By Adele Annesi

Word for Words is by author Adele Annesi. For Adele's website, visit Adele Annesi.
Showing posts with label Revising Short Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revising Short Fiction. Show all posts

Monday, December 2, 2013

When Stories Talk Back: How Flash Helps Writers Revise


Sometimes a story tells you what it’s about; you just have to be listening.
 
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece of flash fiction. As I advise my students, I let the piece sit before revising it. Also, as I advise people, I went to a different venue to reread the work before tinkering with it. I suggest this because it’s surprising how much you’ll see in your writing when you read it somewhere else. It’s also surprising, especially in flash, how changing a word can change the story.
 
Before I changed any words, I opened a new Word document. With a hardcopy of the original story on the table, I retyped each word into the blank document, thinking as I wrote how the meaning of the piece might change if I selected a different word instead of what I had. In taking each word slowly and making the revision mentally before making it on the page, I could hear internally how the piece changed along with the word change. This worked especially well with flash because of the compact nature of the genre.
 
Word by word, or bird by bird, I revised the piece. Although it was one of those stories that was largely intact when I first conceptualized it, taking it a word at a time and letting the story tell itself made a tighter, more precise piece than I started with. Even more important, the meaning was richer for the careful word choices.
 
If you’re interested in honing your precision with prose, take this lesson to heart, learn your story by ear and practice your art with flash.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

What's in a Word: Editor's Checklist for Short Fiction, Metaphor and Motif

Motif: The echo of an interesting character
The next items on our editor's checklist for revising short, or longer, fiction are metaphor and motif. We'll start with brief definitions, and provide questions to ask yourself while revising your work.

Metaphor: A metaphor uses an image, a story or an object to represent a less tangible object, quality or idea. For example, "Her eyes were glistening jewels." When revising your work, ask yourself whether your metaphors are original, well-placed and appropriate for your story's theme. The example here, albeit clichéd, would work well for a gemstone dealer describing a woman he loves, particularly in historical fiction and romance. A story about an artist would be better served by this: "Her eyes in the fading light were Prussian blue."

Motif: A motif is a recurring subject, theme, idea, object or concept that represents a deeper concept. Motifs, like metaphors, should be original, well-placed and appropriate for the story's theme. If, for example, your story is about a musician, you'll not only look for instances in the text that echo the subject of music, but also for objects or concepts that will evoke that theme throughout your work. For example, the curve of a woman's body can echo the treble clef of pitch, and vice versa.

The key to using metaphor and motif well is to know your story and characters well. This usually is more the case in draft two. Also, with both metaphor and motif, less (as in understatement), especially in literary fiction, is more.

For the full editor's checklist, see this month's Online Editing Workshop,

Tip: For best revision results, finish your story, then set it aside and work on something else. Distance improves perspective, and you'll more easily spot places in the work where you can exchange one metaphor or motif for a better one.

Happy writing!