All the King’s Editors — Dave King
By Dave King | January 16, 2018 |
Welcome back to All the King’s Editors, our regular feature — more or less twice a month — in which one of Writer Unboxed’s stable of editors line-edits a few pages that one of you has submitted. This gives you a chance to see editing advice applied in its natural habitat.
If you’d like to contribute a sample to be edited, click HERE for instructions. Remember, editing is as much art as science, and your take on the passage may differ from mine. If so, feel free to join in the discussion at the end.
I hate sirens. E, especially at night., Whenever I hear one, slicing through the silence like, sharp as a scalpel. Whenever I hear the screech of an ambulance, I make the sign of the cross. My mother taught me that. “It’s a silent prayer,” she my mother always said. I can’t help but always wonder what awful event the ambulance is rushing toward, triggered a frantic call to 911 and if my prayer made a difference.
But, I’m shaking too much at the moment to make the sign of the cross. Because tonight, I’m the eventand right now, the gesture feels pathetic, inadequate. [1]
I look down at the red stream of blood. It’s life itself. My heart might explode with fear, with regret, with grief.
The EMT speaks urgently over the radio. “BP eighty over sixty80/60 [2]; pulse one-twenty120.” The EMT speaking so urgently into the radio is wearing a His nametag. I can’t make out what it says, even though I’m close enough to clearly see the letters. They just don’t come together into words. That can’t be good.reads “Aiden Strauss.”
The other EMT, the one working to stop the blood flowing from the wound in my belly, [3] is older, I think. B, but maybe it’s just the shaved head. I watch his every move as he inserts a needle for an IV, connects a bag, and thumps the line to make sure the clear liquid is flowing. My teeth chatter uncontrollably.
“This should help,” he says, his expression flat, serious. I think he‘s trying says it as much to assure himself as much that he’s doing his job well as to comfort me. It’s not working. He’s really not doing either.
Aiden again announces over the radio “Seventy over fifty,70/50.” the younger guy says. I want to tell him that can’t be right; it’s too low, but my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. Tthe words refuse to form.
The bald one stands, then lurches as the ambulance makes a sharp left.; h He’s too tall for this tiny box careening down the street. The ambulance makes a sharp left turn and he lurches forward. Righting himself, he pulls a zippered bag from the crowded shelves, tears it quickly opens it, [4] and grabs something. He’s on autopilot, working from muscle memory. But this is my first time.
I expect him to pull out an ampule of something, anything to stop the hemorrhaging, but he’s ripping open packages of gauze sponges. —tTo soak up the blood that won’t stop flowing, dripping on the floor, a gruesome marker of the crucial window of time that’s closing.[5]
Jesus! No! I wish I could make the sign of the cross. I’m not ready for this. I’ll never be ready.
“Tell me wWhat . . . you’re doing.” I’ve found my voice, but it’s so weak., I don’t recognize it as my own. I’m helpless, at the mercy of their medical knowledge and good judgment. [6]
The two of them exchange a look that makes my throat constrict and my silent tears turn into convulsive sobs.
Aiden The young guy opens the Plexiglas partition and shouts, to the driver. “ETA?” I had forgottenn’t even thought about the person behind the wheel, who’ was just as responsible for our wellbeing. A woman’s voice comes across loud and clear,
“Less than ten.” A woman’s voice.
Aiden Young guy places his hand on mine. “We’ll be there soon.” Bald guy is still sopping up blood.
I feel faint. I take a desperate, shaky breath and try to distract myself by focusing on my surroundings. It smells like a hospital—antiseptic—a preview of what’s to come.
I mumble a fervent prayer that I make it won’t be robbed of this precious life before we get to St David’s. My fingers are icy cold, my breathing shallow. A black mist that I can’t stop seeps into my brain.
and sSeconds before my eyes close, Aidenyoung guy’s voice cuts through the mist. “65/45Sixty-five over forty-five.”
Notes:
Most of the changes I’ve made have been to control the pace so that it focuses readers more intently on your two key moments – the discovery that the narrator is bleeding out in an ambulance, and the moment he or she passes out. So I’ve compressed the first paragraph a bit to get to the revelation more quickly, then tightened things up a bit through the middle, after the revelation is out, when you want to keep things moving forward.
I also wanted to adjust the way the narrator’s state of mind develops. For most of the piece, you create an effective contrast between the focus on mundane details – the EMT’s baldness, the smell of antisceptic — and the seriousness of the situation. But the sudden explosive prayer mid-scene seemed out of keeping with this contrast. It might work if the panic kept increasing after the prayer, but the narrator seems to settle back into a less panicked state of mind, paying attention to the driver’s gender. Besides, I think you can make a greater impact if you keep your writing understated. This is a case where less is more.
One final note: I took this piece because I had a chance to bring some unique personal experience to the editing. Ten years ago next September, I had a heart attack that literally stopped my heart halfway across the front yard, while they were wheeling me to the ambulance. The paramedics got me restarted twice on the way to the hospital, so I know what it feels like to be at that point where your brain isn’t getting quite enough oxygen. That’s where the failure to read the nametag came from.
Specifics:
- You want to make the transition from the setup to the payoff suddenly, catching your readers by surprise. Don’t linger on the sign of the cross.
- And once you’ve made the reveal, get straight to what’s happening in the ambulance — the blood pressure reading is nicely dramatic. Also, given that you later start a sentence with a BP reading, it seemed less complicated to write the numbers out from the beginning.
- Once you’re past the reveal, you can give the blood more impact by tucking it into a subordinate clause.
- Right now, you want strong verbs rather than weak verbs propped up by adverbs.
- No need to embellish the blood. It’s shocking enough as it is.
- Given the narrator’s inability to talk earlier, this seemed a bit too articulate. Also, we can see that he or she is helpless.
[coffee]
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
Dave, it’s strange how some stories come out in present tense vs. past. This one feels off in present tense because the narrator is losing a lot of blood and probably losing consciousness. So unless she is going to die and narrate from her spirit’s POV, it would be better to tell the story in the traditional past tense. There is an automatic assumption that whatever hell she’s been through, she’s survived it.
The story flows better with your edits. It’s so instructive to see this. Thank you.
And how scary that you were so close to death. I’m glad you made it. It is really amazing what doctors can do sometimes.
Great job, Dave. I like how you added in thoughts from your own firsthand experience for the author’s consideration. Who knows, the author may have had a similar experience that inspired this opening, but your inclusion inspires us to bring all relevant “insider” detail to the page, whether from our own experiences or our research. Along with the concision and more active prose, that detail makes the passage much more involving. And…so glad you pulled through and lived to share your writing wisdom with us!
Dave, I like what you did here. Moves the action along nicely, and gives clarity to what is happening. I too am glad you survived your heart attack.
I agree with Vijaya that past tense works better, for the reasons she gives.
Your edits go far to tighten up the action and the character’s perceptions, which in this situation flit through his or her awareness without being slowed down by too much reflection.
Blood pressures in the original, expressed in figures, were too clinical and distant; spelling them out makes them immediate and almost audible as part of the dialogue.
As for the blood, I would restore “flowing,” stop there, and delete “dripping on the floor.” Our character can’t see the faces and actions of the EMTs while at the same time watching the floor for blood drips. He or she would get a sore neck to add to the belly wounds.
Dave, so glad you survived. I always enjoy your posts.
I hadn’t picked up on the clinical nature of the numbers, though I think you’re right. Another good reason to go with words.
As to blood dripping on the floor, I would think the narrator could see the blood going over the edge of the gurney — they are pretty narrow. And the image is more specific than simple “flowing.”
Dave–I take any opportunity I get at Writer Unboxed to make the case for why professional editing isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. This fine example of what a true pro can do demonstrates that point. The same applies to David Corbett’s recent, first post in this series.
I am curious to know whether you have any misgivings about a first-person narrator who’s bleeding out telling us about it in the present tense. Vijaya raises a similar question. Maybe I’m too literal-minded, but when I read something like this, I question the tense and POV choices the writer has made.
Thanks again for moving forward with a great new offering at WU.
A couple of you have mentioned some possible problems with writing this scene in the present tense. I wasn’t bothered by it, especially since it adds so much immediacy to what is already a dramatic situation.
Vijaya is right that writing the scene in the present tense creates a presumption that the narrator will survive. But surely the narrator’s survival isn’t the only dramatic question that can drive readers forward. There’s also the question of how he or she got to this point, how the near-death experience will affect him or her. And I’d hope that, in this short scene, the narrator has impressed readers enough that they’ll want to keep reading just to find out what happened next.
I can also see several scenarios in which the narrator’s survival remains up in the air. One is that this is a flash-forward prologue, and that the next chapter will start two weeks before this scene and show what led to this point. Another is that the narrator of this chapter will not be the narrator for the remainder of the book — that we are seeing a dramatic death here, and the rest of the book will be about how that death affects other characters.
One thing this definitely underscores, though, is the need to know the whole story before you begin editing. If I had known the next scene would be of this narrator waking up in the hospital, I might not have been as tolerant of the present tense. How a given scene plays out is so dependent on where it fits in the story, who the characters are, and who the characters will be that editing it in isolation is like a doctor diagnosing a patient without being able to take a medical history.
And thanks for the well wishes. The heart attack was the result of one blood clot in the wrong place — my cardiologist said I was the healthiest heart attack he’d ever seen. And thanks to regular exercise that comes from living in the country, my heart is performing within the normal range. There was probably some long-term damage, but my cardiologist says I should never notice it’s there.
Agreed that you really need to know the whole story before editing. It isn’t difficult to tighten and clarify a narrative, but if it’s heading in the wrong direction and you, the editor, don’t know it, edits could exacerbate rather than solve narrative issues. Nice work, I’m looking forward to my turn as a King’s editor.
Hi Dave,
I love watching the editing process and agree you’ve done a great job of tightening the action and pacing this piece.
But concerning the discussions that this is written in first-person, present tense I looked back at the writer’s original work. Isn’t it possible the narrator is not the person on the gurney bleeding out but rather someone or some being watching the drama unfold?
I look forward to more of All the King’s Edits in the future.
Wila, you are either prescient or you know the author of the piece.
The author did contact me privately to thank me and give me some more background on the piece. It turns out that the person bleeding on the gurney is, in fact, the daughter of the narrator. She is riding to the hospital with her daughter. This is, in fact, a flash-forward prologue, and the author doesn’t reveal the daughter’s presence until later in the story.
The reason I assumed that the narrator must be the bleeder is that, if there were a fourth person in the back of the ambulance, why didn’t the narrator ever focus attention on her? A real mother riding with a daughter who was bleeding out would be noticing her condition, trying to talk to her, thinking about their life together, something that would indicate that the daughter was there. Hiding the daughter’s presence does set up a future surprise, but at the expense of a plausible point of view. And even without the mother-daughter relationship, I didn’t find it plausible that the narrator could watch the drama unfold without actually noticing the person on the gurney.
Again, though, this shows just why it’s so important to know the entire story before you begin editing.
Dave,
A friend once told me these are her three favorite little words and I sent them twice to you.
You are right and, you are right!
Dave,
A friend once told me these were her three favorite little words and I send them twice to you.
You are right, and you are right!
You have an excellent editor’s mind. That is why I chose to work with you. I hope to hear from you in a few months.
Well, thanks. And I look forward to it.
(Nudge. You already have my manuscript. I’m waiting for your notes.)
Wow, this really makes me want to work with an editor. It’s amazing how much you’ve polished up the original prose and pacing. It really sings now.
Here’s the thing. When I get into an editing problem — like the narrator not paying attention to the fourth person in the ambulance — those problems go to live in my subconscious, and answers pop out at the oddest times.
So . . . while I was getting a bath tonight, it occurred to me that, perhaps the mother didn’t notice her daughter bleeding on the gurney because she couldn’t. The author would need to build it into her character that, when faced with harsh truths, she habitually focuses her attention elsewhere — like at the actions of the EMT’s or the smell of the ambulance. It would be tricky to establish this character trait, but it could be done. And the prologue above could remain as written (give or take the tightening), and the author could preserve the surprise reveal that it is the daughter bleeding out.