. After we lined up the scenes and made some notes about where the tone was too light or just too vague, it was Kent who felt drawn to those particular edits. Jen not so much.

It seems to be going pretty well, despite the oddness. Kent thinks it’s going a little slow, compared to when he’s in his technobabble wheelhouse. It’s probably healthy for him to get a bit of practice with earth-human feelings once in a while.

Size Matters

r-avatarWe’ve been harping on and on lately about how big our current project is, which raises the question of why we don’t make it two books.

Two books is something we thought about early in the editing process, after all, we’d have two 90,000-word novels. That’s damn respectable. Turns out there are a host of reasons we’ve opted to not go that way.

First, it feels lazy. We want a good book, not an easy book. That means we need to work hard to craft something beautiful and meaningful, no matter what the size. If all we did was lop it in half, it would feel like cheating, and we’d have two not-great books.

Second, even though it’s long enough to be two books, the plot is not really structured in a way that makes it easy to bisect. As originally written, the story proper took place over one week. We had a large amount of backstory that was told through flashbacks. There was (in our opinion) a really clever structure to the flashbacks that, at the time, we felt justified the use of so many. Our readers, though, did not agree. We had six, and none of them picked up on the clever part, which begs the question of how clever it really was. Since our original vision was a bust, we decided to just tell the story in order. Radical, right? But the scenes that were flashbacks in the first draft weren’t enough to carry the first half of the novel. They were a few isolated incidents, but they weren’t close enough together to be easily connected with a line. Now we’ve written new material to close up the gaps and make the line clear, which is what makes it so damn long. In theory we could chop it at a big tentpole moment and give it a cliffhanger ending. But we don’t wanna. That’s not the way the story is meant to be told. We also don’t want to pad out the first half with artificial plot complications just to make it seem like it deserves to be its own story. That’s not how we roll.

And third, we have ideas for another book, ideas that work well as a sequel but not as the third in a series. When there’s only one point of reference, the second point can go anywhere. But when you have two references, anything further really ought to follow a predictable pattern.

Jen and Kent are very happy that they each have a writing partner they can talk about this kind of thing with. They pity the poor solo authors who have to figure it all out on their own.

Excuses Excuses

r-avatarHow about this winter, huh? I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but here in Skelleyville we’ve gotten about 3,000 feet of snow this year. Couple that with the polar vortex and its subzero temperatures, and we have not been able to maintain our routine of walking conferences.

Call us wimps if you must, but we’d rather stay inside with the fire and a mug or two of hot buttered rum.

A few weeks ago the temperature rose several degrees and we felt brave enough to suit up and take some walks in the winter wonderland. It felt good to stretch our legs, and to have the time to talk through some of the issues that have come up in the editing of the music novel. Sure we can have those conversations inside, but we find that we often make more progress as we progress around the neighborhood. A change of scenery is always good, and the physical activity puts us in a different headspace. New ideas emerge. It’s pretty cool.

So it’s a good thing we found another way to derail ourselves!

LSM

Meet Lady Marzipan. She’s incredibly cute, and incredibly distracting. When we’re working in the writing cave, sometimes she’ll lay and quietly guard the door against invading uffdeguffs (and teenagers), but more often she loses her tennis ball under the furniture, or chews on her squeaky octopus, or rattles her plastic chew bone on the hardwood floor. (Yes, our cave has a wooden floor. Doesn’t yours?)

And who can resist that face?

Now when we take walks, she joins us, and our conversations go like this:

Jen: How’s that scene you’re working on?

Kent: Going pretty well. I’m getting close to the — hey, Lady Marzipan! That’s not your squirrel!

She’s a fuzzy little test of our multitasking abilities. (They’re not all that impressive, turns out.) But on the plus side, Kent and Jen now have someone to cast the tie-breaking vote on those rare occasions when it’s needed!

Yup. There are a lot of words.

r-avatarLast night we completed our read-through on the music novel. We knew that the latter portion of it would contain a fair amount of misplaced recap, because of the restructuring (the latter portion was originally the early portion, in fact it was originally the whole book, rife with flashbacks). We did find such material, but it doesn’t have as much bulk as we were expecting, so cutting it back isn’t going to have as much of an impact on the Brobdingnagian word count. Furthermore, there’s stuff we still need to add. Hoo boy. It’s looking like this one could flirt with 200k.

But that’s okay. The book will be the right size, based on the story it contains. There are guidelines, but there isn’t a magic number of words that “good” books consist of.

This attitude is a bit of an adjustment for Kent, in particular. He’s tended to be a bit keyed up about not letting things get too big. In this case, it’s just a bigger story, with more world-building required. There’s also a large cast, all of whom have important functions in the narrative. It’s just big, period.

The scale of your book becomes another point on which you need to agree with your partner. If one of you is thinking of it as a novella and the other as a saga, you’ll probably realize early on that more discussion is needed. But once you’ve agreed that what you’re plotting is “a novel,” be careful of miscommunication. That word could describe anything from about sixty thousand words on up. Of course, there’s an upside to a partnership (as always). A writing partner is someone to help get things in perspective. Editing is a lot of work, and cutting clever stuff is especially hard. It’s all too easy to make excuses for keeping too many words, not paring things down (or conversely for not fleshing them out — too few words is not a typical Rune Skelley problem but we can see how it could happen). A good partner will push for doing things right.