Tag Archives: editing process

We Searched and Researched and Researched and…

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

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Alright-y then, going off of the last post on preparation; I want to talk about research. I know research is a part of preparation, but it’s such an important, and big, part I thought I’d give it its due with a whole post about it.

So the meat of the argument, the question everyone asks, is: how much research is enough research/how much research should I be doing?

The quick and dirty answer to this question (and some budding writers out there will stop after this, which they shouldn’t) is: you do as much research as you feel you need to, and then you get on to writing.

That being said, if you consider yourself a writer, if you want to be a professional writer one day, you should do more research than looking up one website/article (wiki- or otherwise) before you sit down to write about something. As a general rule I go for two or three sources on a subject, but it will depend on what you are writing.

If, for instance, you’re writing a historical fiction story I wouldn’t say it’d be out of line to have at least six sources (two or three on the event itself and one for each of the major participants), and really if you had a dozen sources I wouldn’t say you’re out of line. I read an interview with a writer (and you’re going to hate me because I keep doing this) whose name I can’t remember (someone look it up and send me a comment: female author, book took place around/during the Chicago fire, came out late ’90’s or early 2000’s). Anyway, this author took ten years to write this book, most of that time being research. So there’s that.

I would even say if you’re writing an alternative history story you still need to research the event(s) you’re changing, because you need to know what happened if you’re going to change things. Plus, doing this may get you to think about outcomes/consequences you might not have thought of for your story.

For my Reiner Rotterdam story I looked up several sources (digital and print) about fairy creatures to make sure I had the legends right. As it turns out trolls (Reiner is a troll by the way) originally were just bigger humans that liked to live alone and it wasn’t really until the introduction of the fantasy genre that they took on monstrous features that have become common place in our collective imaginations. Learning this made me think about the story I wanted to tell again, and in a different way, and I think it came out much better because of it.

Let me bottom line it for you: you will have to do research about something for your stories. To be fair (more than fair really) in this glorious information age that we live in research has become exceedingly easy to do, and writers have less and less excuses for misinformed stories or completely wrong “facts” in their stories.

As a general rule (yes, another one) regarding research: If you don’t know, even if you’re unsure, about something look it up.

I hope this clears the air about research. And as always: think good things, writer good words.

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The Uncle Karl Fix Pt. 2

21 Saturday Jun 2014

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Okay, so enough people have said something about “Uncle Karl” that you’ve (begrudgingly) decided to take a look at the scenes he’s in. Hopefully there’s been a few days/weeks/months between you finishing the writing and you going back to edit. The reason for this is that time can help you get a better perspective on your story. I can’t tell you how many times I wrote something that made complete sense in the middle of the writing, but when I went back through editing I was like: Wait! What?!

So, you’re looking at the scenes with Uncle Karl. The very first thing you need to ask yourself is: What is Uncle Karl bringing to the scene?

Try to be as objective as possible. This will be difficult. Probably at some point during your re-read of the scene you smile because of Uncle Karl. It’s tempting at this point to go: Hey, I don’t know what they (your friends who have been nice enough to read your story to help you edit it and make it better) are talking about. Uncle Karl is great. I’m the cleverest motherfucker here.

Alright, stop right there. Now I’m not saying you’re not clever, and you may be the cleverest one among your group of friends, you might even be the cleverest motherfucker writing about what you’re writing about, but…BUT…what if you’re not? And even if you truly are the cleverest writer to ever write, if people are too distracted by Uncle Karl to notice then in the end it doesn’t matter.

So you’ve re-read the scene with Uncle Karl in it with the question, What is Uncle Karl bringing to the scene, on your mind. Now for the second question: What is the scene trying to accomplish? Thinking of this question re-re-read the scene. Now is Uncle Karl helping or hindering what you’re trying to do in the scene?

Obviously if Uncle Karl is helping then Uncle Karl gets to stay. If Uncle Karl is hindering Uncle Karl gots to go.

You have to do this for each scene individually. I must stress: DON’T GET RID OF UNCLE KARL IN EVERY SCENE BECAUSE HE DOESN’T WORK IN JUST ONE. The reason I bring this up is because Uncle Karl isn’t just taking up space on the page, he’s taking up space in the world of the story. You took the time for the story to have Uncle Karl in it so the story WILL have a hole to fill if you take him out.

This is actually a good segue into the coolest question of “The Uncle Karl Fix”: What happens to the story if you take Uncle Karl out completely? BA-BA-BUUUUM!

For instance what if Uncle Karl is hindering one of your scenes, but he’s there to introduce something that will be important later in the story? So Uncle Karl is hindering the scene but helping the story. Fair enough, but what does taking him out completely do for the story? What if taking Uncle Karl out forces the Main Character to be more proactive? What’s wrong with that?

What I’m trying to get at is that getting rid of Uncle Karl doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can provide opportunities for the story to grow and move in directions you didn’t expect. From part one I mentioned my most recent “Uncle Karl” was that my story was from a character’s POV and that it just wasn’t working from their POV.

Yeah, I was upset. Something I wanted to do didn’t work. The story sucked. I had my maybe-they’re-just-not-smart/cool/into my genre-enough-to-get-what-I’m-trying-to-do moment, and once I calmed down I started thinking about the other characters in the story. When it occurred to me who’s POV it should be from all these ideas flooded into me about how I could play around with different aspects of the story, things that hadn’t even occurred to me the first time around, things that couldn’t have because the way the story was coming out. All of a sudden the story was breathing and alive again.

At the end of the day that’s all we, as writers, really want isn’t it? To have a story that’s fun to write and lives on its own.

Zen and the Art of Writing Mechanics

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

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It’s been said by better people than me (over and over again) about many, many things: you have to have a firm grasp of the fundamentals to be able to do anything well. Why people think they can ignore it about writing and language is beyond me.

I recently joined a writing group. I was shocked by myself when I started reading others’ writing. Honestly, I didn’t think I was that guy. I thought I was more concerned with the stories than the grammar rules. However, I found myself floundering to get to the story because of the misuse of the words involved.

This is not another rant about comma use. No this is much more fundamental. This is about the misuse of language.

For instance (and every writer struggles with this one), passivity. Passive verb forms keep an action from fully forming (and people could argue that they keep a character and, more importantly, a story from fully developing as well). Examples of a passive sentence: Jenna was starting to understand. Active sentence: Jenna started to understand. Even better: Jenna understood now. You need your characters doing things otherwise you have a story that might have been instead of a story that is.

Another specific example of things that can muddle the pace of the story and put off your reader is prepositional phrases. Not that you shouldn’t use these, but over using them can cause sentence to keep going well past their intended point. Example: “ It’s not my fault,” said Johnny, who had to let the ball go in order to hang on. This is a speech tag, yet the sentence doesn’t just tell us who’s talking it goes into action too…except it doesn’t, because there are three prepositional phrases strung together. This is an example of overcomplicating a sentence.

Like I said, I really didn’t want to be this guy but I found myself missing the story being told because of constant misuses like these. It’s like seeing someone with matted hair, dirty t-shirt, and ripped jeans walking down the street. Is that a person you’d randomly stop so you could talk to them? It’s entirely possible that this person is a sensitive poet who’s had a bad couple of weeks and is on the way to do laundry and a shower, but are you going to test those odds?

The story actually has it worse than the afore mentioned person. If you did take the chance and stop to talk to the person, and they did turn out to be a down on their luck poet you might be able to look past the unkempt appearance. With the story though (and this is my point), the words are the story and the story is the words you use to tell it. Make sure your story is presentable.