Revision: Rigor and Riches

Hard. Boring. Exhilarating. Scary. Inspiring. Painful. Transformative. Mention the word “revision,”and each novelist will respond differently. With one exception: writers either love revision or loathe it.

There’s plenty of reasons, many legitimate, why you might dislike the process. Writers don’t always know where to start or how to fix what they find.  When novelists accept the questionable advice to just spew out first draft, the result can be pretty awful. And then the fun’s over. Now it’s time to concentrate, to work. 

Besides, cutting can be painful. The expression, “Murder your darlings,” which has a long, complex history via such greats as F. Scoot Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, sums up the way writers often feel. It takes energy and effort to get the words down. What do you mean I have to discard them?

And yet, you do. Here’s why:

In my experience, cutting back is the crucial act that allows the vitality, precision and emotional heart of a piece of writing to emerge. ― Pamela Erens

So, usually, the first act of revision is eliminating everything you can willingly discard, and then a bit more. After all, if the great moments and sentences are buried, how can you know what to keep?

How to start cutting:

• Repetition of words, details, and information readers already know
• “Telling” and then “showing” or “showing” and then “telling”
• Excessive or familiar description
• Long set-ups before you reach “the good part”

The great news? Once you pare down, you can see how to proceed. These questions might help you get started:

~ Is the scenario original and substantial?
~ Do the characters seem both consistent and alive?
~ Is enough at stake?
~ Do chapters and scenes begin and end with hooks?
~ Do you capitalize on your novel’s point of view?

After addressing the fundamentals, you can smooth sentences and perfect word choice.

Is this hard work? Absolutely. Is it worth it? As Stephen King put it in a Writer's Digest interview

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising

There you go. First rigor, then riches—at least in terms of craft, if not royalties.

The Truth about Verisimilitude

The holiday season evokes numerous questions about what is “truly” spiritual, loving, generous, or joyful. Partial truths abound. Is everyone merry? Do gifts express love? If your mom wants you to play nice with her bigoted, alcoholic brother, is it true that you owe her that?

This time of year elicits as many questions as platitudes. For novelists, though, whatever the season, the big questions always matter, and drama is always the best way to present them.

Whether theater or fiction, drama originates in the gap between reality and an artistic presentation of it. To probe truth, that created reality must be more credible, causal, and moral than random everyday life. 

This concept goes all the way back to Plato calling art imitative, and Aristotle countering that, basically saying, yes, imitation is instinctive, but to create what we call “art,” something beyond replication is needed

That something is inextricably intertwined with fact versus truth.

Albert Camus was on Aristotle’s side, saying:

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

Let’s break that down. By definition, fiction isn’t true. But facts don’t always compel and can even mislead. In any case, empirical data rarely fosters deep empathy about those from other times, cultures, even worlds. 

Fiction is a more effective vehicle for inducing empathy, and with that comes a huge responsibility. Neil Gaiman is adamant about this: 

We writers–and especially writers for children, but all writers–have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were–to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson identified this same irony: 

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Nor is this an observation meant for poets and philosophers. As Stephen King puts it, 

Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.

How does this lie/truth business apply? Consider a Christmas story. The starting point would not be a collection of facts about how many gifts people buy or return. Not even how many people fly or drive to convene with family. Because on its own, such data can’t probe for “truth.”

Instead, a story about one family’s holiday would be composed or at least embellished (not true) in order to reveal change in character (more true) caused by a dramatic event (also true and most compelling of all). 

The result? New truths—real ones—about this family, truths so universal that readers discover new truths about themselves. Isn’t that exactly why fiction simulates reality rather than merely reproducing it?

Tip: Fiction captures truth by replacing facts with plausible, causal, and suspenseful details.

Not Just “Writers Need to Read”—But Why

Tip:“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” — Stephen King

In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot observed, “Someone said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.’ Precisely, and they are that which we know.”

Just as true today as almost a century ago. So much more to know—and to read. If this seems daunting, consider the opportunity. The art of fiction comes from who you are—and who you are comes from everything preceding you. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” 

On a more universal scale, curiosity like this drives people to explore their roots. Don't your cultural roots signify as least as much, whether from ancient Greece or DaVinci? 

Or all those classics that inform how every novelist thinks and writes? Reading reminds writers that the best fiction is timeless. James Baldwin:

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Here’s Evan Mahone in “The Best Advice for Writers? Read”

Last week the Guardian published a list of writerly rules donated by respected authors. Somewhat surprisingly, only a quarter of the authors advised aspiring writers to read. Perhaps reading is too obvious, too fundamental to be perceived as a rule–like advising chefs to eat if they want to learn how to cook. But despite the fact that most of the rule writers failed to advise people to read, I doubt any writer would argue that reading is not essential to the writing craft.

What does Mahone think reading writers (pun intended) get? Only vocabulary, models, inspiration, and escape from the difficulties of your profession/avocation. So the pursuit of books like the ones you want to write becomes quite serious.

You can't write seriously without reading the greats in that peculiar way that writers read, attentive to the particularities of the language, to the technical turns and twists of scene-making and plot, soaking up numerous narrative strategies and studying various approaches to that cave in the deep woods where the human heart hibernates. --Alan Cheus

J.K. Rowling got it right: “The most important thing is to read as much as you can…” Besides, as Neil Gaiman reminds: “Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.” 

Can you afford not to find the time? 

Oooh—Taboo: Rectitude versus Risk

Serious writers are usually seriously familiar with all the things they’re forbidden to do: Always “show.” Don’t let your character study herself in a mirror and report what she sees. Avoid anguish, yearning, stormy nights, flimsy nightwear, and rippling muscles. Never start a chapter with dialogue or a sentence with “and.”

Of course taboos originate with good reason. Members of a society agree that a particular behavior—even with language—is so sanctified or appalling that it’s forbidden. People don’t do it. Often, they won’t even mention it.

But what if you judiciously turn a prohibition on its head? One result is a fragrance from The House of Dana, marketed as “Tabu, the forbidden fragrance.” The ad showed a violinist interrupting his performance to bestow a passionate kiss on his accompanist. Pretty sexy, right? 

Follow every rule and you won’t evoke much passion. “She had provided her services as head librarian of the village for nearly five decades.” That’s very sound grammatically, but more fun to mock than to read.

Aside from the stiff formality unsuitable for contemporary fiction, there’s something tantalizing—for both author and reader—about breaking rules. Consider some of these.

~ Sentence fragments.

“It is possible to overuse the well-turned fragment …, but frags can also work beautifully to streamline narration, create clear images, and create tension as well as to vary the prose-line.” — Stephen King, On Writing

~ Weather.

Be careful. It’s easy to lapse into the painful personification of the smiling sun or the equally painful revisiting of the full moon, the rumbling thunder, the unforgiving sky. But make the familiar unfamiliar, and you have a warm, sunny winter day.

~ Dreams

This, too, is quite dangerous, and “It was only a dream” possibly unforgivable. But if a brief, vivid dream lyrically foreshadows, it can add texture, perhaps even humor, irony, or drama.

~ Backstory.

A little goes a long way. But none at all? That thins plot.

“Telling.”

            “Show everything” and it might never be clear where your 5000- page novel is set.

Exclamation points!!!

            This one’s for real. Don’t.

Tip: Know the rules so you can choose when to follow and when to flirt.

Religion and Revision?

This comparison isn’t meant to be blasphemous! Religion can loosely be defined as a belief system involving a higher power, while revision produces an improved version of something.

Viewed this way, there’s more commonality between the two than how the words sound:

• Never covet thy neighbor’s publications, prizes, interviews, royalties.
• The journey is its own reward.
• Think more about others than yourself.
• That hard work often produces some rationalizing.
• Your journey will likely involve some wise mentors and some false ones.
• Your journey will help unleash the best you have to offer.
• Your journey will be difficult—because it’s supposed to be.
• Your journey might change you from who you were to who you want to be.

Let’s say you consider those premises valid. What’s next?

v  Do unto others (your readers) as you would have other writers do to you. Never condescend or waste words.

v  View revision not just as the heaven of a “perfect” novel, but as a meaningful creative process. That’s not a view; that’s exactly what revision is.

v  Understand the “commandments” well enough to know when the context justifies breaking them—and when it doesn’t.

v  Be patient. Sometimes the solution lies beyond your immediate understanding. But keep trying. Don’t give up.

v  Place yourself in the hands of a power greater than yourself. Your novel knows what it needs. So do your readers.

v  Heaven helps those who help themselves.

If you want your final draft to differ radically from your first one, as Raymond Chandler put it,

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.” The joy of revision is making sacrifices to achieve something good.

Upholding the tenets of your religion demands effort; that’s why some people give up what they love for Lent. This is Stephen King’s take on that: “The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.”

Tip: Revise as if your soul depended on it.

Passive Voice and the Novelist’s Voice

Novel readers don’t ask for much: A powerful plot. Compelling characters. A voice you could listen to forever.

What don’t novel readers ask for? A novel where there is a plot based on decisions that should be made by characters who are being described by a narrator resulting in a voice that is passive. There is (good construction to avoid) no justification for that!

Novelists rarely incite that much irritation. But the sentence does illustrate the connection between passive voice—and no voice. In “The Pleasures and Perils of the Passive,” Constance Hale identifies both kinds of voice: “Most (though not all) verbs have a property known as ‘voice,’ which can be either active or passive. The voice of a verb is different from both the common notion of voice (the timbre produced by a person’s vocal cords) and the literary notion (the ineffable way the writer’s words work on the page).”

Stephen King delivers this warning in “Why and How to Avoid Passive Voice”:  “You should avoid the passive voice. I’m not the only one who says so; you can find the same advice in ‘The Elements of Style’.  Messrs. Strunk and White don't speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but I'm willing to; I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.”

Safe or not, the passive voice is wordy, cumbersome, and unintentionally comic: “The ball was hit by the girl.” Will that release your voice? Seriously?

To find your voice, you must first counteract insecurity and self-consciousness, then enchant through syntax, music, diction, rhythm, figurative language, and on and on. Why add an awkward, usually displeasing construction that makes all that harder?  Because exceptions exist (though preferably not expressed as “There are exceptions”).

~ Would a sentence become unclear or ungainly if you traded subject for object?

The Emperor was attacked by an enraged people, starving and humiliated, whom he’d recently enslaved in a victory that generated, song, poem, statue and—revolution.

~ Do you intentionally seek distance? Ambiguity? A certain tone or rhythm?

There are truths few humans can endure, truths awaiting someone to voice them.

How to choose when to give in and use passive voice?

Tip: Imagine that each passive sentence costs $50,000. Then spend your cash wisely.

After all, W.H. Auden proclaimed, “All I have is a voice.” And that’s all anyone has.