NOTICE: Diverse writers welcomed here!
Diversity is vital to speculative fiction. A genre centered
on exploration and encountering the Other must include voices and visions from
writers, readers and thinkers of all kinds.
This year the Armadillocon Writing Workshop has sponsored
seats for writers of color! Visit the workshop page for more information and to
fill out the sponsorship request form!
This week it’s time to set aside your writer’s hat and start
revising. But when it comes to revising you’ll need more than one hat. I’ll
call this first hat the big picture hat. This is where you need to assess just
what exactly you’ve got.
Sometimes our stories are buried beneath our conscious
thought. If you wrote your first draft free and fast, new story elements or
characters may have emerged or changed direction on you. Instead of forcing
things back into your original plan, this is an opportunity to see what this
draft has to say to you.
This is big picture editing. Start by simply reading through
the mess and listen for the piece’s beating heart. What are the things your
characters believe in? Fight for? What is won or lost? Try not to be distracted
by scene details or sloppy sentences. Resist the urge to do any housekeeping at
this point. Try to get a bead on the essence of the story, the thing that will
guide your revisions.
Now that you’ve read your draft for you, it’s time to pick up your pen (or put your document into
revision mode) and read through it with your readers in mind. Is your story
coherent or are there places where you might lose your reader logically or
emotionally? This first revision is where it’s easiest to make big structural
changes. Move the furniture around, write new material, change a character’s
motivation, age, gender if you need to, try different dialogue.
 |
|
Oscar Wilde's handwritten manuscript
page of
The Picture of Dorian Gray
|
Mostly, I’m drawing
with my red pen here, circling text to be moved, crossing out chunks, writing
brief notes for new scenes or dialogue. Here are some things to think about:
Plot:
Is there a beginning, middle and end to the story? Does the
protagonist change in some way? Do they succeed or fail at something? Do they
have a goal or desire? Did the characters get side tracked? If so and if the
story lost its focus you can either redirect the characters to your original
idea or explore the alternate story that the sidetrack suggests. It can be
helpful to write a brief reverse outline here. Make a list of each thing that
happens to see if you have cause-and-effect chain of events running through
your story.
Pacing:
May be wonky at this point. Frankly, pacing can be tricky in
shorter forms. Five thousand words can go by in a flash, so check for long
stretches of description or rambling characterizations. Try to keep things
concise and make sure events are progressing in a way that increases the
tension (i.e. keep tightening the thumb screws on the protagonist).
Clarity:
Are there logic holes or missing steps in the chain of
events that will confuse the reader? Are there places where you can adjust the
description or characterization that will make the ending resonate more
powerfully? In theater, early rehearsals are devoted to blocking out the actors’
stage movements. Think in terms of blocking. Make sure it’s clear to your
reader where your character is in the room/woods/spaceship/etc., and in
relation to other characters.
With scribbled up draft in hand or on screen, you are ready
for your first big rewrite. You’re not shooting for perfection here, just
improvement. Try to improve the overall shape of the story, dial up the
conflict if you need to, refine the characters and their desires. You can rinse
and repeat this process throughout the week. Hell, if the zero draft isn’t
cooperating, you have time to start over from scratch. Maybe there’s some
moment within your first try at a story that branches off, intrigues you, go
ahead and see where that one leads you. Your goal is to come out of the week
with something rough but cohesive, something with all the moving parts in the
right places.
All of this advice holds for an older piece that you want to
refurbish. Except that what you have may be more polished, and it might be
harder for you to scrap big sections, rearrange or take the story in a new
direction. If so, this is the week you kill your darlings. No matter how
beautiful your sentences, how shapely your paragraphs, if the story isn’t
working it’s going to have to change and probably change into something very
different than your original idea. Sometimes I feel better if I keep the stuff
I amputate in a folder with the idea of using these scraps in something new
someday.
Next week will be a rest/catch up week. I will also talk
about revising for style and grace (that other editor’s hat) for writers who
may want to fast track and get their story in early.
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