Explain, Exemplify. Translation: Cut It Out!
By Guest | April 17, 2011 |
Therese here. Today’s guest is one of the kindest and most positive authors around: Rebecca Rasmussen. Rebecca’s debut novel, The Bird Sisters, was just released five days ago, on 4/12. I adore the description of this book:
When a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds’ heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can’t, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who’ve brought them. The two sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.
But back in the summer of 1947, they knew nothing about trying to mend what had been accidentally broken. Milly was known as a great beauty with emerald eyes and Twiss was a brazen wild child who never wore a dress or did what she was told. That was the summer their golf pro father got into an accident that cost him both his swing and his charm, and their mother, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, finally admitted their hardscrabble lives wouldn’t change. It was the summer their priest, Father Rice, announced that God didn’t exist and ran off to Mexico, and a boy named Asa finally caught Milly’s eye. And, most unforgettably, it was the summer their cousin Bett came down from a town called Deadwater and changed the course of their lives forever.
Publisher’s Weekly called The Bird Sisters “Achingly authentic” and Library Journal Review gave it a starred review, saying that Rebecca’s “poetic prose creates an almost magical, wholly satisfying world.” Definitely my kind of book.
Rebecca’s here today to talk about something every writer understands: hard edits. Enjoy!
Explain, Exemplify. Translation: Cut It Out!
Right after I gave birth to my lovely daughter, who I will call Bird Daughter here in cyber space, I decided it would be a fabulous idea if I got to work on a novel, too. (Both were firsts for me.) I was sleeping only a few hours a night, smelled like spit up & milk, and was generally unrecognizable to anyone who had known me B.G.B. (before giving birth!), but I was also pretty afraid that I was about to slide down the mothering hole wherein all I would be able to talk about would be my darling daughter. What she ate: milk! When she drooled: all the time! How she gurgled & wiggled her toes when she was content: almost never!
What you need to know: I love(d) Bird Daughter.
But I love(d) myself, too, as well as the creative work I was doing before her appearance in my life. So off I marched on my first novel, which I wrote between the aforementioned feedings, droolings, and occasional toe wigglings. I was also teaching my own class and attending a few others at the University of Massachusetts where I was a graduate student in the Program for Poets and Writers, and where my husband was a student in the Classics department.
Fast-forward about seven month’s worth of stolen moments at Starbuck’s, in my car, in random hallways at school, even waiting in line at the financial aid office…
I had a draft of a novel! A novel! And impressive bags under my eyes, too! (And a darling daughter who could sit up on her own without tumbling over.)
…It was a cool spring day in late April of 2008, and I was sitting by the duck pond on campus getting ready to defend my thesis, which was called The Bird Sisters from the very first day I sat down to write it. I was wearing “professional” clothes that itched my skin and I was watching the ducks skittering across the blue-green water hoping that my committee liked birds as much as I did.
Who doesn’t like birds? I thought.
The people who run them over and don’t stop!
It turns out that everyone on my committee liked birds just fine. They simply thought there could be less of them (in a sense).
A very wise, talented, and generous writer named Noy Holland was chairing my thesis committee that spring. One of the first things she said to me was this: “Your book is very good, Rebecca. It reminds me of Housekeeping.”
The Housekeeping? I thought. By my beloved Marilynne Robinson? This is going swimmingly! I’m getting my mom to babysit later and hubby and I are celebrating! I’m going to eat Thai food and drink beer and spoon coconut ice cream!
The second thing Noy said was this: “You need to cut 100 pages.” (My manuscript was 345 double-spaced pages at the time.)
Good lord, no! What? Where? When?
“How?” I said, utterly confused. I couldn’t conceive of being able to cut that much from my novel. But I trusted Noy’s opinion and somehow knew she was right even if I didn’t understand just then. Though I admit I kept wondering where the story would go if 1/3 of it went to the recycling plant down south.
Noy showed me something completely invaluable that day. She went through several pages of my manuscript with me sentence by sentence, crossing out every third or fourth one along the way and trimming the others down.
She taught me about the trouble with constructing a story under the model of what she called “Explain, Exemplify.”
Here’s a rudimentary, out-of-context example of what she meant:
Unrevised Sentence number #1 (45 words): “On her way to drop her children off at the elementary school in town, the woman had run over a goldfinch, and her daughter had cared enough (cried enough—she was still doe-eyed and teary when they arrived) to make her do something about it.”
So in this first sentence, I explain that the daughter had cared enough to make the mother do something about the goldfinch they ran over on the way to school. And then, as if the reader won’t yet understand my meaning, I add that she cried and then I describe her teary doe eyes…
Noy’s point was that every time I did this in the novel, I bogged the story down unnecessarily. I wasn’t allowing my significant details to speak for themselves. I wasn’t trusting that the reader would “get it.” So I explained, and then gave an example to show the reader what I meant. I.e. the daughter cares for the injured bird, so she cries, and from that gesture comes the tears.
Yikes! Can anyone say redundant? Don’t get me started on the doe eyes either! Their once-existence in the novel still embarrasses me! (I blame it on being in my twenties.)
Revised Sentence number # 2 (34 words): “On her way to drop her children off at the elementary school in town, the woman had run over a goldfinch, and her daughter had cried enough to make her do something about it.”
I know what you’re thinking: 11 measly little words. But sometimes that’s the difference between good and great, unpublishable and publishable, tediousness and concision. That’s how I ended up cutting 100 pages from my manuscript and it’s also how I ended up with an agent and an editor, and very few edits to do once I signed my contract. Once Noy showed me how to take the vision for a sentence and pare it back to its most essential form, people started to say yes instead of no.
Maybe I would have learned this on my own. Maybe not.
All I know is that Noy Holland has a place on my acknowledgment page and in my heart, right along with Bird Husband and Bird Daughter, who, incidentally, wiggles her toes a lot more these days.
Thanks for the great advice and example, Rebecca! Readers, you can learn more about Rebecca and The Bird Sisters by visiting her website, her blog, and follow her on Facebook and Twitter. Write on.
Photo courtesy Flickr’s jenny8lee
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
I love this post, in one simple example you show the heart of good editing. Thanks for this.
Great post. Sorry couldn’t make comment shorter; didn’t have time… :) (apologies to Twain, Shaw & Voltaire)
Well said! I’m in the midst of doing this one one of my own manuscripts. It’s tough. Great post, Rebecca.
What a wonderful reminder – how fortunate you are to have had someone like that take you under her wing. (sorry, couldn’t help it)
I have to laugh because one of my crit partners does exactly this. I’m going to email her this post right away! She’s such a beautiful writer, and I want her to know that she CAN cut her 100 pages, just like you did! And her book will be the better for it.
Not only do I absolutely intend to fly my way over to grabbing a copy of The Bird Sisters immediately (the description above is beyond enticing!), but this post is one of those you read and immediately recognize as something you must/and will refer to often, or at least to the point of never forgetting it.
Thank you abundantly, Rebecca! I’m pretty sure I really needed this ;-)
Terrific advice! Thank you for sharing this wisdom in so clear a manner. What a wonderful gift Noy gave you. As an educator, I wondered why the technique hadn’t been shared earlier than the thesis defense level. Do you think that it would have had the same success or would students be less likely to grasp it early in their programs?
Wonderful advice! I hope I can apply it to one of stories, if I can get one of them finished. I would like to take some writing classes so that I can write better, but all the classes I see are not for creative writing? What gives?
That cover is really beautiful!
Delightful post, thank you. I do this, too, and it’s fine for the first draft, when we’re letting it flow. The key is to know what our habits are, and to be ready to seek out and cut [whatever it may be] in subsequent drafts.
Thank you so much everyone for having me here today! And for being so lovely and kind to me and my book. Happy Sunday everyone! XO
I remember how shocked I was when I was told to cut 100 pages. Great advice Rebecca and your dedication shows. I am in love with the Bird Sisters.
What a great example. I find my first draft does a lot of this. I’m not sure that I am trying to explain, or trying to apply depth. It doesn’t really matter, I am still treating my reader as though they can’t put 2 and 2 together.
This post is heartening. It can be done! Slaughter those darlings!
Thanks for this. Sometimes I think all writing is a balancing act between generosity and ruthlessness.
[…] Explain, Exemplify. Translation: Cut It Out! Rebecca shares her experience with making 100 pages of cuts to her manuscript, by sweeping away redundancies in her prose. […]
As a writer working on my first novel in between everything else life has thrown my way, it’s beyond helpful (and grounding) to see you’ve done it so successfully through “seven month’s worth of stolen moments.” Thank you for the inspiring and insightful post!
I love this kind of practical advice! Thanks so much, Rebecca, for taking the time not only to share what you have learned but to give an example.
THE BIRD SISTERS is an enchanting story told with grace and skill. Now I have a glimpse into how those feathers were preened.
Excellent advice. I had a “Noy” too. Her name was Lauri. I’ve been celebrating her on my blog all the past week, since it’s a year ago, the 15th, she passed away after a third battle with cancer. Lauri taught me how to edit my over-written prose by doing exactly what Noy did for you. I cut a 325,000 word novel down to 127,000, a book that eventually attracted an agent to offer me representation–news I was able to share with Lauri, just in the nick of time.
Rebecca, I love this. I am going to look for these kinds of sentences in my manuscript. Thank you, so much!
Great stuff; the post, the comments, the works. I define poetry as saying the most with the fewest words. Done right, it’s low word count, high impact. Well (and economically) presented. Huzzah!
My agent says, ‘cut 20,000 words’. And I say ‘waaaaaaaaahh’. But then do it. And it makes the book so much better. Grumble, grumble. I hate it and love it when he’s right :)
Every writer needs someone in her life who can tell them the truth.
Loved this, Rebecca, and thanks for the specific example.
Not only do I absolutely intend to fly my way over to grabbing a copy of The Bird Sisters immediately (the description above is beyond enticing!), but this post is one of those you read and immediately recognize as something you must/and will refer to often, or at least to the point of never forgetting it.
This an advice I read often, but I loved the way you put personal details, and the example is terrific! I think it will be easier for me to stop that kind of thing in my own works now that I’ve read this article.
Thanks xD
I cut about 20,000 words on my first novel just by doing this. It really does work! Thanks for the reminder!
[…] Explain, Exemplify. Translation: Cut It Out! – from Rebecca Rasmussen on Writer Unboxed gives great descriptive examples of show-don’t-tell. […]
11 words is still a quarter of that sentence, and a good start. It’s easy to forget that when we have to make huge cuts to our work, we can do it in bits and pieces from everywhere, rather than cutting several large chunks of text or an entire subplot, etc. (Of course, sometimes those cuts might be necessary, depending on how they function in the story.)
I’m still learning this skill. I’m too wordy, especially in the first half of my stories, but I am getting better at axing words. At least I write SF and fantasy, where longer novels are acceptable!
Timely post! I cut 30,000 words off my 56,000 WIP for a contracted novella and still have 6,000 more to go! I thought I caught all the redundancies, but hopefully I can dig deeper and find the excess.
[…] with this lesson about good cutting techniques from The Bird Sisters author Rebecca Rasmussen at Writer Unboxe…She talks about having to cut 100 pages from her 345 page novel (Eek, myself!) and how she cut it by […]
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