Love Every Word
By Jeanne Kisacky | April 6, 2014 |
Everyone who writes likely has a favorite book (or a hundred). And within those favorite books are favorite passages. My most often-revisited books fall open to specific pages, the ‘good parts’–those which hit an emotional high, or which spark a resonance within me, or even those that had me so completely enraptured in their literary spell that I forgot myself. I have re-read those passages so many times that they have become a part of my writerly being, and the best I can hope as a writer is that someday, someone’s well-loved copy of my book will fall open to a certain page.
Those ‘good parts’ provide important lessons. I am currently revising a project that has been in progress for more than a decade. I have set it aside for years at a time, unable to find the secret magic that would make it what I believed it should be. But this time around, I finally feel like I’ve found the work’s soul. The magic secret was to set only one clear goal in editing–to treat every passage, every sentence, every word, as a ‘good part.’ This requires looking at the work from the ‘inside,’ not the ‘outside.’
In prior attempts to revise this work, I had edited it with various specific goals in mind, all of which had to do with the work as seen from the outside. I was editing to reduce its scale or simplify the overall structure in order to make it ‘acceptable.’ This editing approach was the product of fear and uncertainty. The first (admittedly bloated and awful) draft was roughly 300,000 words. I cut it down to 220,000 and sent it to rather shocked beta readers. I cut some more. I watched other writers’ reactions when I mentioned it was down to 200,000 words, and I became focused on length. I was looking at the work as a product, something to be fit into a package. And it wasn’t fitting. I tried to make it fit, by breaking it into two volumes. But then there was no satisfactory ending to part one. I tried streamlining the plot, cutting characters, but the story lost its heart.
Now, I am doing what I should have done from the beginning. I am not thinking about word count, about cutting the work into a number of independently marketable parts, or about publishing rules/trends/standards. I am simply trying to make the work as long as it needs to be to tell the story. No more. No less.
To do that, I have to sit down, every day, and think about the writing from the inside out. I have to focus on what exactly, the story is about, not what kind of package it will fit. (And here is where I want to give a big shout out to Lisa Cron, Donald Maass, and the WU community for constantly reminding all of us that story is the center of stories.) The words, the sentences, the passages, the chapters that don’t have a role in that central story need to go. No matter how evocative, or joyful. If it’s an enjoyable but irrelevant minor character, if it’s a lot of detail that doesn’t help the main story trajectory, if it’s beautiful description that goes on too long, if it’s a lot of fun banter that does not communicate anything meaningful, it needs to meet the proverbial red pen (or in modern terms, the delete button). In the most loved passages of my favorite works, there is nothing unnecessary. This is something important to remember.
Editing the work in this manner has made me look at every single part of the work as a ‘good part.’ Of course my work has chapters that I think are much better than others–more emotionally resonant, better paced. While I might look forward to editing the ‘good parts,’ focusing on how every passage relates to story proves that there can be no ‘not so good’ parts. If I avoid editing a chapter because it is ‘not so good’ then it means my job is not done. My current goal is to edit the book until there are no scenes which I do not look forward to editing. It’s not that every passage has to offer an emotional high, or fast-paced action, or nail-biting tension (although all of those are good). It’s that every passage has to have a reason to be there, and it has to be as loved, by me, its author, as a ‘good part.’
[pullquote]Each chapter has to live and breathe as if it had a life of its own, because it’s that life that draws any reader on.[/pullquote]
Each chapter has to live and breathe as if it had a life of its own, because it’s that life that draws any reader on. There can be no servile chapters, none that simply get the job done. If a chapter serves only to get the reader from plot point A to point B, because B is really where it’s happening, no one is going to make it past point A. Have you ever read a book that had a great beginning or a great climactic moment or a great romantic scene, but you just don’t remember all the details of how the characters got from opening to conclusion? Have you ever been reading a book for the first time, and found yourself ‘skipping ahead’ to get to the part that was more interesting or which mattered?
Every scene can and should be a favorite scene–a ‘good part.’ Think about it. If there is a passage in your work that you skip over, or that you avoid getting around to editing, then what do you think a reader will experience in it?
Make every passage in your work a ‘good part.’ Love every word. Every sentence, paragraph, chapter, and part. And if you do, then maybe your book will become one of those dog-eared volumes that doesn’t fall open to just one passage, or two, but one of those volumes which has been re-read so many times, in its entirety, that it is falling to pieces.
Do you love every word?
Do you find yourself struggling to work on the ‘not-so-good’ parts, when they need the most attention?
Illustration generated by using the FUN and addictive app at https://www.neoformix.com/Projects/WordHearts/index.html
Jeanne Kisacky trained to be an architect before going back to her first love–writing. She studied the history of architecture, has written and published nonfiction, and has taught college courses. She is the author of Rise of the Modern Hospital: An Architectural History of Health and Healing, 1870-1940.
I used to work with a cowriter, and he focused on the sentence level, not on the story. He was a marketer in his other job, but he didn’t understand marketing in terms of storm. He would fret about sentences, that if we used this word it wouldn’t be marketable to our audience or the agents. Always a tweak to a sentence to “fix” it, while ignoring bigger story problems.
I think the guessing game of “what will an agent take,” has a lot of us second guessing ourselves, and a lot of writing advice seems to feed on that. I regularly see articles in Writer’s Digest that are “10 Things to Make Your Story Sell,” and it focuses on sentences and not story. These make writers feel good because they feel like they’re doing something important to the story, but they’re robbing the story of what makes it what it is. A year or so ago, I threw out most of the writing advice and focused more on trusting my process. I know how to write, but all the how-to advice is a constant stream of “You’re just doing it wrong, so here’s how to fix it.”
But it’s tough call when it comes to “Is it necessary?” because so much is out there that implies that if X is in your story, it’s unnecessary, period. Description gets a really bad rap because I always hear writers saying, “Description is boring. Get rid of it.” And instead of fixing the problem — which may be that it wasn’t anchored enough in the story — the writer simply edits it out.
Linda,
I agree that focusing just on words, without a guide against which to measure their contribution to the work, is a loss of time. I did a lot of that.
What I was hoping to say with this work was that I now have a clear idea of the story–what the main conflict is, and what needs to stay central in all of the description, plot, action, etc. I have a sentence taped to my wall that is the core of the story. Every passage I edit is compared to that. If it plays a role in forwarding that core sentence, it stays, if it doesn’t, it goes.
Without that larger picture–the core of the story. Editing is just pushing words around.
So maybe it should be ‘love every word’ that contributes to the central story?
“In the most loved passages of my favorite works, there is nothing unnecessary. This is something important to remember.”
I love this, Jeanne, and this reminder is coming at an important time for me as well. And eeee! I’m excited you are working on your story!
Thanks Kathleen!
When I struggle through the ‘not-so-good’ parts, I take a break from writing the story and instead review my stories plot outlines.
Really, I am searching for something that can bring back up the pacing of the piece (for me ‘not-so-good’ is code for ‘slow-paced’).
Definitely ‘not-so-good’ is code for ‘slow-paced.’
With me, when there was a passage I didn’t want to revisit, it meant there was something that really needed fixing. Slow-paced, wandering, stilted, . . . you get the idea. I think if we as writers paid attention to when we are bored with our own work, editing would be far more straightforward.
Love that, Jeanne, and this whole post. Distance makes the task of weeding out uncritical words, phrases, scenes, chapters and characters easier. I’m so glad you’re working through your manuscript with the benefit of time between drafts, and with this new mantra firmly in mind; it’s a great one. Ready to w00t for you!
Therese, thanks. It means a lot coming from someone who I know has given so much to making the work the best it can be.
To me, loving every word means being in the present when I write, which is the best place to be. I strive to make every word of every sentence count. In the end there are usually paragraphs or scenes that I’m still not completely satisfied with, but I know I did my best and it’s finally time to move on.
That’s quite the project you’ve undertaken. When I edit, it’s usually to add content.
Being present when writing is a huge plus, making every word of every sentence count is exactly what I mean. I’m definitely a pruner, but I know lots of writers who start out sparse and then add more layers. Both have benefits and drawbacks.
“…loving every word means being in the present when I write…”
A wonderful way to put the state when you are the story, the words flow, and when you look at it later, it all works.
Great post Jeanne and so timely for me.
I am in the middle of editing my book and in fact am in the middle of a scene that’s soon going to be nuked en masse :-(.
I love your point about keeping the central idea of the story in focus while editing. It not only makes the edits easier, but also helps with overall coherency and build-up. And you are so right about the fact that if I myself can’t love every word in the book, how will anyone else? Though the flip side of it is that we are often advised to “kill our darlings” in the story. An advice that I recently followed, with a broken heart, by deleting a favorite scene, even though it was funny and pithy and fast paced. Yet fast paced not towards the overall direction of the story!!!!!! (Though I use the word delete here loosely as delete for me means moving it from the MS to a “deleted scenes document”…. Just in case I need it later, though the just in case moment has never arrived for any of the previously moved scenes).
Thank you for the timely post.
Glad to hear you are happily revising. By this point, there’s far more of my book on the cutting room floor than there is still in it. I miss the darlings, but they weren’t contributing. However, I know from other writers that those loved but cut scenes can come in handy as lagniappes on a website. Or can even spark entire new stories.
I’ve had my share of those – passages you keep editing over and over but they still never seem quite right. And finally you realize that the section doesn’t need further rewriting – it’s gotten as good as it is going to get – rather, there’s something wrong with it on a more fundamental level. Now I know what it means when I feel that uncertainty and discomfort in my gut – that maybe it’s time to question whether those sentences or paragraphs or chapters I’ve been laboring over even belong there in the first place.
I ache every time I cut out one of the loved passages, but then after it’s gone, when I read the revised passage, it’s like a newly clean house. There’s something pleasing about the clarity. So maybe recognizing the need to clean house is at least halfway of the journey. Good luck on your work.
An extraordinary post. I’ve made a similar journey. I started with a gigantic story with endless interwoven plot lines. I finally realized the huge tome wasn’t what mattered, but instead the individual stories. It took years to break it apart and “reimagine” it all, but now I’ve small stories that aren’t full of waste and instead focus on what matters.
Hooray that you managed to figure out what it needed and to separate it into the different pieces. It is so hard to see the bigger picture when facing the words, but that’s usually what solves the problem.
“I am simply trying to make the work as long as it needs to be to tell the story. No more. No less.”
Props from a fellow long manuscript writer, Jeanne! This was the perfect thing for me to read today. I’ve been allowing myself to get twisted up about stuff that doesn’t matter. Story is all. Thank you!
Hey Vaughn. You and I definitely need to write the book on how to work on long-term projects! Or maybe how to figure out how to work on shorter projects. Glad this helped you stay focused.
I love the point you make about taking note of the passages or parts of our stories that we tend to skip or avoid when it comes time to work (or simply read). That has happened to me before, and I usually come to my senses a few pages later realizing that I’d skipped working on a section.
Before I automatically assume the section is in bad shape, I tell myself it’s time to take a break. Then, I return to that skipped part, but refreshed. I can make a more objective decision that way, but usually, I do find that it needs, at least, a bit of tinkering.
Excellent strategy to take the break and then come back to it. It’s passages like that though that almost always turn out to be the ones that need the most love.
Thanks Jeanne, I agree, I think we get so carried away with trying to fit a market or take well meaning advice from this person and that person that our stories end up suffering for it.
I listened to an online panel from the cast of The Blacklist this week and something that James Spader (Reddington) said really resonated with me.
He was asked what he thought of all the social media buzz that was happening with his role in the series and he kind of shrugged. Then he went on to explain that when he studies for a role he immerses himself in the character. He ignores all that hype and just concentrates on what makes that person that he’s portraying tick.
Maybe this is something we need to do with our MC, delve into their minds and create that ‘moment’ of perfection. I hope one day to achieve this, and then I’ll know, I’m a writer. :)
I think focusing on knowing the main character is critical. In fact figuring out what my story was about was really a matter of figuring out what the main character’s true struggle. It wasn’t the events around him, it was what he was going to do about them and how he had to change to do that. It’s so hard to ignore the flashing lights though, and get distracted.
Good points, thank you for reminding me! When I was editing my (recently “finished”) novel, I discovered that when I came across paragraphs, scenes, sentences or words that seemed a bit awkward, most often the solution was to get rid of those passages altogether. I got a 160,000 word manuscript down to 145,000, got rid of some characters and merged others, and then I realized that if I was going to cut any more, I was going to destroy what I thought was its strength.
It’s still too long for a debut author (hence my frustration when I read novels of a similar length by established authors which could easily be a third shorter), so recently I decided to cut it in two parts. I rewrote part 1 so it could work as a novel on its own, but… I don’t know. I don’t want to be buried under a pile of form rejections just because of wordcount. The problem with form rejections is that they don’t help at all, apart from developing a thick skin. Is it just too long for a debut novel, or is there another problem?
I’m once again inclined to stand by my long manuscript, especially after reading your article :-) My gut feeling tells me that the long version is the right one, the story I wanted to tell, and the story that I think is worth reading (and my critical betareaders agree).
Yes, you have to love your beta readers as much as you love every word. Listen to them. Especially if you trust that they are giving good critical and helpful feedback. In the end, regardless of word count, until I started this latest revision, the book WAS way too long. I have cut out so much that was fun, but which took away from the main story. So I would say, instead of rearranging for outside limits (word counts, unpublished author) go with your gut as a writer, particularly if you have done due diligence in revising out the nonessential parts and cutting anything more feels like it hurts rather than helps the story.
This seems to be a process for some of us: the huge interconnected novel.
Pride’s Children started out a a single story – but is writing itself as a trilogy, and I couldn’t be happier.
I keep close at hand Maass’ The Fire in Fiction – and find myself consulting my own little worksheet for Chapter 3, Scenes That Can’t Be Cut, oh, just about every scene.
So either the scene passes the test – or, rarely, it goes: he also says somewhere that there’s a reason you put the scene in there when planning – and finding the reason is as necessary a part of the process as writing the scene.
Works for me.
Alicia
That’s an excellent resource for staying focused on keeping only what is necessary and loving what you keep!
Brilliant post, love it! Especially “Every scene can and should be a favorite scene–a ‘good part.’ Think about it. If there is a passage in your work that you skip over, or that you avoid getting around to editing, then what do you think a reader will experience in it?” So true! Every writer should print this out and reread it at least once a week.
Thanks Lisa! I can’t tell you how much your own work helped me to figure out how to find the focus of the story. Otherwise I would never have gotten to this point.
“Everything single part is the good part.” A refreshing angle. Good advice to focus on what’s important to the story rather than word count. Thanks!
Shelley, I think focusing on word count almost killed my story. It’s got a role to play, but it shouldn’t be the main influence.
This post is really relevant to me, as I’m in the throes of editing a wip that’s too long. So – There right now, doing that, when will I have earned the T-shirt?
It’s not just too long from the POV of publishing, but the set-up is, the author is on holiday in a caravan with her laptop, and each chapter is one day’s typing of her remeniscenses – so it has to be humanly possible for someone who types about the same speed as me to have actually written it in less than 3 weeks – why do I set myself these challenges?!
I have a file into which I’ve cut and pasted a whole load of “dead darlings”. Some of them are just me showing off, some of them are reflections that I’ve decided the readers can and should be doing for themselves. I like the idea that every passage should be “a good part” – though it’s easier said than done.
But then, what isn’t.
I shall stop now and get back to it …
Maybe we should have an “I survived a huge first draft” t-shirt club? The award goes to the person with the largest file of murdered darlings. Good luck on making the structure of your story work for you rather than the other way around.
I so agree. What’s the point if we don’t love every word, love every character, love everything we write? My clue always is, if I don’t, that means I stopped following my creative process and have written what I think I should be writing, not what I am passionate about.
Thank you. I love what you have written.
Excellent post! Will share on Facebook. Great reminders.
Love every word. I love it! What a credo for revising.
I’m so glad I read this post today! And if anyone’s a candidate for the “I survived a huge first draft” club, I reckon it might be me :)
Actually, I’m still wrangling with that huge first draft, and have been editing for word count. It does sometimes give me a wee bit of a kick to see the numbers ticking down – painfully slowly – by x thousands.
But at the same time, my gut has been screaming at me that it is the story that counts, not the number of words – and that eventually made the editing a chore instead of a pleasure.
So I decided to listen to my gut. The first half of the monster has been tamed, and I have to say almost all of that half feels like a ‘good bit’ now because while a great heap of words ended up on the cutting room floor, I was no longer afraid to add words to a scene if the addition improved what was there. I was confident I could always find a few hundred words of fluff and filler elsewhere that would compensate for the new additions bumping the count back up again.
Thanks for the post – I’ll get back to it now, keeping firmly in mind that every bit should be the good bit, and I’ll do whatever is necessary to make the second half the good bits too!
Piper,
I have been appalled by the amount of fluff and filler I found in my own writing when I started paying more attention. So glad you have found the key to keeping the focus.
And you hit the nail on the head for the other hidden cost of the “huge first draft” club. It takes sooooo long to get through a full edit.
I just went through the editing process with my debut book, CRAZY, and I can SO appreciate everything you said. Thanks for the post!L
Linda,
Thanks for the kind words, and congrats on getting from draft to debut!
Eerily, this is exactly what I’m up against in my new draft! Such good advice!
This sounds like the year you’re going to finish not one but two long-term projects. So exciting, Jeanne! (It also gives me hope.)
This is such excellent and kind advice. Thank you.