I’m editing/revising not one, not two but about half a dozen books right now.
Writing Typos and Mistakes
My current dragon to slay is form and from. You would think I would know how to distinguish and type the right one, you really would. I’ve been typing for decades. So now I’m on hyper alert for those two mismatched words.
Sometimes to get through a book—-think of it like a hike—-some parts are pretty, some not so pretty. I use things—-mitigations—-like “So” to simply move a sentence to a paragraph to a age—-have to go back and clear that up.
Other than that I’m pretty good with word-errors.
Sentence Structure/Tricks/Repetition
I make it a point to avoid repetition of words within a sentence—-”She was enjoying the day, thinking that there wouldn't be many more days before the apocalypse.”
I would make a choice between day and days—-change word or omit one. Clumsy writing repeats itself.
He said, she said.
I just read somewhere it’s called “tagging”:. (I remember when tagging was graffiti.) But Elmore Leonard advised in a short article on writing to make the writing itself, the narrative, the dialogue strong enough, distinctive enough so that readers’ could distinguish between characters.
Bluntly, he fucked up two of my novels because I then added this bon mont to my revision work. I actually did a word search/count of how many “saids” were present in two 600+ page novels and suffice to say—-I cursed the books and perhaps Leonard.
Then I got to work.
It sounds simple, take out he said, she said. But what it requires in practice-execution is everything AROUND it must make sense now. This meant that I had to start listening to my characters and more importantly distinctly differentiate their voices, their syntax, their idioms, their accents, etc..
But in the dear departed Leonard’s masterful defense—-it made the work at least 5x better.
One, it eliminated the plodding/clodding stop-start-identify march that was created sentence after sentence. It also gave me a level of control over the characters that I hadn’t exorcised before. I now had to really design differences in them and their mannerisms. But it had to be glaring and subtle at the same time.
One way I did it with a foreign character who’d learned English from Turkish through tutors was that he didn’t use contractions—-which in turn created a semi-formality to his speech pattern—-which others could point out, especially children.
But more importantly that informed him as a character so that I could look at two other characters and have one speak more American “roughly” and a third, more educated but peppered with slang. Three “voices” found.
The second effort meant that a scene had to convey tonality because I wasn’t going to cop out at he said coldly. Now the narrative/dialogue had to convey emotion. Which meant I had to really think about how to say something, show not tell. Disgust, apprehension, revulsion, judgment. All of those emotions that would clumsily be inserted with said had to be conveyed now by surrounding actions and movements. The narrative then lent itself to pointed description rather than casual or useless or superfluous description. Which in turn meant that I had to then strip down descriptives that were just space filling.
The whole damn exercise revealed to me how clunky he said, she said is and that it was like a semi-colon in it’s needed usefulness.
This then meant that I was building chapters-scenes and really thinking about conversations and deliberately going line by line to make multi-character discussions clear, evident, sparingly described. It became a project within a project.
I just thought of “why”? to do this and it has something to do with what I often see/read—-lazy writers. By lazy I don’t mean output—-God save us from the vomitorium of writing (another revision effort I make into my work) but even when people talk about is 50k, 60k, words/characters a book—-I hate that question—-because length (pun) doesn’t matter. It’s quality of the output. But lazy/new/bad writers are playing something akin to the mimicry game (the mimicry game is where your character has a lightning bolt of his ass and no parents and goes to a magical school—-no, I have never read a Harry Potter book. And won’t. But many, many, many, too many folk have and get inspired to write and they mimic and then get stuck because writing is more, more stages, more editing, more revisions, more effort).
Lazy/new writers have been inspired by a good writer or at least a good story and they have fragments of that tale and other ideas in their head and then pour it onto paper. But what they also do is pour all of the errors, mistakes, incorrect ways of doing things that are evident in readings that are made easy.
Easy Reading
I’m going to blow your mind. Most of the most popular writers are easy to read. Think of it as Elementary, Middle, High schools and Colleges. Really popular books are about Middle School Level. Literature/Art is sort of High School and College. If it’s difficult to read, slightly impenetrable, requiring multiple readings—-that’s generally good literature partially because it doesn’t cater to the general populace/audience. By catering, I’m gonna get all teacherly here, most TV and public directions and sales info and circulars and newspapers are at about an 8th grade reading level. Mainly because there was a time when the populace wasn’t as reading savvy/learned as it is now. But less people read in a laddering/advancing way—-constantly increasing in complexity grammar, ideas, words, etc.. There are actually studies based upon economic income/a social class and educational level——the level or amount of words people use/know.
Yes, all of this goes into my revising too because I do consider when I have a unique word (shibui—-I will be using shibui somehow, somewhere) or if I have words in other languages or ideas (quantum mechanics, time travel, science), or sexuality (trans, omni, pan, etc..) that I’m pushing the intellectual envelope of my possible reading masses.
In revising I clear up too complicated or complex or I deepen stuff, aim for art—-let my intellectual freak flag fly. I push and press for broader ideas, I challenge the reader to come with me into a new way of seeing a person or the world. I press for the reader to suddenly question the character they’ve been dealing with, who might exist in both good, bad and neutral actions, and see them as a multi-dimensional human.
To the future of a project, even as I’m First draft writing, I am considering the expansiveness, and that's what good editing and revising is—-expansion—-making the book, not simply in pages, but in ideas—-bigger, better, deeper and yes, clearer.
Lazy writing is spellchecking and perhaps grammar hunting (which is important) but a work really going for the gold changes Draft to Draft. Which is why on the tutelage and advice of eon of my mentors, Raymond Federman I do 12 Drafts of every work. In some ways 12 different manuscripts. In other ways 12 different novels or ways of telling the same story. In other ways 12 advancements of the original acorn/kernel of an idea.
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Kyle Phoenix is a teacher, certified adult educator, sexologist, sex coach and sexuality educator with over two decades of intensive experience. He studied at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, New York University, and Columbia University. He has worked, consulted and taught individuals and focused professional developments for the CDC, Department of Education, Gay Men's Health Crisis, New York City Department of Health, non-profits, Fortune 500 companies and unions. He began his career facilitating on-campus workshops addressing a wide range of sexuality and sexual health issues and then moved on to teaching at universities, non-profits, private groups and clients, hosting The Kyle Phoenix Show on television and multiple online webinars, including YouTube and Sclipo and writing extensively through his blog, Special Reports, articles and other print and E books in the Kyle Phoenix Series on relationships, finance, education, spirituality and culture. He lives in New York with his family.
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