All the King’s Editors–Heather Webb
By Heather Webb | May 24, 2018 |
Welcome back to All the King’s Editors, our regular feature in which one of Writer Unboxed’s stable of editors line-edits a few pages that has been 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. If so, feel free to join in the discussion at the end, but above all, be kind.
Reims, France 1790
Her Grandmere’s gnarled knuckles engulf my fingers as she counts out each stair carved into the chalk crayere, one hundred and thirty-nine steps, not one more, or one less.[1] The strong fishy smell of whale oil burning in her Quinquet makes me sneeze and for a moment the flame dims and all goes black. [2] , mMy bare toes curl into the cold stone for balance. Then the wick flickers back to life and she tugs me forward.
“I know it’s you, Barbe-Nicole. It has to be you.” Grandmere mumbles in the silence, her opaque eyes glassy and determined.[3] White gold waves blanket her frail shoulders and reach down to her round middle.[4]
Why must it be me? [5] My insides squirm like a nest of baby mice, terrified Maman will hear us and lock Grandmere in her room again. When she woke me, ancient wrinkles accentuated by the light of her smoking lamp, she clapped her hand over my mouth before I could squawk, and wrapped me in a robe[6]. I didn’t don’t think about slippers, so terrified and thrilled, as I sneaking past my parent’s suite, through our cavernous Ponsardin Hotel, while the rest of the household slumbered.[7] Maman warned me to stay away from her mother Grandmere,; Grandmere she hadn’t been herself the past year[8].
But the spark in her bright eyes lit a portal to the past,; her fantastical stories of Marie Antoinette, her midnight sojourns through the crayeres, her constant testing of my inherited talent, as she called it. Even if Maman was is right, and she Grandmere has had lost her marbles, she willwould always be my Grandmere, the one who believes I am special.[9]
As we reach the bottom of the cavern, smells of oak barrels swollen with wine fuses with the chalk and the green smell fragrance of moss which covers the wine bottles like a blanket [10]. The ancient smell permeates my nose, enervating my sinuses, clearing away my sleepy fog. Goosebumps prickle across my chest and my toes curl into the chalk floor, like a mountain lion ready to spring[11].
Grandmere sets the Quintet on the rough-hewn table, the flame flickering on clusters of grapes she’s lined up, [like before, purple nosegays of sunshine, rain and soil] [12]. I search her wizened face for a clue, but there is no hint in her clouded eyes. She ties a blindfold around my head and nerve-endlings sting inside my nostrils. I sneeze again, cringing.
“Don’t peek.” Her voice sounds as brittle as the nuns at St. Pierre les-Dames.
“You think I’m cheating?” I lift the blindfold and Grandmere pulls it back down.
She places a small cluster of grapes in my hands and brings it to my nose. The vibrant smell of sun and earth and fruit dances a quadrille on my senses.
“Pear and vanilla,” I say. “And touches of Hawthorne?”
She huffs and replaces it with another bunch.
Opening my mouth, I draw the aroma into the top of my palate, smoky like a gypsy campfire.
“Grilled toast and coffee.”
Her soft harrumph means she’s pleased with my answer. The next grapes she hands me are sticky and soft.
“Chocolate cherries, but I’m cheating, now. I can tell by touch they are Pinot Noir from the south slope where we picked yesterday.”
Notes:
- There’s a lot that’s working in this piece–lovely descriptions, intrigue, and it opens with action. It’s got a sense of foreboding and great tone. I’m also immediately interested because I’m a sucker for stories set in France–and I also happen to be working on a book, myself, about a parfumeur. Score!
- Sensual description is a great way to build a world and to create evocative imagery, but be careful. Too many phrases and sentences of this sort of description–particularly in an opening, but at any time, really–can feel like purple prose. I don’t believe this piece shows purple prose, but there are a couple of places where adjectives or descriptors could be pruned to make way for a stronger sentence, and, more importantly, a clearer image.
- Opening lines should be grabby and succinct and above all, clear. It’s legit to start mid-action for sure, but if a writer chooses this format, it needs to be clear who is doing the action. You also typically want to lead with the protagonist, not a secondary character. I do believe this line could be stronger.
- Though I quite like the premise and the angle of this opening–the grandmother stealing her granddaughter away in the middle of the night to teach her forbidden things–I would have liked to see the actual hand over mouth, pulling the girl from bed, heart-thumping, as they descend into the cellar.
- Overall, this is a strong sample that just needs some tightening here and there, and a little care with tense and pronouns.
[1] In general, I recommend against opening a book with pronouns instead of names, proper nouns of some kind, or even nouns referring to people (the man, the little girl, etc.). It makes it difficult for the reader to discern what’s happening and to whom, as well as in whom we should place our loyalty (the protag). The other issue I’m having, is there is an “as” clause which sets up two actions happening at once–and we don’t even know who these people are. Also, do the number of steps matter that much to the characters or plot? It’s a bit convoluted.
[2] Too many adjectives in a row. I’ve also added “the flame dims” for clarity. I had to reread those two sentences to see what you were getting at. You don’t want to give your reader any reason to reread or be jarred from what is happening.
[3-4] Just tightening to keep the pace moving swiftly and fluidly
[5] My addition isn’t necessary but it does add nice clarity as well as a heightened sense of tension
[6] This sentence is a little cluttered with too many clauses. I think it’s the description of the wrinkled face and lamp that are throwing the sentence off. Also, I think a modified version of this action/sentence would make a terrific opening hook!!! Maybe try an opening line that’s something like this: A hand clapped over my mouth and my eyes flew open in the dark. From there, you could build the tension beautifully as it would be more immediate and urgent, and it would be much clearer what is happening. As written, this bit about the stealing from bed reads more like “backstory”.
[7] I eliminated “so terrified and excited” because it threw off the grammatical balance of the sentence and again, cluttered it. Also, it’s “telling” us how she feels rather than “showing” us through her body language. You already mention squirming insides and being terrified two sentences before. If you want to reemphasize that here, give her a pounding pulse or racing heart, etc.
[8] Cleaned up some pronoun confusion
[9] Most of this paragraph is written in the past tense as backstory. To make it more immediate, it should be in present tense. Again, it dials up the tension considerably and puts the reader more directly in scene.
[10] Moss covering the wine bottles is a nice detail, but this last clause is giving the sentence a run-on feel. I’ve clipped it for pacing. You could rework this to include the detail, certainly. Also, you’ve used “blanketed” in the first paragraph to describe Grandmere’s hair. Repetitive
[11] We’ve seen toes curling into the floor in the first paragraph. Repetitive
[12] This blue text is confusing and doesn’t seem to go with the rest of the sentence. Did she line up other grapes and and soil and these other things? In other words, her Grandmere has tested her on many different scents before? Clarify
Thoughts to share? The floor is yours.
Heather Webb is the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of historical fiction. As a freelance editor and an adjunct in a MFA in Creative Writing program, Heather has helped many writers sign with agents and go on to sell at market. When not writing, she feeds her cookbook addiction, geeks out on history and pop culture, and looks for excuses to head to the other side of the world. To date, her books have been translated to seventeen languages.
Intriguing launch into story (especially the hint of menace and abundance of sensory detail) and perceptive editing (especially the pruning of descriptors and standardization of tense).
I would replace “lost her marbles” with language more in keeping with the style established so far. American slang sounds out of place in this setting.
Good catch, Anna! I agree completely. I’ve just fixed the formatting of this post as well (it went haywire internally) so thanks for reading it anyway!
Anna, I would second your comment on “lost her marbles.” Anachronisms can damage something good by throwing the writer’s knowledge of time and place into doubt. The movie version is often illustrated by “Hercules,” in which the breast-plated son of Zeus was filmed wearing a watch.
I agree, depending on how far out of time we’re talking about. If in a medieval novel someone picks up a sandwich, I’ll take serious issue with it, but in some instances, I find the History Police can be persnickety and lose sight of what our aim is as authors–to tell a damn good story.
Very intriguing opening! I was expecting the girl’s talent to be classic magic, it’s very refreshing that she can “read” the wine from the grapes.
If I may, I’m a total language nerd and French is my native tongue. I wasn’t there in 1790, but even so, I’d go with the more generally known French spelling of the words used. Grandmere is written Grand-mère or maybe even Grand’mère if you must give it this Old French feel. We would also write St-Pierre-les-Dames, all hyphenated.
This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves, I hope I’m not being too obnoxious. Google’s an awesome tool, but I find language to be too subtle an art to put all my trust in the interweb. ;)
Also, quinquet doesn’t require a capital letter, it’s just a common oil lamp, not a proper name. (Pardon my Hermione complex here. *smiles shyly*)
All good input, Veronic. Thanks for stopping by.
Try reading the passage without the edits. The difference is small but significant, from “promising” to “polished”. The unedited version would keep us reading.
The edited version would get an immediate request from anyone at my agency. That includes me. Grand-mere hasn’t lost her marbles, after all! That deft turnabout shows an author entirely in control of the reader’s experience.
Nice writing–and expert editing. Great example of the arts.
Woohoo! Great news for the writer of this piece. Give this baby some polish and maybe it’ll wind up on a happy agent’s desk. And thanks for the compliment, Don. :D I always enjoy your comments.
Definitely a strong edit of a strong story.
I do think opening with the hand on the narrator’s mouth would be more compelling, as long as the next lines stopped it from heading too fast into thriller territory.
An excellent observation, Ken. I agree. We don’t want this historical to go into thriller territory, but it’s lovely to see the writer has a firm grip on pace. Thanks for your comments!
The opening lines were overwhelming for me, couldn’t get past them. Disclaimer: I’m ESL and i’m not used to see those words crowded together (gnarled, chalk crayere…)
Forcing myself to read again, I liked the rest of the piece. Good job!
I agree with you that the opening lines were a bit convoluted as well, but with some pruning and reworking could great. And as you said, the rest of the piece was engaging! Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Heather:
I second each remark about both the promising nature of the text before editing and the clear improvement with your review.
I’d like to second as well your comment about wanting a bit more orientation at the outset by taking just a step back in time and showing the grandmother waking the narrator in the middle of the night. Although I agree that throwing the reader into the middle of the action can be powerful, it can also be confusing if it’s unclear what exactly we’re in the middle of, and I was a bit lost at first.
The great challenge of beginnings, especially in this Age of Impatience, is to orient the reader sufficiently so they’re intrigued but not confused, and begin the action as quickly as possible. It’s a challenging problem.
By and large I think this piece does a good job of meeting that challenge, but by submerging so much detail in reflection in the third paragraph, we lose the immediacy that present-time reportage would have provided.
As you suggest, if we could follow the narrator moment by moment through the being wakened by a hand over the mouth, seeing the grandmother’s face so close lit only by candlelight, putting on the robe, the rejection of slippers, the creeping past the parents’ room and some brief description of the setting beyond “our cavernous Ponsardin Hotel,” I think that grounding would allow the reader to feel the emotional impact of this suspenseful moment — with no loss of action. Right now I’m getting a lot of information but I’m not really feeling as much as I think the scene can potentially deliver.
Great job, on both your part and the writer’s.
Thank you, David, for your comments. I liked what you said about the challenge of getting right to the action:
“The great challenge of beginnings, especially in this Age of Impatience, is to orient the reader sufficiently so they’re intrigued but not confused, and begin the action as quickly as possible. It’s a challenging problem.”
How true this is. I’m wrestling with this in my own work in progress at the moment. It’s a character story set in the past so it’s essential I have proper world-building, but I’m finding the pacing and tension to be an issue as I begin my revision process. A sure sign either the character’s goals and subsequent stakes aren’t apparent or high enough. As you said, we don’t have much time to grab–and maintain–a reader’s attention. I suppose I’d better get crackin’!
“Even if . . . Grandmere has lost her marbles, she will always be my Grandmere, the one who believes I am special.” I love the way that line so neatly summarizes the way each character feels about the other. It also intrigues me: does it foreshadow the complications and conflict that will result from their relationship? Well done.
It’s a lovely reflection, isn’t it? And I do love plenty of foreshadowing as well. She’s done quite well there.
I love historical fiction – but I would have stopped reading at that first paragraph. Why? I was hit with two words that were unfamiliar and one of which I feel was not defined in context. I have a great vocabulary- but I don’t know French. When I am hit by something like this smack at the beginning, it strikes me as the writer showing off or being pretentious and immediately turns me off on the writing. Yes – I figured out what the lamp was. But the crayere- I actually from the prose felt they were sneaking up somewhere rather than down. It’s not till we were in the wine cellar that looking back I figured out what was meant. Maybe “chalk” would tip off people who already know about wine cellars in France – but not the average person.
I typically will give a book a page or two to see if I am drawn in – but a bad first paragraph will also make me put it down immediately.