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22 April, 2010 10:31 am

Rewriting And The Importance of Words

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing, NonFiction Writing

In his blog, David Hewson talks here about how changing one word when rewriting can make a huge difference to the atmosphere and ‘punch’ of a scene. The word in question is ‘piss’ and two examples are given – one with it, and the rewrite without it. The rewrite is, to my mind, definitely stronger.

It’s just one little word, but whether it’s in the sentence or not makes a huge difference to the reading experience. Less is definitely more in this case.

With the word, the focus of attention falls directly on the word itself and detracts from everything else that is equally important in building up the whole scene. The rotten fruit, the rubbish, the abandoned plastic – they matter too, but somehow they’re  overshadowed and sidelined when the word ‘piss’ is included at the end.

During rewriting and redrafting the offending word is removed. Without the word, the scene is allowed to hang in the reader’s mind as a whole. We most certainly understand what the overriding stench is, but it’s allowed to permeate the other dereliction, not obliterate it.

Words matter. Even little ones.

Skilful editing and rewriting comes from knowing what to take out and what to leave in and is arguably the hardest thing in the writing process.

I find the best way of discovering what needs to come out is to get some distance between my muse and my writing. When a piece has been allowed to ‘rest’ for a while, your mind is more willing to accept that not every word is perfectly placed. You’re more able to read your words as a reader rather than a writer, and making that distinction is important because readers primarily want involvement in the story, immersion in the atmosphere, empathy with the characters, and anticipation along with recognition of peril.

All this happens very quickly when reading. It also happens on a subconscious level. The above elements are either there or they’re not, and if any of them are missing the story will fail one level or another. Depending on the strength of the others, you’ll either lose the reader completely or they’ll carry on reading with reservations. But some of the trust in the unspoken reader/writer contract will be lost.

Trust goes full circle back to the rewriting process. You have to learn to trust your own writerly instincts. When you’re reading back through a piece, if something jars with you, it’ll jar with readers too. Don’t be tempted to gloss over it because of the hard work involved with figuring out what’s wrong and what it needs to make it right. Don’t be tempted to think that just because it’s only one word, or sentence, or paragraph or page it won’t matter.

It will, and does, matter. Every word matters, individually and collectively.

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9 February, 2010 9:09 am

First Drafts – Patchwork Writing

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by Deb    in Articles, Fiction Writing, NonFiction Writing, Random Writing Rambles
patchwork writing

Photo by Lori Ann http://mamawit.wordpress.com/

I’ve just read a post on Holly Lisle’s Talysmana site regarding first drafts and the writing process, which has sparked off a few thoughts of my own.

One of the hardest things in writing, or learning to write, is learning to accept that what comes out of your imagination, your pen or your keyboard first time round isn’t necessarily anything remotely like what it will be when you decide it’s finished.

You have to push on through the muddles, accept the changes in direction and bear the confusion with stoic determination. You have to trust that the changes you make to a first draft are going to result in a better story.

And it’s not cheating when you change the beginning to match the ending. It’s okay to rewrite whole sections, delete others, change character names, swap locations, switch themes or whatever else occurs to you as you’re writing.

I’ve been a creative writing tutor for a few years now. I use the word ‘cheating’ deliberately, because so often I’ve had students cast me scandalised glances when I tell them it is perfectly okay to go back and add a few lines in chapter two when they think of a cool twist in chapter 15 that needs some foreshadowing. It really is as though I’ve suggested they cheat during an important exam.

First drafts are meant to be torn apart. Stories grow in much the same way as patchwork quilts. You have a load of little bits and pieces of material (in stories called scenes or ideas) and as you assemble the finished piece you rearrange, discard, add, match colours and shades, experiment with stitch styles and thread colours (in stories called narrative voices) and finally find a combination of all the above that pleases you.

You have to go through the experimentation and shuffling, the mixing and matching, the discards and the additions. There’s no other way to do it. If you don’t try the pink floral up against the purple stripes you might miss a wonderful and startling combination that delights and surprises.

It’s not cheating to shuffle the pieces around to work out which looks best.

But here’s the thing. In order to have pieces to shuffle about, you’ve got to write them first. Only then can you start the final assembly process that builds a story. And that’s what’s so hard about first drafts. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of believing that because it’s written, it’s got to stay as it is.

Wrong. It’s just another piece of the patchwork. If it clashes then change, revise, rewrite or delete it.

That’s what first drafts are for.

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5 February, 2010 1:45 pm

Homing in on the Senses

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing
london traffic

http://www.flickr.com/photos/roomiccube/ / CC BY 2.0

Effective writing demands the use of all five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting – but it also demands something else: the ability to see beyond the usual, to find the extraordinary in the commonplace, to get beneath the surface of the everyday and discover the wealth of treasure that lurks just out of the reach of what’s normal.

Everyday we’re bombarded by sounds, sights, smells, shapes and other snapshots of real life as lived by everyone around us. Most of the time we block them out, not out of wilful ignorance, but out of necessity. If every sense was fully receptive all the time we’d be overwhelmed in a matter of minutes.

Imagine trying to notice and make sense of all the snatches of conversation heard while walking along a busy street. Impossible. Couple that with the sounds of motor engines, the call of the pigeons, the scrape of shoes on concrete, a police siren in the distance, the rattle of a charity collector’s box, the aroma of the fish and chip shop or a burst of coffee outside the cafe, the sudden sharp yell of a frustrated child or the shrieks of excited teenagers.

The trick is to be selective in what you notice and focus on just that one thing for a moment.

It’s not very often, for instance, that we’re treated to the pleasure of real silence and very often what we image to be silence really isn’t. Sit very still and listen. Can you really hear nothing at all? In the house, is the clock ticking, is the central heating humming, does the occasional car go past outside the window, are the birds singing?

Right now, although I’m sitting alone at my computer as I write this, the sounds I can hear become almost a cacophony when I pause to really listen.

I hear birds, not singing but squawking, there’s the hum of the computer and the tap of the keys as I type, the wind blows the fly screen against the door, knocking, the cat claws the furniture in the next room and my own voice calls sharply for her to stop, I move slightly and my clothes rustle as the chair gives a little squeak. I clearly hear the clicking of the mouse wheel as I scroll up and down the page.

Isolating sounds, listening for them one by one and giving each a name, is good training for the creative mind. It teaches you to home in on the small things, to pause and realise the breadth and depth of the normal.

All too often the little things escape us, but it’s the little things that build into big things. Words build into sentences, into paragraphs and pages, to chapters and whole books. But without the words, one by one, there is nothing.

Learning to home in on the moment and stay there for a little while builds on the subconscious store of remembered senses.

Then, when your character is alone in her house and feeling lonely or scared, anxious or happy, your subconscious will throw you the senses, the tiny sounds so easily missed or overlooked, that will heighten the characters’ sense of aloneness, or whatever else she’s feeling, and draw it sharp and real for your readers.

But before you can home in on these tiny sensations and sounds in writing, you need to have experienced them in real life.

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18 January, 2010 5:39 pm

Do you admit to being a writer?

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by Deb    in NonFiction Writing, Random Writing Rambles

shy catPhoto by The Marmot

I read something, somewhere, about the need to define yourself as a writer both inwardly, in your own mind, and outwardly, when talking to other people about what you do.

I used to think that was probably right. Note the ‘probably’. I’m not so sure anymore.

If you tell people you’re a writer, the next question you have to answer is ‘what do you write?’, followed quickly by ‘will I have heard of you?’.

Unless both answers are in the extreme positive, in that you’ve carved out a well-defined niche for yourself along the lines of Bill Bryson or Lee Childs, say, or you can tell them you’re regularly published – like on a weekly or monthly basis – in a national publication that everyone and his dog has heard of, my thoughts now on the subject are that a little secretiveness is probably best.

There’s that probably again.

Truth is, I alternate between two extremes on this issue. One day I feel that telling everyone is the way to go, and the next I’m convinced it’s best to shutup about it. Unless you enjoy endlessly justifying what you do and why you do it, and are willing to put up with the ‘oooh get you’ looks.

Today I’m having a ‘shutup’ day.

Tomorrow I’ll probably be back shouting from the rooftops. (Are cliches allowed in blogposts? Who cares, seeing as today I’m keeping silent about writing I don’t need to worry about whether or not I’m being original.)

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10 January, 2010 8:13 am

Scrivener and The Pale Ones

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing, NaNoWriMo, Scrivener, Writing Diary

The Pale Ones are now in Scrivener and I’m faced with the task of organising the scenes and getting to grips with the story again.

Since the end of nano I’ve done very little fiction writing. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I picked up quite a bit more ‘work for hire’ than I normally do and that kept me busy with nonfiction.

But the Pale Ones are nagging. They want their story told and I want to tell it. So I need to get back on track and figure out where we go from here.

Scrivener does make the task of importing a WIP easy. Previously I was using yWriter, and while it’s a great writing tool, it doesn’t quite do what I want or present the work in the way I want it. So the first task was to get the POs out of yWriter and into Scrivener. Simplicity itself. Both programmes behaved perfectly. YWriter exported neatly into .rtf, and Scrivener picked it up effortlessly when asked to do so.

I ended up with a very long single file in Scrivener, which seeing as I’m working in scenes, was no good at all. Scrivener promises that breaking up long files is a simple matter, and it is. Just put the curser in the file where you want to the break and tell Scrivener to make the break. Everything before the break is put into into its own little scene section, and everything beyond the break stays together in the long file. You can select text at the beginning of the break to use as the scene title which makes later identification much easier. In a matter of minutes I’d run through the whole 60k odd word count and recreated the scene sections.

My next task is to organise my Scrivener index cards on the corkboard. I have scenes out of sequence, scenes I no longer need because of changes further on in the story, and scenes which, frankly, just aren’t doing the job they were supposed to do.

I’ve got to pin down my ‘sentence lites’, (Think Sideways jargon), or should that be ’sentences lite?’ and relearn/rethink my story arc. I’ve been away from the story for long enough to have forgotten a lot of what I’ve written which is both good and bad. Good because I can read it back with a fresher eye, and bad because it feels jut a bit like someone else’s story and I’m half afraid that when I try to get reacquainted with it I won’t like it anymore.

Hopefully Scrivener is going to make my task easier. Apart from the normal frustrations of learning a new programme, (and an irrational fear that by clicking buttons and experimenting I’m going to break either my story or Scrivener) my first few days with it have only made me more glad to have it.

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