How To Write Magical Words: A Writer's Companion

by Unknown

  Now, combine some of the ideas that go well together. Metaphors and similes will go well with tightening all description. Dialogue may fit well with pacing issues. Try to keep it down to about two ideas for each pass. At this point, your list may consist of about five to ten passes. If you’re thinking ten rounds of revision sounds insane, I agree. Don’t worry. You’ll probably do a lot less. If your thinking ten isn’t enough, you have my sympathies.

  When you start revisions, keep focused on whatever your list denotes. It’s okay to fix other problems you notice along the way (if they’re small), but try to stay focused. For larger issues that don’t apply to your current focus, jot down a note so you’ll be sure to tackle it at the appropriate time. This simple approach has numerous benefits:

  • You’ll know you’ve handled the issues you intended to handle and have done so to the best of your ability.

  • You’ll have cleaned up many little things (typos, misspellings, grammar, etc.) that will make subsequent passes easier.

  • In the course of re-reading your manuscript, even though your focus was on one or two main aspects, you’ll have started picking up on other problems. By the time you get to the third pass, you’ll already have solutions for many items on your list (and probably several not on the list).

  • You’ll gain a deeper knowledge of your manuscript and how the pieces fit together, making each revision more productive.

  • With practice, you’ll be able to juggle more tasks in each revision.

  In the end, you’ll find a number of revisions that works for you which addresses everything in a solid, systematic fashion. For me, I find around three in-depth revisions, each handling about three main points, are more than enough. Lately, I’ve been trying to do more revising as I write the initial draft (I’ll talk about that in another post), so perhaps I’ll be down to two passes. Anything more than five sans editor/agent/reader feedback sounds like overkill to me, but each writer is unique, so I make no judgments. Just remember that by approaching revisions in a focused, clear-cut manner, you can rest assured you’ve done your best. You don’t need to keep going back. You do need to send it out, cross your fingers, and get started on the next piece.

  §§§

  David B. Coe

  I do a lot of polishing as I write—that’s just my approach. But I make notes to myself as I go about issues that need to be dealt with, be they big meta-plot problems or tiny things like inconsistencies in spelling or capitalization. Then I fix things, look for my various crutches. Finally, I do a slow read through in which I try to see how the book flows and what, if anything, still needs work. This is where I am now with the WIP. When I’m done with this, of course, I send it off to my editor and agent for their comments. I do another set of revisions with them, then copy edits, then proofs. By the time I’m done, I’ve read the book through 4 or 5 times. But I find that I need distance between each reading. If I read through and revise, then immediately do another pass, I start to glaze over and miss stuff. Just me.

  Faith Hunter

  Stuart, I enjoy seeing how other writers revise. And I adore the term "battle plan" as it applies to revisions. Cutting, slicing, splicing, pasting, dumping . . .

  I like it! I’m stealing it!

  And I particularly agree with this: "Just try to keep it down to about two ideas for each pass." When I started out, that was all I could manage, and I did maybe five passes for each book, all in hard copy. Oy . . .

  But lately, I’ve been able to cut it down to two passes, one to revise and one to make sure I actually did what I wanted to do. I revise all in one pass with my wonderful multicolored sticky-notes on hardcopy.

  Artistic Choices and the Market

  David B. Coe

  Two common themes come together in this essay. First, I’ve written and spoken before about how often my characters surprise me in some way, be it through the assertion of a trait I hadn’t seen in them previously, or through the unexpected twisting of a plot thread. My favorite example of this is the time one of my Winds of the Forelands characters told me that she was pregnant literally as I was typing the words. Now fortunately this character was a woman, so it didn’t make things TOO difficult for me. Still, I’ve informed my characters that in the future I could use a bit more notice on such things. Not that they listen to me. . . .

  The second thread is one that comes out of a question readers ask me quite often: "Does your publisher or your editor ever impose changes on you—force you to change things for marketing or ‘political’ reasons?" The answer to this is: "Less often than you might think, but occasionally." (Examples forthcoming.)

  So today, I’d like to talk about changes that we as authors sometimes have to impose upon our characters and our plot. It would be great if we were able to listen to our characters always, to follow them wherever they take us regardless of what doing so might do to our plot outline. After all, life is like that, right? We are at the mercy of circumstance; any one decision can ramify through the rest of our existence.

  To which I say, "Yes, but . . ." Writers are artists. Every story is an act of creation. And while spontaneity is certainly a crucial component of the creative process, so is control. My brother is a brilliant painter, and as he describes his art, it’s clear that much of what he does with color and brushstroke happens in the moment, "unplanned" as it were. But he still has to impose his will on the work; there are matters of composition and balance that have to be maintained, or else the painting falls apart, becomes merely a collection of shapes and tones rather than a visual tale. The same is true of writing. We can’t cede control of our work to our characters. Have you ever taken a child on a hike? She wants to explore, to stray from the path, and occasionally it’s fine to let her. But you are responsible for seeing her safely home, for keeping her out of the poison ivy and away from the cliff ledges. Well, so it is with your characters. They may be adults in the story, but they’re as self-centered and irrational as children, and they must be controlled.

  But even more, there are times when we have to make decisions regarding plot or character or book structure that have less to do with the creative process than with more pragmatic considerations. Back when I was in the middle of Winds of the Forelands, which was originally planned as a four book series, my editor asked me if there was a way I could split the fourth book of the series in half. Booksellers were becoming concerned with book length and price point (the price of a book printed on the jacket), particularly with respect to hardcovers, and wanted to see smaller books. There was no way for me to split that final volume in half without destroying the narrative integrity of the book. But the third book wasn’t out yet, and I found a fairly natural stopping point earlier in book three that enabled me to divide books three and four into three complete books, thus making it a five book series. This was not an artistic decision; it was a marketing decision. But it helped sales for the second half of the series in a way that did little or nothing to compromise the narrative structure of the overall project, and so it made sense.

  I have, on a few occasions, had my editor ask me to tone down some language or make a scene slightly less graphic than it had been when I wrote it. I’ve had it suggested to me that I change a character’s name or the name of something on one of my maps because the name might offend or put off or confuse readers.

  Right now with my WIP I’m seriously considering changing the gender of a lead character because there is some gender imbalance in the dramatis personae as it currently stands. What difference does that make? Plenty, actually. To some degree people enjoy reading about characters like themselves. Well, currently my books are getting a lot of attention from Romantic Times. The Southlands books are garnering very good reviews from RT, and my female readership is on the rise. This is something I want to nurture—a majority of all readers are women, and I want them to continue to read my books. And right now my book has too many boys and not enough girls. Does this make me crassly commercial? Maybe. But as I’ve sta
rted thinking about this change, I’ve started seeing exciting possibilities for sexual tension between the character I’m considering changing and my lead character.

  Yes, I’m an artist, but I’m also a businessman. Part of my job is to be true to my characters and my story, but part of it is to sell books. I say this not to rationalize or justify. Well, okay, maybe a little bit to rationalize and justify. But also because this is the reality of what I do. To some degree I write for myself, and I have been known to fight long and hard to preserve an artistic decision with which my editor does not agree. I also write for my audience, however, and part of my goal is to maximize that audience. The key for me is finding balance between the artistic and the commercial. If I thought that changing the gender of a lead character would compromise the integrity of my story, I wouldn’t do it, no matter the commercial benefit. As it happens, I see artistic potential in a choice that might also help me commercially. I’d be a fool not to consider it.

  If I can be so bold as to offer advice: you should always strive to be true to your creative vision, but you shouldn’t ever be embarrassed to think about the commercial ramifications of your artistic choices. There may be virtue in sticking to your artistic principles no matter the cost, but if nobody reads your book, who’s going to know how virtuous you were . . . ?

  §§§

  Misty Massey

  David said, "There may be virtue in sticking to your artistic principles no matter the cost, but if nobody reads your book, who’s going to know how virtuous you were . . . ?"

  *wild applause*

  I had to rewrite Mad Kestrel twice for my editor before Tor bought it, and I became so tired of hearing people tell me I had sold out for doing what my editor asked of me.

  If the changes he wanted had been out of whack with the final story, I’d have argued. But they weren’t. His suggestions were solid and improved the story, and I ended up published. I think it all comes back to knowing what we want out of writing. :-)

  L. Jagi Lamplighter

  Nice article, David. My husband, John, actually had an editor request a change for political reasons once. John wrote his first novel in the 90s, but it came out soon after 9/11. In the book, he had a bunch of bad guys who were soldiers in the U.S. Army. After 9/11, his editor did not feel this was appropriate any more.

  John sympathized with his editor’s point of view. He added a scene that made it clear that these particular soldiers were bad guys who had been recruited by the enemy for this purpose and not average soldiers. The scene both met the editor’s criteria and improved the story (it added additional dimension to some of the lesser villains.)

  David B. Coe

  Thanks for the comments, Jagi and Misty. Seems to me that the lesson here is clear: editors will ask for changes on any manuscript. Some of them will be purely aesthetic in nature; some will stem from marketing concerns. We as authors have to decide what we want to do with those suggestions. No one would say that you need to accept them without first examining them critically; but neither should you reject them out of hand. You want your book to be as good as it can be. You want it to reflect YOUR creative vision. And you want it to sell. Your goal in evaluating editorial comments and artistic decisions should be to find the best balance among those three things.

  A Conversation With My Editor

  C.E. Murphy

  A couple weeks ago my Del Rey editor called me up to talk about revisions for Truthseeker, the little paranormal romance I’d written for her. Now, my agent had mentioned a few days earlier that she’d talked with my editor, and that my editor had some concerns about the level of romance in the novel. I wasn’t, personally, absolutely certain that the romantic elements in the first several chapters really meshed with the rest of the book, so I was okay with that.

  This is what my editor actually said, though: "I’m afraid the book might fall too perfectly between romance and fantasy, and therefore satisfy neither. Would you consider rewriting it to remove the hero’s point of view and strengthen the heroine’s?"

  I said, "Er." And then, "Er, my agent didn’t mention striking the hero’s point of view . . ."

  My editor, somewhat wryly, said, "She was probably afraid to."

  Now, my editor made it very clear that this was a request to be considered, not an order from on high. She was even willing to give the book to one of the house’s romance editors, to see if they thought it might do better as a romance, which I thought was pretty cool of her. (Although it gets into a whole different set of complications, because I’d probably want to publish it under a different name, then, and . . . yeah, all sorts of things. Anyway.)

  Obviously this is a bit of a shock, for a writer. The book is about 86,000 words, and the hero’s point of view is about 20K of that. My first thought (after "buh, uh, uh, um, uh, buh") was, "Well, I can almost certainly reduce his point of view . . ." I told my editor that I’d have to re-read the book and see what I thought, but I’d certainly take the idea of cutting him entirely into consideration. She thanked me, and added that although she’d read the book twice, she still didn’t, in the end, really feel like she knew the heroine very well.

  Augh! The book definitely needs revision, in that case. I sort of reeled and said, "Okay, that’s a really good thing to know, that’s important," and went to think and re-read and try to deal with that problem.

  Clearly, reducing the hero’s point of view so I can get further into my heroine’s head and let the reading audience know her better is one way to deal with it. It’s not going to change the story, just the delivery of it. Right now, though, boy howdy, does it feel stiff and awkward and unwieldy. I’m trying to remind myself that I really need more than two chapters of revisions to be able to say whether this will or won’t work.

  The truth is, it probably will. Here’s a secret about editors: they’re usually right. Not always, but usually. And this kind of thing is part of the job. Most of the time you’re not asked to rewrite a third of the book, but sometimes it happens.

  It behooves you not to throw a hissy fit. Even if in the end you decide your editor is wrong—and that is an option; if for some reason it turns out this really is not working, I will be able to go back to my editor and say, "Look, I tried, it turned into a cludgy mess, how else can we approach this?"—you’re going to get a lot further with an attitude of, "Aagh, okay, holy crap, let me step back and think about this," than you are on "OH MY GOD YOU WANT ME TO EVISCERATE MY BOOK!?!"

  Ultimately, we’re all trying to get the most sell-able book on the shelves as possible. My editor didn’t ask for these changes because she’s mean, or because she hates me, or because she hates my book, or because she wants me to flounder in obscurity. She asked for them because, in fact, she’s trying to make sure the book hits solidly in the ranks of what people want, and so my sales numbers stay strong, and so I get to keep writing and publishing more.

  We can’t know if it’ll work. We can do our best, and one thing that’s part of my job as a writer is to understand that my editor has, y’know, a pretty good idea of what works within my genre and what doesn’t. (So does my agent, who liked the book as-is—but my agent also represents romance, whereas my editor is more like me (and many sf/f readers) in that she doesn’t read romance at all, and so the romantic elements of the book as it originally stands weren’t so much to her taste. If they weren’t to her taste, she figures there’s a big segment of the sf/f audience for whom they won’t be tasty, either.)

  This is a bizarre job, guys. It’s hugely creative, but it’s also hugely commercial. Do I feel like I’m selling out, or selling short, by seeing if I can change the presentation of the book to make it more palatable to sf/f readers? Absolutely not. It’s my job to give people what they want, and if that means I have to take my ego off the plate (which to some degree, with this book, I do, because I was proud that I’d managed the romantic elements as well as I had!) and go back to the keyboard, then that’s what I’m going to do.

  Which isn’t a
very romantic, frothy, happy-bunnies way to look at it, I admit. But the business side of this is just as important to me as the creative side, so it’s a-revising I go.

  §§§

  Faith Hunter

  No happy-bunnies, no. And OMG what an awful rewrite. But what a wonderful editor to show you a way to make it work. Of course, you may find another way while you are writing, Catie. You are just that good!

  On a panel at ConCarolinas, I mentioned that a favorite writer of mine posted a note to his fans (in the front his latest book) bragging that his editor said he was such a good writer that he no longer needed editing. The editor lied like a dog. It was awful. It needed editing in the worst way. (grins) I’ll never read another of his books.

  Writers all need editing. You have an amazing attitude. I’d have cried and wailed for a couple days before diving in. Good for you!

  The Presentation of Your Submissions

  David B. Coe

  My fellow writers and I often say on this site that there is no right way to do something when it comes to writing. You have to listen to your own muse and allow your characters to do the things they’re telling you they need to do. And ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time that "no-right-way-to-do-this" rule works. But there are exceptions, and one of the most important involves submissions.