My Editing Process

I’ve started to edit MAGIC STUD.  Probably should have waited a few more weeks, but I want to get it completely finished.  The editing is the next phase, and each book project has been different.  In my last one, I had to do passes over the entire book just for repetitions and idioms (it was a historical–yes, I looked up each idiom to verify it was correct for the date of the book).

For this one, the process looks like this so far:

1. Printed the entire book.  While I generally will do a lot of editing on the screen, there’s a point where it’ll help to be on paper.  That way, if I don’t feel like getting on the computer, I can still go through a few chapters.

2.  Supplies consist of a binder to put the book in and a red pen, or another color like purple or green.  As long as the color is visible.  If a correction is in black, it’s easy to miss against the black text.

3.   As I go through and make changes, I try to use proofreader’s mark (so I can build good habits), and I write the change in the margin.  So if I delete a couple of words, I’ll write “Delete” in the margin.  I did some copy editing, and this helped a lot.

My focus areas are:

Subplots.   I had a lot of trouble with these in this book, so I’m paying extra attention to these.  I’m adding one in that helps tie together a couple of elements and making sure the second one is developed adequately.

Fixing problems with one of the characters.  He doesn’t have a big role in the book, but his role is not developed enough.  I’ve had so much trouble with him that I wondered if I could solve it by taking him out, but that would create one of those unanswered questions as to why he wasn’t in the book!

I thought I would be having to do an omniscient viewpoint check–make sure I don’t have any viewpoint errors or head hopping.  But it looks pretty solid.  If I were writing in the more traditional third person, I think I’d have to be looking for viewpoint errors.   I find omniscient so much easier to write in!

There’s also some minor editing.  Shortening sentences, fixing places where I’ve used the same unusual word a couple paragraphs apart, finding repetitions, sections that aren’t needed.  Everything is on a case by case basis.

Researching Other Locations

I’ve been to my real-life setting in my next book, but it’s been many years since I was there.    So one of the things I did was subscribe via RSS Feed to the local news.  The town itself doesn’t have a local newspaper, so I went up a level and subscribed to the one in San Luis Obispo.  This is a great way to see events that are typical of the area, and those are things that could be filtered into the story itself.

However, if you’re trying this with Washington, DC, then subscribe to the main news.  This area doesn’t have local news.  So much so that when I got out of the army, they told us that we would experience culture shock at seeing local news in the newspapers!

News Voyager gives a list of all the newspapers in the United States.

The Setting for My Next Book

The setting for my next novel is Morro Bay, California, which I’ve found described as a “quirky fishing village” (I don’t know–can anything in California be called a village?).  The Morro Bay Photography Gallery features some excellent photos, including the famous landmark Morro Rock.  When the pet rock craze swept the country, Morro Bay boasted that they had their own “pet rock” in Morro Rock.

Check out the photos of the waves from one of the storms.  Because of the location of the town, they can get pretty hard during hurricanes.  One year, the hurricanes completely washed out one of the beaches–a dredge had to be brought in to pump the sand back to the beach.

Making Research Easier

I’ve been checking out books from the library for research for an upcoming project.   Whenever I run across something I think I might use, I record it in my research notebook (a spiral bound notebook with an index in the back).    Since the library has an online catalog, I print the entry for the book, which includes all the author information, date it was published, library call number,and the library name.  I cut it down and tape it in with the research notes.

I also use the library entry to copy and paste the book name into my information sheet’s research section.  Some of the titles can be quite long (non-fiction books always seem to have a short main title and then a long subtitle), so this makes it a lot easier.  I just use Paste Special>Unformatted to clear out any Web site formatting.

Magic Stud is Done!

I just typed “The End” on the book.   It’s done.

Now it’ll sit while I do the outline and possibly a fast first draft of the next one, so when I return to it for an editing pass, I’ll have a fresh eye.  Still some things to fix, but they’re relatively minor.  The most important thing is being DONE.

Describing Characters?

A hot topic among writers is whether to describe characters or not.  A lot of writers say not to describe the characters, to let the reader imagine them.

I’m always a little disappointed when a writer doesn’t bother to describe the characters.  Mind you, I’m not looking for a detailed vital statistic description of everything possible in the character’s appearance.  One or two sentences might be enough if they’re the right sentences.

And I don’t think it necessarily needs to an actual visual description–hair and eye color and whatnot.  I was in a description workshop, and I think I drove them crazy because I wasn’t describing things visually.   I actually wanted to expand beyond that because there are so many interesting things that can be done.  Here’s a few:

Description by dialogue:  I’ve seen this done a couple of times.  In one of Sue Grafton’s books, a hairdresser gives Kinsey a hard time for hair that looks like rear end of a dog.  In a J.A. Konrath book, the description was, well, quite shocking.  Well written, but it made me go “Eew!”

Through story development:  In a lot of urban fantasies, the character’s appearance comes into play as part of the story.  In the Riley Jensen series, she’s part of the rare red werewolves; in Darkfever, the main character ends up having to dye her hair because the bad guys can identify her.

Through impression:  This is what I’ve been using from MAGIC STUD.  It comes from some of the thrillers I’ve read, and it’s not a vital description statistic, but an impression of the person.  It’s great with an omniscient narrator because I can have a lot of fun with it.  I have a character who gives the outer impression of being a fluffball (see title of book), and he’s actually an extremely dangerous assassin.

What are some other non-traditional ways of describing characters?

Making Deadlines

Check out Uber-Late Manuscripts to see what happens when an author doesn’t finish the book on time.  Yikes!  It ripples out to a lot of places and ultimately affects sales.   I’ve seen writers who want to get a book published, but don’t give it any kind of priority.  I have a relative who wants to write a Clancy-style thriller, but it’s never gotten very far because he hasn’t made writing it very important.

I’ve been trying to find ways to make the process simpler, so I can get from beginning to end faster.  I wrote my first draft of MAGIC STUD in 30 days, but I’ve spent almost two years revising it, and I need to do better.  Right now, I’m finishing up an outline workshop, and I’m trying the first step on my idea for the next project, SAND DOLLAR MAGIC.  It’s to write a synopsis of the book, with the beginning, middle, and end.

This is a lot different than I would normally do.  For MAGIC STUD, I wrote the query letter sumary (since changed), nailing down the what makes it special aspect, which I also did for SAND DOLLAR MAGIC.  Then, with only that, I wrote the first draft, not sure who the bad guy was or what the ending was.  At least other than “fight on an island.”

For SAND DOLLAR MAGIC, the hardest part of the synopsis has been identifying the ending.  Not just “fight on Black Hill” but showing how the story is resolved.  In anything I’ve written, the ending has always beeen sort of vague–even the short stories started out that way, and I would botch the ending and have to revise.  So I’m hoping to streamline that process by nailing it down up front and doing less revision in the writing stage.

Novel Running Too Short

Over all the books I’ve written, I have a tendency to run too short and always have to write up (while still editing down).  Just about every piece of writing advice assumes you’re going to be writing too much and have to cut it.  Right now, I’m hovering at 65-68K (keeps going up and down) as I add in the subplots.  I’d like to get it to 80K.  These are the most common things people have told me in relation to this problem:

• I wish I had that problem! 
• Just add more subplots
• Maybe that’s the length the story needs  
• Maybe the story isn’t big enough for a novel. 

All of which adds to up to everyone saying essentially, “Sorry, you’re out of luck!”  And there’s not a lot on the Internet on the topic, besides adding more subplots, so I thought this was worth doing.  Sometimes knowing the reasons why helps solve the problem.

So some reasons to think about:

Writing it like a long short story.  This is the first thing that tripped me up.  I used to write short stories, and I thought of a novel as a long short story.  About 100 pages, it fizzled out.  I made it worse by thinking of chapters as individual short stories, because that kept me in the short story mindset.  The two forms of writing are very different, and I had to start thinking novel (that was a whole lot harder than it sounds!).

Not enough description/narrative.  I’ve seen people who talk about doing bare bones, like lots of dialogue and have to go back in and fill with narrative.  My own special challenge with this one was that since I used to be a short story writer I tend to not do as much narrative as someone used to longer fiction.  I’ve had to both work on adding more to the narrative, and at the same time make sure it’s important.  On MAGIC STUD, I’ve caught myself a number of times explaining what was said in the dialogue, owing probably to trying to bring up the word count.

Weak Subplots.  This is me.  I’ve had a great deal of difficulty with subplots, in part because I’m plot-driven and most of the discussion on subplots leans more towards character-driven.  I still had them in the story, because they did naturally filter in, but I didn’t realize it because I kept thinking of the character-driven ones.  So they were under developed.  A red flag was when I wrote the query, and it just didn’t feel right.  Turned out was because paragraph 1 was plot.  Paragraph 2 was the subplot.  They’re so well-connected that it wasn’t obvious to me.

Not filling in the details and asking why.  This is the one I just discovered.  Even with an outline, I tend to want to just jump in and write and add things in as I go along.  That’s one of the reasons I crossed fantasy off my list as a genre and went with urban fantasy–I would have had to do too much world building, and I just don’t have the patience for it.  Unfortunately, where it also popped is that I would include something important in my story like a war, make up some details on the spot for it, and move on.  I’d add more details as I brought it back later in the story.  But what I didn’t do is fill in all the blanks and answer all the questions needed about it.  So I lose opportunities for building on those things.  All I’ve been doing over the last few months is chasing these down.  I came up with a problem at the end where I didn’t know where it was going to go.  That led to the fact I had never answered why the magic device had been hidden in this particular location.  Always ask why and answer it!

Please feel free to post your own insights into why writing comes out too short!

Deep Third

Alice Rasley has a nice blog entry on So When Shouldn’t You Use Deep Third?  If you’ve heard the term Deep POV mentioned around, have a look at this blog for a clear explanation on it.  I’ve seen some others talk about it, but they just list rules on what to do and now I wonder if those who talked about it actually understood it.

But this statement in particular struck home for me:

Deep POV is now trendy, and it’s appropriate for many types of stories, and also for our highly interactive culture. However, it’s only one of several POV approaches, and it’s not right for every genre, every book, and every author.

Alicia’s points about Deep POV (or even perhaps any type of POV) not being right for every author is true.  When I first started MAGIC STUD, it was in third person.  I’d always written in third, but this time, it felt really wrong for the story.  Given that my other choice appeared to be first–given just about all urban fantasies are written in first–I tried that.  Boy, if third didn’t fit, first was downright terrible.  It managed to bring out the worst elements of the story.  So I tried omniscient on a hunch, and that hit the spot.  It not only suited the story, but gave me something that I didn’t know had been missing in my writing.

Deep POV for my story?  That would have been scarier than first, and first was pretty scary!

Organizing Research for a Novel

Once I went into revision for MAGIC STUD, I realized that the organization system that I’d really liked during the first draft fell apart once I started rearranging chapters.  I’d borrowed an idea from David Fryxell’s book Write Faster, Write Better.  He’d buy file folders and label one for each chapter.  This was great for me because a lot of my research is compartmentalized–it applies to a specific chapter, not to the entire book.  So all I needed to do was drop the copies in the corresponding folder.

Of course, once the revision started, I rearranged of chapters.  Chapter 33 just moved into the Chapter 19 slot.  So suddenly all those nice, organized folders turned into chaos!  Nothing I had in the folders matched any of the chapters.  I ended up taking out all the research and putting it into one folder. 

So I’m back to looking for another method to tame the research.  A lot of writers use the three ring binder method, but I find this a turn off.  Three ring binders tend to be heavy, even the smallest ones.   The AIW Writer’s Conference used to give out small three ring binders containing conference materials, and it was hard to carry around all day.   What’s a bigger one going to do at a library where I’m also checking out hardbacks?

I also heard a writer at ThrillerFest talk about using a database (sorry, I don’t have the Web site of the database).  It sounded like an interesting idea until I thought about when I’d created files of computer research and then forgot they were there!

So I’m looking at possibly using The Advantages of Keeping an Analog Work Journal as an all purpose resource.   This was particularly interesting:

The real power is the index I create in the back. It’s simply a list of major meetings, events, diagrams, and conclusions and their corresponding page numbers. I use key phrases so that if the subject comes up again I place a coma after the page of the first entry and add the additional page number. This is my “quick search” feature for the analog journal.

I can keep multiple research subjects in one book and have it indexed in the back.   I can use a spiral notebook, which I can get a good price on during the Back to School sales.

How do you organize your research?