I’ve been thinking a lot about the past decade. Look for a post later today.
How was the last decade for you?
It’s Getting Silly Around Here & Revision Tip 23
The Creature With Fangs Elfed yesterday.
My Beloved Husband Elfed yesterday.
Queen Louise Elfed yesterday.
And I did, too.
A most merry time, indeed!
Revision Tip #23
I rarely have the image systems of my books in mind when I start writing. But by the end of the first or second draft, some image (symbol for Eng lit majors) has cropped up and I realize that I can riff on that symbol throughout the book to tell the larger story. In a subtle way, I hope.
In SPEAK, it was the image of the tree. There was only one mention of it in the early drafts. When I realized the power of it, I wrote in all the art class scenes, and made the tree into a year-long project for her.
WINTERGIRLS was interesting. The first paragraph of the first draft of the book was this:
"The crows stalk me, wings folded neatly behind them, hungry yellow weighing my soft spots. They circle around me once, twice, three times, claws scarring the stone floor of the church.
I curl up on the frozen altar. They flutter close, black feathers filling my mouth and eyes and ears."
I really don’t know where that came from; I just wrote it down, plus a bunch of other stuff. The reference to the "frozen altar" is what got me thinking about ancient religions and mythology, which in turn led me to ponder if there was a mythological story within Lia’s story. Ofcourse there was: the story of Persephone. That became a central image system for the book, with references to pomegranate seeds and the death that is winter, along with mother/goddess figure at her wits end, trying to pull her daughter back from the grasp of hell.
(For the record – that opening paragraph wound up migrating to page 264. It fits much better there.)
Is there a small detail in your draft that could be expanded into a central image system?
The care and feeding of julenisse & Revision Tip #22
All work in the Forest today will grind to a halt as we enjoy the ceremonial viewing of Elf. And we might even make spaghetti with maple syrup.
I got to thinking about my family’s tradition of setting out rice pudding for the julenisse. Nisse have been around long before Christmas celebrations. English words that describe them as elves, or gnomes; I’ve seen "pixie," too. If properly cared for, nisse will watch out for your farm animals, your house, and your barn. If you don’t take care of them, they will cause all kinds of mischief on your property.
Nisse are low-maintenance creatures. All they require is a bowl of rice pudding (risengrød) set outside your door or in your barn on Christmas Eve. We’ve always done this faithfully and I think our nisse appreciate it.
But as the sun was setting yesterday and I was lighting candles in honor of the solstice I realized that the nisse have been around a lot longer than Christmas celebrations. Ack! Have I been disrespecting the nisse all these years? They are ancient creatures… do they wait, forlorn, on the night of the winter solstice, their tummies grumbling, while the Big People go about their ignorant business? And when the pudding FINALLY shows up on Christmas Eve, do they call up the other nisse and complain?
So last night I put out rice pudding for them. And I will again on Christmas Eve. You can’t be too careful with nisse.
Revision Tip #22
Are you sure that you’ve chosen the right point of view for your novel?
Take your favorite chapter and rewrite from a different POV; shift from third to first, or first to third, or if you are bold and way smarter than me, experiment with the second person POV.
Or…. (and…..) fool around with the tense structure. If your story is told in present tense, rewrite that favorite chapter in past tense. If you’ve written the whole thing in past tense, try out that chapter in present tense.
What’s the point of all this mucking around? It helps you see your characters and the Story from a slightly altered perspective.
Two Tips In One Day!
Good Solstice, everyone!
I feel like calling your main character Rudolph today. (Humor me.)
Revision Tip #20
Don’t make it too easy on Rudolph.
Your story should not be a tale of the desires of Rudolph. It should be the thwarted desires of Rudolph up until the very end, when finally, FINALLY, things go right, tho’ not in the way he originally thought they would.
For every desire, there should be an obstacle. Every step on the path leads to another detour.
Review your manuscript and make sure that poor Rudolph runs into obstacles over and over again. You fiend.
Revision Tip #21
1. Record yourself reading your manuscript aloud. The whole thing.
2. Listen to it with your manuscript in front of you (I am most comfortable with the printed-out version at this point.)
3. Pause whenever necessary to make notes on what needs fixing. This is when I find repeated words, awkward phrases and dropped plot points.
4. After a marathon listening session, go back in and finish all the repair work.
Revision Tip #19
Beware of echoes and doppelgängers!
Maybe I am the only writer in the world who suffers from this bad habit. It makes me crazy. I do it in every blasted book, no matter how hard I try to be aware of it early in the process and avoid it.
I always create characters that are identical, both in their core characteristics and the purpose they serve in the book.
(I may have mentioned this earlier this month, but it is such a big pain in my writing butt, I must rant about it again.)
I spent all day yesterday and the wee hours of this morning extracting one of those characters from my book, and turning over many of his scenes to a different fellow who – I can now see with the blazing clarity of humiliating hindsight – should have been driving those scenes in the first place.
It was a bloodbath, I tell you.
How can you perform this radical surgery in your manuscript?
1. List all the characters.
2. Define – using only a few words – that character’s relationship to the main character.
Examples: comic foil, trusted friend, villain, complication, love interest.
3. If (like me) you have two or more characters that serve the same purpose, get out a magnifying glass and sharpen your scythe. Is it possible to have one of the characters take over scenes from the others?
Example: in the early draft of SPEAK, the character who is now called Heather was two separate girls. Each girl was a “sort of” friend of Melinda for a few months. Each friendship died. Their personalities were a bit different, but not in a strong enough way to affect Melinda’s interactions with them. By melding them together, the story was cleaner.
I am crossing my fingers that the work I am doing this weekend will have the same effect.