The Kindest Cuts of All - A Guide to Editing

Having exhorted you to slash and burn in a recent post, I thought it might be helpful to give you an idea of the kind of things you should be cutting when you are in editing mode.

• Take the scissors to any adverbs (or -ly word). You shouldn't use two words if one will do, so instead of sounded loudly, blared; instead of walked briskly, hurried – and so on.
• Be wary of too many adjectives. When you are writing descriptively, it is easy to fall into a pattern of phrasing: an adjective and then a noun, for example tall tree, or two adjectives and a noun – tall, green tree. You need to keep an eye on this to vary the intensity of your description, so make sure you use various combinations of adjectives and nouns and sometimes go for broke and don't use any adjectives at all.
• Anything overwritten - see above.
• Anything trite - cliches, sayings, hackneyed phrases.
• Any repetitions. If you have used a word in the previous sentence, think of a different way of saying the same thing next time around. Too much repetition suggests either a lack of vocabulary, or sloppy writing.
• Anything that doesn't ring true - if your character wouldn't say or do something, get rid of it.
• Anything you stumble over when you read your work aloud - if it doesn't flow it needs to go.

If you are as ruthless as I recommend you should be, you will probably lose a significant percentage of your work. That is a very good thing (even if it doesn't feel like it at the time). Your prose will be infinitely stronger for being more concentrated.

If in doubt, chuck it out.

Lost in Translation # 4

There's a lovely moment in Cider with Rosie, where Laurie Lee is told  wait there for the present on his first day at school and he waits, and waits, but there is no present...

I was reminded of this when we were in France over the summer. We saw this sign in a railway siding,

according to my schoolgirl French, it appears to say (though I'm sure it doesn't) stop for pudding - a welcome instruction for an engine driver, or anybody else for that matter.

My excuse for including it in my writing blog is because I love the intricacies and surprises of our own language – that is the essence of being a writer – but when it collides with another, the delights can be irresistible. Things are sometimes lost in translation, but more often than not they are found, as well.

Extended Gardening Metaphor Alert

Over the weekend, while the weather was still fine, I edited my garden. By editing, I mean sawing off whole branches of our aggressive Buddleia, cutting back leggy shrubs and unwinding bind weed, endlessly.

Slash and burn, horticultural style. By the time that we had finished, and it took the best part of a day, we could make out individual plants, see the path winding down to my little shed at the bottom, see the shed itself. Even though the garden looked shorn, it had definition. Some of our chopping seemed radical and I hope we haven't killed too many tender perennials along the way but, perhaps it was because we were doing hard physical work in the sunshine, it felt elating, and the end result was a vast improvement on how the garden looked before.

Editing is hard intellectual work. It can be hard emotional work as well, because sometimes you end up chopping out something that you really like for the sake of the story as a whole. A highly polished phrase that you spent half an hour crafting, if it slows down the action, or is out of character, or overwrought, simply has to go. You need to learn to be ruthless. Just as cutting back a rose permits new growth, so clearing the dead wood from your work will create spaces in which you can write better. And although you may end up with a pile of paragraphs (and even chapters) as big as my heap of garden waste, it can be weirdly elating: it makes you prioritise value over effort, and that's the starting point for writing well

Lies, Damned Lies, and Anton Chekhov

I watched  Imagine on the BBC the other night, Alan Yentob's reflective programme about the new memoir Salman Rushdie has written about the time he spent in enforced hiding following the Ayatollah's fatwa. The book is called Joseph Anton -- this was the pseudonym Rushdie adopted at the request of the security services who were protecting him, a fusion of the first names of Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. Which brings me, by indirect means,  to my thought for the day – a quotation from said Anton Chekhov,

"My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying."

I love the idea of writers lying, given that fiction is nothing but an extended, intricate, beautifully crafted lie. What interested me about this pearl of wisdom was the notion that most of the lying – I'm taking this to mean dishonesty, rather than invention – occurs at the beginning and end of a story, and I wondered why this might be?

I think fiction doesn't ring true, or as Chekhov would have it lies, if it loses its integrity. This happens when you include something that is expedient, or sloppy, or inconsistent, and I can see that these traps might snap shut on you more easily when you are busy with your exposition, setting things up, because it's a period of great contrivance. Once you have your story in motion everything moves more seamlessly along and I think you are less likely to make ill-advised, rash editorial decisions.

Similarly at the end of your tale, some narrative threads need tying up with a tight knot in order to get them to hold, and this can strain credibility, or disappoint, or confound - more lies, in fact.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Chekhov was right about the need to cross out beginnings and endings – they present some of the greatest challenges in creative writing, and if he found himself re-writing on occasion, you shouldn't be dismayed if you find you need to as well.

Have a great weekend...

Writing Groups - What's Not to Like??

During the last couple of days I've been moving into a new computer -- nightmare -- and for a twenty-four hour period it has felt as bad as moving house: all my metaphorical boxes are piled up just anyhow and I can't find where anything it is. However, I've done most of the unpacking and quite a lot of migrating, with the indispensable help of the people at Geek Squad (thank you agent Peter!) Probably too much information for you, but it's a kind of apology for my silence yesterday.

As a treat after all of this discombobulation I'm going to my writing group this evening. I've been working with this particular band of inspiring scribes for more than ten years now, and if you aren't already a member of a writing group, I couldn't recommend it more highly. You could try looking online to see if there is a group near you, or pop into your local library, or failing that, start one yourself. Here are some of the benefits I think you will enjoy:

• Writing is an incredibly solitary occupation; not just solitary, there are elements of obsessive compulsiveness about it too, so to meet up with people who share the same imagination/ambition/disorder can be extremely life affirming.
• It can be very difficult to find constructive help when you are starting out.  Enrolling for a creative writing course at your local college can be useful, but what writing groups give you is something more long-term than that. There's nothing to beat the fulfillment of seeing each other grow, develop and mature as writers as the years roll by.
• You get incredibly valuable feedback from a range of different people who, over time, will have come to know your weaknesses and the giddy heights that you are capable of attaining.
• Through listening to other people's efforts, you will develop your editorial skills and be able to bring a keen critical appreciation to your own work.
• Each meeting provides a fascinating, intricate and stimulating analysis of what makes writing work - who could ask for more?

Turn, Turn, Turn...

I'm up against a deadline today, so forgive me if my post is rather brief, but with a nip in the air and the summer on the turn, I thought this fascinating remark made by the inestimable Hilary Mantel in the Guardian on 16th of August might provide food for thought over the weekend.

"In every scene, even the quiet ones, I try to create turning points, so the reader knows how it's going to turn out, but the reader's expectations of how and why is constantly challenged."

This is particularly true in the field Ms Mantel has made her own, historical fiction, as generally people know what happens in the story because it has already taken place. But in any genre, the manipulation of expectation is crucial. The relationship you develop with your reader is akin to flirtation - think writer as coquette - it's a constant dance of leading them on and then confounding them.

What I found interesting about the Guardian quote was the fact that Mantel doesn't focus on one or two key turning points in the novel as a whole, she sets up small acts of subversion, or change, in every scene. No wonder her books are unputdownable.

A Timely Timon...

I went to see the National Theatre's dazzling re-imagination of Timon of Athens last weekend. Director Nicholas Hytner has worked wonders with what has traditionally been regarded as one of Shakespeare's problem plays, bringing it radically up to date by setting it in the City at the time of the financial crash. Timon's vertiginous descent from millionaire philanthropist to street dweller, the loss of confidence in his friends far greater than the loss of wealth and status, is heartrendingly portrayed by Simon Russell Beale in what many regard as the performance of his career. Deborah Findlay, playing the gender-reversed role of his faithful steward, never puts a foot wrong.

In writing terms, there was a lot to learn. It reminded me once again of  what a two-way street the creative process is: you need to be generous as an author, to allow a theatre director, or a theatre audience, or a reader to bring their own imagination and experience to bear upon your work, as that is what keeps it fresh and relevant - and how relevant and fresh this Timon was. Don't hog the act of creativity to yourself - give your readers some of the information that they need, but leave enough space for them to set to work themselves, because in that way they take possession of what you have written and it becomes special to them. Make them put two and two together, often; don't hand them four on a plate. See that they do the maths.

Another thing that Hytner's production so brilliantly achieved was to particularise the general. In locating Timon's downfall in such recognisable territory as our recent history, he made the dilemmas and challenges, the twists and turns , instantly recognisable to us, so that the process of identification was extremely easy. This is one of the most important tasks for a writer - to make your reader experience things as your protagonist does, and because of the relevance of the setting of the production, it was easy for us to suffer as Timon suffered.

Try to make your work as relevant and roomy as possible, so that it is familiar and accessible, but see if you can retain a certain creative elusiviness at the same time, to keep your reader guessing. Then pat your head and rub your tummy too!

On Crusade for Complex Characters

Time to raise the tone a bit, I think, so here goes...
I came across this little fellow in Tournus, gateway to the south of France.

                             


St Guilhem was a ninth century fighter of Saracens, and a cousin of Charlemagne.  Apparently when he died, the church bells rang of their own accord.

The reason he's here, in my creative writing blog, is that his statue perfectly illustrates the kind of contradiction which exists at the heart of most of us - we are all complex combinations of differing impulses.  In Guilhem's case, he was both pious and a warrior (sadly these two qualities often seemed to go together) and he is shown dressed for battle and for prayer, in grey and white, a split personality if ever there was one.

It's a thought to carry over into your work on characterisation.When you are bringing your protagonist to life, you might find that they quicken more readily if you search for the inherent contradiction within their natures: the career woman with her biological clock ticking, or the sadist who nurses his sick mother - you know the kind of thing. When people behave in a contradictory manner, it creates tension and tension is extremely good for writing.  Generally speaking, in life things are rarely black and white, but when you start to grow a character it might be helpful to examine the polar extremes of their personality, because from there you will be able to locate that point of intersection where the black starts to leach into the white and an interesting, subtle shade of grey (or fifty shades??) begins to emerge.

Lost in Translation # 3

In this instance, probably better if it had stayed lost!

I'm sorry, I know, I know, I just couldn't help myself...

An Alphabet of Better Writing # Z

Z is for...Zeal

Hearty, persistent endeavour!  Yes! That's what you need as a writer, almost as much as you need talent and patience.  My dictionary also includes fervour in its definition and it helps if you feel this for your story and your characters because you are going to be working with them for an awfully long time. You need zeal to start writing and to stay writing.  You need zeal to convince other people that what you have written is worth reading.  You need to zeal to pick yourself up, brush yourself down and start all over again when they tell you that it isn't. A zealot is a communicator with a burning message to deliver and this is what you, as a writer, need to be. Be zealous in your work and you can't go far wrong.