Showing posts with label revisions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revisions. Show all posts
We have a home orchard (only twelve trees) and last weekend was time for the bittersweet task of thinning the fruit. Bittersweet because every immature fruit is a future mouthwatering delight, but if there are too many on the tree then they stay small.
It takes a certain kind of ruthlessness to snip off a perfectly good young fruit to make room for its neighbor to grow and develop properly.
The same is true in writing (you knew there was a writing analogy coming, didn't you?), when we hit the revision stage where we decide which pages, paragraphs, sentences, words, punctuation, stay and which go.
But truthfully, when we remove extraneous prose, we're letting what remains grow and develop. To come into its own, in a natural evolution (survival of the fittest, you know) that lets their plumage shine.
So let "cut and paste" stand in for your pruners, and see what ripens on your page.
It takes a certain kind of ruthlessness to snip off a perfectly good young fruit to make room for its neighbor to grow and develop properly.
The same is true in writing (you knew there was a writing analogy coming, didn't you?), when we hit the revision stage where we decide which pages, paragraphs, sentences, words, punctuation, stay and which go.
But truthfully, when we remove extraneous prose, we're letting what remains grow and develop. To come into its own, in a natural evolution (survival of the fittest, you know) that lets their plumage shine.
So let "cut and paste" stand in for your pruners, and see what ripens on your page.
Good thing I got up early this morning, because I forgot to set up a blog post for today! I've been deep in revisions for Crow's Rest. Here's a cover design I did last year, just for fun:
One of the steps I wanted to do for revisions this time around was to use Martha Alderson's Blockbuster Plots method to chart the scenes in my book. I had tried it for my first book but didn't get very far--it can be kind of tedious, and I felt like I'd gotten the insights I needed just from charting the first 4 chapters.
But this time around I stuck it out, and I'm glad I did! Found all kinds of inconsistencies. Like my timeline was off; I had a single day that lasted like 40 hours, eep. And I had one of those writer faux pas, where my MC suffered an injury that wasn't ever mentioned again. Oops.
I also found a few scenes that were not necessary, which is where this type of revision tool really shines. Once you see the entire book laid out in tables, it's easy to see where your momentum lags or where you're being self-indulgent with characters and scenes.
So over the next week I'll be finishing the edits and getting pages out to my beta readers in preparation for querying in February. I'll also have an announcement next week (no, not an agent-y announcement) so check back for some news!
One of the steps I wanted to do for revisions this time around was to use Martha Alderson's Blockbuster Plots method to chart the scenes in my book. I had tried it for my first book but didn't get very far--it can be kind of tedious, and I felt like I'd gotten the insights I needed just from charting the first 4 chapters.
But this time around I stuck it out, and I'm glad I did! Found all kinds of inconsistencies. Like my timeline was off; I had a single day that lasted like 40 hours, eep. And I had one of those writer faux pas, where my MC suffered an injury that wasn't ever mentioned again. Oops.
I also found a few scenes that were not necessary, which is where this type of revision tool really shines. Once you see the entire book laid out in tables, it's easy to see where your momentum lags or where you're being self-indulgent with characters and scenes.
So over the next week I'll be finishing the edits and getting pages out to my beta readers in preparation for querying in February. I'll also have an announcement next week (no, not an agent-y announcement) so check back for some news!
Over the weekend, the aptly named Operation Awesome collected a wealth of posts into a New Year's Revision Conference. Agents, editors, and authors all chimed in with advice on tackling revisions, no matter where you are in your publishing journey.
But if you missed out, don't worry--they've archived all the contributions and you can go back and read them at your leisure. And don't forget to enter their giveaway!
Also, WOW! Women on Writing Workshops is putting on a free teleseminar: Show VS Tell and Overwriting in Children’s Fiction by Margo L. Dill tomorrow, on January 8th. They've already filled up the workshop, but there are plans to record the seminar and make it available. Make sure you follow the instructions to sign up for the class or otherwise let them know you're interested in it.
Seems like the 2013 conference season is starting out with a bang!
Labels:
conference,
new year,
operation awesome,
revisions,
women on writing,
workshop,
WOW
1 comments
First of all, I finished the full draft of Crow's Rest yesterday! Cullooh! Callay!
Of course, that doesn't mean it's finished. But it's worth taking a moment to celebrate before diving into revisions. I also wanted to take a sec to talk about the process for this book.
Before even starting on Crow's Rest, I did things a little different from the mostly-pantsing method used to plot my first book: I took the time to do a very detailed outline.
And let me tell you, it paid off big time. Whenever I had writer's block, or had spent some time away from the manuscript, the outline got me back on track. And whenever I had a shiny new plot idea flirt my way, I could look at my original framework and see if it enhanced the story or just cluttered it up. (For the record, most of them would have just cluttered it up. I would have enjoyed writing them immensely, but self-indulgence doesn't always improve the book).
The only drawback was that it was harder for me to get the ending out. When I was pantsing, I was just as eager to find out how the book ended as the reader would be (hopefully!). But since I'd done such a detailed outline, I felt like there weren't any surprises and I was just filling in some blanks.
My bad guy had different ideas on that subject and threw me a few curveballs. So that was fun. I feel like the Big Confrontation is not quite Big enough, but at least now I have something down on the page to play with.
The other place the outline will help me is with charting the story arc (I like Vogler's Hero's Journey and Alderson's Plot Whisperer methods). I certainly kept the arc in mind while preparing the outline, and charting it is a great way to check that I hit all the correct notes in the drafting process.
And interestingly, I had worked on a practice query early on (and it got a request in WriteOnCon, btw) and put the estimated finished length at around 70,000. That estimate was based on the somewhat-spare first draft coming in at 65,000, plus another 5,000 in revisions to flesh out characters, motivations, etc. Well, the first draft clocked in at 64,967 words! Not bad.
If you have a finished draft to play with too, you might be interested in checking out Operation Awesome's NewYear's Revision Conference. It starts with a critique partner matchup on Jan. 3, and then the conference on the 4, 5, and 6. Authors, agents, and bloggers, oh my!
Of course, that doesn't mean it's finished. But it's worth taking a moment to celebrate before diving into revisions. I also wanted to take a sec to talk about the process for this book.
Before even starting on Crow's Rest, I did things a little different from the mostly-pantsing method used to plot my first book: I took the time to do a very detailed outline.
And let me tell you, it paid off big time. Whenever I had writer's block, or had spent some time away from the manuscript, the outline got me back on track. And whenever I had a shiny new plot idea flirt my way, I could look at my original framework and see if it enhanced the story or just cluttered it up. (For the record, most of them would have just cluttered it up. I would have enjoyed writing them immensely, but self-indulgence doesn't always improve the book).
The only drawback was that it was harder for me to get the ending out. When I was pantsing, I was just as eager to find out how the book ended as the reader would be (hopefully!). But since I'd done such a detailed outline, I felt like there weren't any surprises and I was just filling in some blanks.
My bad guy had different ideas on that subject and threw me a few curveballs. So that was fun. I feel like the Big Confrontation is not quite Big enough, but at least now I have something down on the page to play with.
The other place the outline will help me is with charting the story arc (I like Vogler's Hero's Journey and Alderson's Plot Whisperer methods). I certainly kept the arc in mind while preparing the outline, and charting it is a great way to check that I hit all the correct notes in the drafting process.
And interestingly, I had worked on a practice query early on (and it got a request in WriteOnCon, btw) and put the estimated finished length at around 70,000. That estimate was based on the somewhat-spare first draft coming in at 65,000, plus another 5,000 in revisions to flesh out characters, motivations, etc. Well, the first draft clocked in at 64,967 words! Not bad.
If you have a finished draft to play with too, you might be interested in checking out Operation Awesome's NewYear's Revision Conference. It starts with a critique partner matchup on Jan. 3, and then the conference on the 4, 5, and 6. Authors, agents, and bloggers, oh my!
(Graphic from the YA Highway site)
Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors and followers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on their blogs. You can hop from destination to destination through the YA Highway site and get everybody's unique take on the topic.
This week's topic: How far would you go to get published? We writers can form quite an attachment to our characters and stories. But we also know publishing is a business, and sometimes to make it in said business--to really build a career from it--we have to bend a bit. How far would you go to break into the publishing world?
I've been a little spoiled with my freelance articles--I've never been asked to revise them or change them. Reshoot the photos, yes, and the magazines have done some light copyediting but that's it. Pretty sweet, but it kind of established unrealistic expectations about how much revising I would be expected to do because that didn't carry over into fiction.
I lost my first "sale" of a short story when my college lit mag asked me to change the ending and I refused. I did give it some thought, but decided not to do it. Unfortunately, I didn't find out that it killed the deal until they actually released the lit mag, and mine wasn't in there (after I'd told everyone it would be, of course!). So I have no idea if I'd known that, whether it would have changed my mind. And of course, years later, I did change the ending but for different reasons. Aspects of the story changed, and that meant the ending no longer fit. (And I eventually found a home for Hornworms in Hunger Mountain)
Earlier this year while querying, I got a revise and resubmit request from an agent. When she was setting up the phone call to go over her concerns, she let me know they were "not minor". So that sent me into a panic (and I do mean a panic--how a writer's imagination can run away with her!) over what sort of changes she might request and whether I would be willing to make them. Fortunately, they were suggestions that worked for the story and made it stronger, so I was glad that I gave them a chance.
But I do know that there are aspects of my book I would not be willing to change. Usually if a character or plot device isn't working, I spend a bit of time trying to discern whether it's just not working in this form and I can write it differently, or whether it truly doesn't belong in the story at all. And when my CPs give me advice that I don't agree with, I try to examine why they would have made that suggestion. So most of the time even if I feel their suggestion was way out there, I can find the flaw in the passage that made them feel it needed something else. My fix may not be what they suggested in the end, but hopefully I will have addressed the issue.
What about you--how far are you willing to go? Don't forget to go to the comments on the YA Highway RTW post to see everyone else's answers!
I've been working with an excellent beta reader, Alison Kemper, and we were talking about our efforts to make our books scarier, while at the same time keeping the humor intact.
We both do really well writing pithy, sarcastic dialogue for our main characters. You know, those hilarious off-the-cuff remarks a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that break up the tension without somehow diluting it.
The difference is that in an episode of Buffy, we're also seeing the big scary monster (so we're scared too), her reaction (which might not be verbal), and everything moves at such a snappy pace that if they dwelled on something too long it would feel awkward rather than more meaningful.
All those things are so much harder to do on paper! For me, I tried to maintain the pacing over all else, so my main character never really had a chance to process the trauma or experience her own emotional reaction. And that meant the reader wasn't feeling it either.
Because that pithy dialogue is somewhat like having the last word--it's so funny on its own that it doesn't leave any room for you to explore any emotional depth. Like one of those movies that you see where you go away feeling it was only a collection of catchphrases, with no actual plot development. We've all seen those, haven't we, where we should have just saved the $10 because all the funny bits were in the trailer?
So I blame you, Joss Whedon, for giving us expectations that novels for teens can have that same mix of scariness, humor, emotional depth, character growth, and kick-ass pacing that Buffy showed us. Thereby making my job a lot harder.
We both do really well writing pithy, sarcastic dialogue for our main characters. You know, those hilarious off-the-cuff remarks a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that break up the tension without somehow diluting it.
The difference is that in an episode of Buffy, we're also seeing the big scary monster (so we're scared too), her reaction (which might not be verbal), and everything moves at such a snappy pace that if they dwelled on something too long it would feel awkward rather than more meaningful.
All those things are so much harder to do on paper! For me, I tried to maintain the pacing over all else, so my main character never really had a chance to process the trauma or experience her own emotional reaction. And that meant the reader wasn't feeling it either.
Because that pithy dialogue is somewhat like having the last word--it's so funny on its own that it doesn't leave any room for you to explore any emotional depth. Like one of those movies that you see where you go away feeling it was only a collection of catchphrases, with no actual plot development. We've all seen those, haven't we, where we should have just saved the $10 because all the funny bits were in the trailer?
So I blame you, Joss Whedon, for giving us expectations that novels for teens can have that same mix of scariness, humor, emotional depth, character growth, and kick-ass pacing that Buffy showed us. Thereby making my job a lot harder.
Labels:
buffy the vampire slayer,
joss whedon,
pithiness,
revisions,
scary,
writing
1 comments
I am a total wimp about scary movies--I can only take them if they also have a large dose of comedy. I can handle Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and movies like that, but I hate the jump-out-and-get-you type especially.
To this day, my husband teases me about when we were watching The Changeling, and I left the room after a moment that I will freely admit was only a "gotcha". A stained glass window burst, and I'd had enough, after all the other spooky stuff that came before that. And as much as I love and admire the LOTR movies, I can't watch them within a few hours of bedtime because they are just too disturbing for me.
As you might expect, my wimpiness carries over into scary books too. I don't even attempt most horror books.
But I've been stepping up the paranormal in this rewrite of my book, and sometimes after I write a scene, I have to set it aside and not look at it for a while. Not because I need to set it aside and come back to it with fresh eyes, but because it scares me! That just might be a new record for wimpitude.
But I do have to say I've had some weird things happen before, so I have plenty of genuinely creepy stuff to draw on. In the end, I don't think this novel will be classified as horror, but I hope I've done my job and at least unsettled a few people.
To this day, my husband teases me about when we were watching The Changeling, and I left the room after a moment that I will freely admit was only a "gotcha". A stained glass window burst, and I'd had enough, after all the other spooky stuff that came before that. And as much as I love and admire the LOTR movies, I can't watch them within a few hours of bedtime because they are just too disturbing for me.
As you might expect, my wimpiness carries over into scary books too. I don't even attempt most horror books.
But I've been stepping up the paranormal in this rewrite of my book, and sometimes after I write a scene, I have to set it aside and not look at it for a while. Not because I need to set it aside and come back to it with fresh eyes, but because it scares me! That just might be a new record for wimpitude.
But I do have to say I've had some weird things happen before, so I have plenty of genuinely creepy stuff to draw on. In the end, I don't think this novel will be classified as horror, but I hope I've done my job and at least unsettled a few people.
at the end of the revision tunnel. I've added scenes (thereby adding about 2,500 words, yikes) and am in the process of chopping scenes. I think it will end up about 93,000 words, in keeping with the length of previous versions.
One thing I thought was interesting is that my husband has a hard time anticipating my work schedule. I'll work all day and into the evening for several days in a row, and then set everything aside and say, "Let's go do something fun! Anything but think about this book."
From the outside, it probably does look like a bit manic, but for me it's just part of the process. A period of needing to work intensively so that everything stays in my head is always followed by some time where I work on another project or do something completely unconnected to this project. This lets me go back to the original project with the proper detachment, so I can see all the flaws (and even fall in love with it all over again).
As a bonus, here's a link to an excellent post by Roni Loren on how to identify and avoid author intrusion.
One thing I thought was interesting is that my husband has a hard time anticipating my work schedule. I'll work all day and into the evening for several days in a row, and then set everything aside and say, "Let's go do something fun! Anything but think about this book."
From the outside, it probably does look like a bit manic, but for me it's just part of the process. A period of needing to work intensively so that everything stays in my head is always followed by some time where I work on another project or do something completely unconnected to this project. This lets me go back to the original project with the proper detachment, so I can see all the flaws (and even fall in love with it all over again).
As a bonus, here's a link to an excellent post by Roni Loren on how to identify and avoid author intrusion.
Doesn't that look just like a lovely rosy cabbage? I should preface the following link with warnings that:
1. I have been spending much of my free time on revisions of my novel, which means I've been hanging out in the spirit world, and with ghosties .
2. In between, I've been reading/and or listening to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Dead-Tossed Waves, and the Graveyard Book.
So that will hopefully explain why I haven't been blogging lately, and why I found these so very amusing.
Deep in the revision swamp since we've been back from our trip, so I haven't been posting as often. Or trolling my blogger friends' sites, sorry. But the pumpkins ripening in the garden made me feel Halloween-ish and I thought I'd inflict the following videos on you:
P.S. I should warn you that I found these videos as a result of my nephew declaring a "terrible music day" where we all nominated videos in a facebook thread
P.S. I should warn you that I found these videos as a result of my nephew declaring a "terrible music day" where we all nominated videos in a facebook thread
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