Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
by Renni Browne, Dave King
It was June. I had three chapters to rewrite, a synopsis to do and I panicked.
I knew my first chapter wasn’t strong enough, but I didn’t know why.
I knew all three of my chapters weren’t clear enough, precise enough, to set the tone for the story I had in my head.
And I knew my head was black and blue from banging it against the wall.
Though it should seem obvious as to why I happened to read SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS (SEFW) while strategizing and then rewriting, it wasn’t. Maybe on some sub-conscious level, sure. But I wasn’t operating on all cylinders at the time (though there was that brief shining moment for two weeks at the end of July/beginning of August when my teen was out of town), thanks to a rather large black cloud that’s hung over my home this entire year.
No, it was really just luck that had me pick this book as the first to read in my contract series for the semester.
And yes, Mary Ann, there really is a Santa Claus.
No book has all the answers when it comes to writing (or anything else for that matter), but SEFW certainly comes close. Concepts that I had been hearing about for months, such as Show, Don’t Tell and RUE, otherwise known as Refuse the Urge to Explain, became suddenly clear and comprehensible thanks to the copious examples and explanations in this book.
Though the entire book was of value, I would have to say that the very first chapter was where everything, and I do mean everything, became clear. The authors take a passage from The Great Gatsby and run it through various drafts to exemplify the value of showing the intricacies of character and plot versus telling them. The first version is an almost synopsis like ‘telling’ of a dialogue scene between guests at a dinner party of Gatsby’s where the reader is first learning about the great enigma that is Gatsby, their host. We are told that Gatsby is an enigma. We are told that there are several guests that each have different theories about him. And we are told that each guest believes his or her theory to be the answer.
In version two, which is actually F. Scott Fitzgerald’s version, we’re shown all the above through a conversation surrounding the host’s quickness to replace an expensive dress of a guest who’d accidentally torn it while gallivanting around at another of his parties. We’re also shown that there is a mysterious element to Gatsby – no one knows where he was during the war or where he came from.
All this through dialogue. Not only was it plainly evident how much more entertaining it is to show versus tell, but by showing, the reader is pulled in and becomes a character. The story is revealed to them as it happens.
I read that chapter and immediately tore my own pages apart. And most importantly, I realized that having Kate ‘talk’ about her failed Mars mission wasn’t half the fun that ‘showing’ her failed Mars mission would be.
And so my new chapter one was born.
Another vital trick I picked up – that really carries across several of the key issues that Browne and King discuss in SEFW, was to write the narrative, even though it was in the 3rd person, with the flavor and personality of that individual’s POV. This has been fairly easy to do for Kate – and it’s another reason her scenes are so strong. Jon and Burke have definitely been tougher because I don’t really know them yet. But I believe as I continue to work on the story, that’s going to come out. The experiment I recently did with Jon’s relapse into a semi-autistic state was very insightful for me as a writer. Getting across that overload of sensory input, confusement as to what is right and what is wrong, added a definitive ‘flavor’ to his POV.
One area that I continue to struggle with, even with the help of SEFW, is ‘beats’. In the prose world, beats means pauses – using a bit of business, a physical movement or action interspersed throughout the dialogue to vary the rhythm of a scene and to help the reader absorb the implications of the dialogue. Of course, it’s also to make the scene more visual.
Firstly, I’m so incredibly prone – as it’s been pointed out repeatedly – to head movements that I must admit that even with this book, I still have a great deal to learn about how to use action and body language. Having written for television and stage, I was always trained to work with the actors, to find natural movements that their sub-consciousness wanted to do. It always made blocking easy and I didn’t have to worry about including the directions in the writing. In fact, that’s considered offensive by most actors.
But as a writer, I am the actors. Yikes.
The other challenge for me with the term “beats” is that having worked in TV/Film for so long – the word has a very different meaning in the visual medium. Beats in TV/film writing actually mean scenes or key moments that move the story forward. Twenty some odd years of using a term that way is a hard habit to break.
And in fact, since I created a 4 page ‘beat’ sheet for Critical Past before writing the synopsis – I don’t think I’ll ever break that habit.
NOTE TO SHU POSSIBLY: A workshop on physical action descriptives aka body language could be a good thing.
Still, I am very grateful for this book. It concretized the whirlpool of concepts and instinctual ideas running through my brain on what really works best in fiction. And although my ‘re-read before re-write’ pile is building, I’m going to have to include this on the list. SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS is a port in the storm of my struggles for lucidity as I try to tell a very big story.
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