Q&A: changing directions, minding the gap
By Therese Walsh | December 27, 2010 |
I’ve been crazed lately as I finish the draft of my second novel, but I’m happy to be here today to answer questions from Bree and Allison_I.write.horror.
Bree asked: Say you are midway through your first draft when you realize that a major story element needs to be changed. You could keep writing until the draft is finished and then change things in the second draft. Or you could stop, back up and rewrite what you have so far. What do you do? Why do you make that choice?
For me there’s only one way to go. Stop. Revise. Then continue.
Why? Because it’s only after story is put into the hands of our characters throughout the actual writing process—not the imagined writing process—that the story progresses authentically.
Let me beef that idea up a bit.
Major story elements are foundational; they are the goals, motivations, conflicts, and turning points that lie at the heart of our work and propel it forward. Some people might be able to make a note on a major story change and keep going (e.g. “Hero has actually been with the party all along and not alone in Minnetonka. Revise later.”), but I’ve found time and again that the story won’t unfold properly until and unless it’s written. Really written. This is because characters and story often evolve past a concept or plot point in a way I didn’t anticipate, and that changes what will follow in the manuscript.
For example, maybe a character tells me they’re not going to act like X; they’re going straight for Y. Maybe they tell me fine, they’ll act like X but they’re going to have to say something about Z, which isn’t something I wanted them to address for another two chapters, but I realize if I muzzle them I disrespect that character’s personality. Maybe a secret is revealed—to me, the writer—that changes the way I view the character, or the way the characters respond to one another in future scenes.
I won’t know until I write it.
All that said, I absolutely will leave myself a note (or two hundred) about small-scale story adjustments to consider as I work through a draft. Making every one of those changes as I progress would be crazy making–especially since I’ll change my mind about at least half of them by the time I reach The End.
Allison asked: How do you learn to ‘hold your horses’ and adjust to how long it takes from writing a MS to seeing it in book form? How do we, in other words, ‘mind the gap’ between the time we’d LIKE it to take, and how long it actually takes?
(Ray and I both tackled this question, with slightly different angles.)
The time it takes between beginning a manuscript, writing those first words, and seeing it in print can feel like an eternity. If I’d known, back in 2002, that it would be seven years before I’d see The Last Will of Moira Leahy in print—and that I’d completely rewrite the story one-and-a-half times—I might very well have quit. We all know it takes time to write a quality draft. It takes time to revise that draft. It takes time to edit it until it’s smooth and silky.
But I think you might be asking about the gap of time between finishing a story, turning it in to an editor, and then seeing it appear in book form. What can help here is understanding the myriad steps involved in creating a book that are entirely out of the author’s control.
First, your story is one of many sitting on an editor’s desk. Your editor needs time to read your story, process it, read your revisions, make other suggestions. The in-house marketing and publicity teams need time to understand what your book is about in order to formulate the best approach for reaching out to others, like reviewers, booksellers, and magazine editors. The art department requires time to digest the scope and themes of your book, and to create several compelling cover ideas.
In the meanwhile, the author needs to be a contributing member of the publication team. He/she will need to respond when the editor has questions or asks for revisions, when the copy editor makes notes and requires clarifications, and when the marketing and publicity departments ask for information about the book and you–its author–so that they can best do their job.
Lots of people are involved in making a book, and I think if you take it all in—the big wide world of creating a work of words that is saleable, and not just creating words on loose sheets of paper that you can print out at home and hand to your sister—everything comes into better focus.
As for that gap, once you have an appreciation for it—why it’s there, necessary, how it helps you and your book in the long run—you can fill it with worthwhile ventures. Build your website. Get to know your local booksellers and other authors in your area. Take a set of professional author photos. Establish your presence on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Learn what you can about the industry with great books like Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees.
And most important of all: Write your next draft.
Readers, how would you have responded to Bree and Allison? (And psst, the next time you hear from me here, hopefully I’ll have finished MY draft. I am the slowest and broodiest writer in the universe, I swear it.)
Photos courtesy Flickr’s (¯`¤.TheSnake.¤´¯)
and Writertopia!
Therese Walsh (she/her) co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006 and is the site’s editorial director. She was the editor of WU’s only book, Author in Progress, and runs the Writer Unboxed UnConference.
Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, received starred reviews and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot.
Learn more about Therese on her website, and sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to hear about any new projects.
Excellent post.
I’m the same way with revisions. Major– change it now. Minor– make a note for later.
98% done? Woot! Go you. :)
Great Post.
I agree with making the big changes as you go and with making notes to change the little ones later. I recently went through my minor notes. It was fun to tie up the loose ends. Now I’m minding the gap.
Congrats on being 98% finished with your second novel!
I have to make those changes as I go because I’m afraid I’ll miss some elements during edits, and there goes the continuity. Minor things, or research, I can just add a note — like: what plants grow here? but it it’s part of the plot, I need everything to flow.
Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery
Love the comments you made about listening to your characters and not muzzling them. I’ve written two novels and had a minor experience with it in the first but in the second had a major realization when I heard the character speaking to me and it completely changed the direction of the novel and story I was telling. It’s nice to know that other authors hear their characters too.
Another agree, here. I find that if I stop to make small changes, I will completely lose momentum, and that’s very difficult to pick up again. So one of the key skills a writer needs to develop is understanding the difference between a major do-it-now change, and a minor it-can-wait change. Because if you accidentally stop for the latter, it might be a while before you get the show back on the road again. (At least it is for me!)
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The time between submitting a contracted book and celebrating the release can be quite busy. First, after a cleansing break, the writer should begin the next project. Then the editor may ask for revisions on the submitted book, which can take weeks or even months. There is work to be done on the cover art and, sometimes, the title and back blurb. Once the revised version is approved, the author may receive a line-edited version, where changes are made to sentence structure, word choice and other details requiring the author’s approval. Finally, a “galley” copy of the book may go to the author for a final read-through to catch errors. In the midst of all this work, the author can be planning how to publicize their work and building buzz.
Adding these tasks to the events of Real Life, I always find enough to do while waiting for the book release.
What a cute progress meter. And go-go-go, Therese! you can do eet. (Though if it came to a “broodiest” challenge, I think I’d be a contender.)
By the way, love the new little name tags at the bottom of the posts. You guys are always making tweaks and changes, and I appreciate it.
My thoughts exactly, Therese! Notes for minor revisions, actually go back and re-write from scratch for major ones. And you know, I actually like the delay between when I hand in a book to my editor and when I see it out there in print. Makes it much easier to detach from it a bit and let it go off into the world.
Good luck on finishing the draft!! Go you, that’s excellent that the finish line is in sight!
totally agree – go back and fix it because fixing that plot string now will save a lot of trouble lata. been there/done that! never again. as far as the time gap, start in the present and don’t worry that far into the possible future. nothing ever happens like you imagine it will.
Ah, how I love the gaps! I can let go for a while and just breathe. I can take a break from my characters, but most importantly, they can take a break from me. ;>
Thanks for comments, everyone, and welcome to new commenters. I’m surprised to see such a consensus for fixing the big stuff, but I’m glad.
Joshua said:
Those moments of author-epiphany via writing are a special sort of magic for me. They fuel the process, and sometimes are exactly what I need to recommit to my characters.
Jan, glad you like the new cool-box plug-in. I’ll shape them up for all contributors this week. Pictures are supposed to appear, too–a jpg in the lower right of the box–but I can’t seem to figure that out…
As for my progress: I went beyond 90k and entered the it-ends-when-it-ends zone. :-)
And for those of you currently minding the gap, hang in there.
Thanks for such a thoughtful answer to my question! It sounds like that gap time could be exciting if your work was in the right hands. I had feared my question was un-answerable, but you really gave a patient explanatiion.
90K ?! I’ve been patting myself on the back for passing the 60K mark; you go Therese! and I hope you reward yourself when you finish the draft.
Hi Allison, my pleasure! And as for what I said about “creating words on loose sheets of paper that you can print out at home and hand to your sister” — I do that, too. A lot. Best of luck with your work, and thanks for the cheer. Getting close… :-)
That’s very interesting. I just went through this with my WIP, and I didn’t start over until I’d completely written through the set of revisions I was currently on. I don’t know if it’s obsessive/compulsive, but I need to bring a draft to its completion before I change it again. If I abandon and return to the beginning it leaves too many wrinkles for me to iron out. That said, new plot lines cast dark shadows over revisions I think I’ll abandon, so it makes the process a bit painful.
Welcome to my madness.
Nothing much to add, really, except thanks. Such an interesting post and discussion. I, too, must do the big stuff now and save little stuff for later. I keep a document of the little stuff, like notes and questions, and I try to keep it in order so I can go through the draft and add it easily later on.
I generally like to write straight through the first draft, but if big changes occur to me I have to make them as I go. Otherwise continuity problems are a major headache during revisions. I keep an open document on hand for character names and descriptions, but I also add story notes right into the ms, preceded by “jkjkjk” so that I can find them with a search later.
Thanks for an interesting post!
Re-write before the 1st draft – for sure – if a problem is noted in the plot. Saves valuable time from chasing story-lines to nowhere.
Painful, yes. Profitable, more so.
Great ideas Therese — and congratulations on the writing milestone!
I have to make the big changes as I go, mostly because if I can’t “see” it, then I can’t write it. If I can’t envision what I’m writing — because a character or plot arc is too cloudy — then I can’t move on. Sometimes that means making little changes along the way too, so I might just beat you out on the “slowest, broodiest writer” category!