Fleshing Out the Bones

Maybe you've never thought of editing as adding or reworking detail, but under the headings of revision and rewriting (both part of editing) comes the concept that some aspect of the story isn't working because something is missing. Flannery O'Connor felt the same, especially about the strangely vivid people in her stories. "I can't allow any of my characters … to stop in some halfway position," she said. And she didn't. Her characters were fleshed out to the point where readers are often uncomfortable with them, but they're three dimensional and memorable, not clichés or caricatures.

Why do we do all this fixing? To make the work better, and to make the images we've created come alive. "Fiction is supposed to represent life," O'Connor maintained. "And the fiction writer has to use as many aspects of life as are necessary to make his total picture convincing." To achieve this end, perseverance is required. O'Connor felt that way even after working for months and still having to throw everything away. "I don't think any of that was time wasted," she said, believing that "something goes on that makes it easier when [the writing] does come well." And that's the sense of satisfaction and the purpose—for the writing to come well.

To put today's musing into action, check out the writing tip at the top of the list at the bottom of the blog, and let us know how it goes.

Fractal Thinking: The Writer’s Thought Process

Do you see something of interest in the world around you and replicate it in your imagination so that you can analyze it? If so, don’t worry. You’re probably just a writer at heart—or maybe a mathematician. The other day I was waiting for the morning train, drinking coffee, finishing a chapter of John Gardner’s book The Art of Fiction and listening to a new commuting buddy talk about her interest in literature. As my new associate was talking, I was thinking how much she reminded me of a writing friend and mentor. Then I began musing how much she might be like my other friend or different, about her perspective on life, her longtime interest in literature and how that might inform her thoughts—and the list goes on. Everyone multitasks and multi-thinks, but writers tend to observe something, replicate it in their imaginations and analyze it all in rapid succession. It reminded me of an episode of Nova on fractals, irregular geometric shapes that can be split into parts, each of which is a smaller, albeit uneven copy of the whole. Writers think like this all the time but in a certain context—as fodder for their work. Understanding events, people and human nature, and assimilating this understanding for later use, are part of a continual and often subconscious effort. It revives the argument for always carrying paper and a pen, since electronic stuff doesn’t always accommodate the “jot” of jotting things down. You never know when some revelation might enrich a story or character. It really is all fodder ...

Check out the tip at the bottom of the page, and let us know how it goes.

The Way Life Works: Theme in Writing

What if the common effort to recapture youth isn’t as much about wanting to be young again (okay, sometimes it is), but about going back to that fork in the time-space continuum where development was arrested by vivcus interruptus to recapture the essence of ourselves so that we could enlarge on it?

Want to know what made me consider that highly philosophical question? It was this line from Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto: “Everything that Mr. Hosokawa had ever known or suspected about the way life worked had been proved to him to be incorrect these past months.” Patchett goes on to say what Hosokawa had thought before being taken captive by terrorists, and how those perceptions proved deceptive. My musing on a longstanding belief about life came from that one line. Patchett’s sentence is a great example of a thematic statement that doesn’t stand out as one, but still prompted me to think thematically about life.

Theme isn’t an easy concept to deal with, so I’ll defer to Donald Maass in Writing the Breakout Novel, in the chapter on premise, where he says that fiction expresses “… our greatest purposes and our deepest desires. They are us. That is the reason we identify with them.” The best treatment of a writer’s premise or theme doesn’t stand out like a road sign, but rises to the surface like champagne bubbles — something to think about while revising …

Seeing Around Corners: The Bend in the Road Perspective

Sometimes you don't know your character's next move or your plot's next turn until you arrive at that moment in the story. Of course, sometimes you don't know until after, but we'll save that observation for another time. Have you ever walked a familiar path, thinking, I know the turn is here somewhere — I've been down this way before? The spot may be overgrown or hidden by a trick of the light, but for whatever reason you can't see the place until you're on it. So, too, with stories. Despite plot treatments and character studies, despite planning and research, sometimes it's impossible to see how to direct the story or depict a character until you're in the moment. It's the organic nature of storytelling. Since you last traveled your story, weeds have grown in the text or your mental landscape has changed. But don't despair; it happens to everyone, especially if you're a writer who takes the road less traveled. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference," from "The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost.

To find that bend in the road and not lose your way, check out the writing tip at the top of the list — and let me know how it goes.

Editor and Writer Launches New Website

Forgive me for doing a bit of shamless promoting, but here goes ...

Award-winning writer and editor Adele Annesi is launching a new website, AdeleAnnesi, on the theme of place as inspiration to complement her Word for Words and Writing Linx blogs for editors and writers. Pass the new venue along to your writers’ group, and visit the site to leave a comment on the Contact Me page — it would be great to hear from you.

Settings: The Importance of Place

Prong, pavé, channel, bezel — how a diamond is set makes all the difference. It’s the same with the setting of a story. A setting isn’t there to prop up the tale, it’s there to enhance it, like black velvet behind a diamond. If you were showcasing a different stone, onyx or smoky topaz, the jeweler’s cloth would have to change. Otherwise there’s not enough contrast and the stone’s facets recede. Not only is choosing the right setting important, but so is selecting the aspects of it that best reveal your characters, enhance your story and subtly support your theme. Establishing a strong sense of place grounds readers with a feeling of “having been there.” To edit for setting, you need to know the place, but necessarily to have been there. Pulitzer prize winning journalist turned crime novelist John Sandford says settings don’t have to be exact, just “credible for [the] neighborhood.” Without the right details on geography, locale, season and time of day, it’s hard to imbue a piece with depth. Seasons are especially useful, as in spring for renewal, winter for death, summer for the heat of passion and fall for that ominous sense of “something wicked this way comes.”

To put today's musing into action, check out the writing tip at the top of the list, and let me know how it goes.

The Nose Knows: The Most Powerful Sense

A physician friend says the most powerful sense is the sense of smell. I’m not sure whether he’s right. I’ve heard that for women auditory is the strongest sense—hence the tendency to believe a man when he says, “I promise I’ll never do it again.”

But my friend is right about the sense of smell being the most evocative of memory. On Saturdays my mother sometimes brought home from the local grocery a mortadella, a cured type of pork luncheon meat that spared no fat and was laced with black pepper, nutmeg and pistachios. If it sat unwrapped on the counter, when I smelled it my first thought was—Italy. The aromatic smell instantly brought back my grandmother’s small off-white stucco kitchen in the agricultural Marche region of central Italy. Suddenly I was back in that kitchen, with its naked light bulb hanging over the rectangular table where we gathered with my cousins for meals. In those days I hated eating and would rather be playing hide and seek in the hillside grass in the gathering summer evenings.

The powerful sense memory that came form the mortadella was more than food and a recollection of Italy. What I actually thought when I smelled it was—home. That’s the wonder of sensory detail well-used.

To put today’s musing into action, check out the writing tip at the top of the list at the bottom of the page and let me know how it goes.

When Words Sing: Editing for Voice and Style

When I read for pleasure I usually choose mysteries, well-written stories like Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael mysteries, which are set in England in the middle ages. I love the language, have to look up the occasional word (Peters, whose real name is Edith Pargeter, was a language scholar) and lose myself in Peters’ writing and voice. Unfortunately, once the editor, always the editor, at least with other people’s work, and I still find myself making mental changes to the text. But I do it differently than I would another style of writing. Peters’ language is lyrical and needs to stay that way, so the changes need to match her voice and the period in which her stories take place. The example is analogous to music. Jazz, pop, rock and classical are each different, and part of their beauty is their individuality. Any change would need to respect the parameters of the musical style and the composer so as to retain the integrity of the piece. To make the connection to editing, I'm reminded of advice from Revision and Self-Editing, where James Scott Bell says, “A good rule of thumb … is write hot, revise cool.” Write in the moment, not with the editing side of your brain. Then, when the work has cooled (more than a day is good), revise. You’re less likely to hack up what you’ve written or carve it in stone.

For a way to put today's musing into action, check out the writing tip at the top of the list, and let me know how it goes.