4: Tell Me a Story

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to edit that bad boy of a manuscript you have in front of you". That first novel draft, article, dramatic play, or epic poem is daring you to go back to it, to preen and pick its overgrown hedges, to find all its flaws and throw them into the dumpster. Of course the draft is shivering with excitement at the prospect of finally being edited, but unfortunately, you--the writer--have never felt less motivated.

Editing can be a daunting process. When you’re flushing out a story for the first time, the words flood onto the page like water gushing from an open dam. The characters are new, fresh and you may feel that every word, metaphor, and phrase is the pinnacle of brilliance. When you finish writing, you put down your pen as a rush of satisfaction bursts through you. You take a sip of your coffee or tea while staring into space with a bemused smile at having finally discovered your hidden Hemingway.

But then you look at what you’ve written again and suddenly the words aren’t golden, but closer to a greenish-tinged copper. What happened? Did the words move around while you weren’t looking like the creepy gnomes on your neighbor’s lawn? Why is this plot point missing if it’s so essential? Where did all these typos come from? HOW CAN THIS BE HAPPENING?!

Don’t panic! Remember that because it’s your first draft, second draft, third draft, even tenth draft, the writing might still demand a lot of work. Therefore, you need to edit. Most authors, from Tolstoy to Capote, have admitted to editing their work tirelessly and sometimes with drastic alterations, cutting and tweaking every word possible before finishing their masterpieces.

I don’t know about you, but I actually like editing. I find it just as satisfying to comb through my writing five, ten, even twenty times as I do to write the story. So here are some tips I can offer to make editing easier and if not a more doable process, than at least a more appealing one.

1. Kill your babies.

2. Ever heard this one? I have. So many times. It was what my writing teachers bored into my head from the age of fourteen. Though my first impression of it was: that’s terrible, I soon realized that it was necessary. That gorgeous, flowing, witty sentence that runs on for half a page? Maybe it’s time to cut it. I recently cut an entire page of “baby” out of my novel because I realized that it was only a second, weaker introduction to the book which I had already introduced a few pages earlier. Cut them. Don’t look back. (Not in real-life, only in fiction.)

3. What’s a better word?

4. Check your thesaurus. Or even better: how would this particular character say it? They usually know best.

5. Most importantly: Tell me a story.

6. When getting bogged down in the finer finesse of writing, it can be easy to forget that your ultimate goal is to tell a story. So tell it! Make it interesting, engaging, intriguing, riveting-- all the synonyms. How I do this (to myself, in front of my computer, at my dining room-desk) is by reading it out loud. I read everything out loud because only then can I hear how the words sound, feel them in my mouth, and test them out as if they were real until they are real. For thousands of years, humans passed down stories solely by word-of-mouth so remember that how a story sounds out loud is still extremely important because the better it sounds spoken, the better it will sound when read.

#editing #Tolstoy #Writingtips #Writing #drafts #story