The Solitude, part 7

Those of you who follow this blog may be surprised that it continues. That fact is only due to the unfinished discussion of my writing process. This time last year, for example, I decided one morning that I didn't need to blog, that I could call my absence a summer vacation. Unfortunately or not, that vacation from blogging lasted deep into the winter holidays. This year, however, every week is summer vacation. 

Besides, those of you who have finished your first complete draft of something novel-like will need instruction on what to do next. So, in the interest of time, I shall post 2 steps here!

Part 7

Once I have come to the end of the story and can call the manuscript complete, it is time for revision. Getting the whole story out is fine and dandy but now the work begins. I like to describe this as a sculptor throwing a clump of wet clay on a wheel (the basic first draft) and then crafting it into something beautiful (the finished manuscript).

The first step for me is to go back to any scenes where I already know I need to do more tweaking. I usually edit previous sections during the process of composing new text, so I don't expect a major editing pass - but I still do it. After this spot checking, I'll return to the first page and read straight through to the end.

My goal in the first read-through is to fill out scenes, make them more complete by adding description, writing more and/or better dialog, clarifying any information, and sometimes cutting out material that is no longer relevant based on how the story actually finished. Not all seeds I plant come to fruition and must be weeded out. So, generally, the word count will expand during this stage.

In the second pass from start to finish, I focus on scenes as individual stories, making sure the arc is effective and the other elements fit the purpose of the scene - which should be to move the plot along, develop characters, or emphasize a point or theme which is important to the story (rarely done). Occasionally, I'll have a scene that is purely for fun, which may also serve to develop a character. I seldom "kill my darlings" but some do get a firm wrist slap.

Presently [sometime in October 2019], I'm in the third full pass of my current just-finished novel, titled EXCHANGE, and this stage involves trimming words from sentences and cutting whole sentences from paragraphs which don't seem to be needed. I may also cut entire paragraphs but because I revise as I compose, I usually don't have a lot of that - unless I decide an entire scene is no longer needed.

I don't care about reaching a particular word count, although I'm still cognizant of desired counts for various genre. Because epic fantasy readers expect a fat book, I let my EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS go to 233,000 (after editing and revision down from 255,000). But some stories have their own inherent length, like my contemporary adventure novel A GIRL CALLED WOLF, which hit 86,000. Making it longer, usually by adding scenes, would have lessened the story's effect.

Part 8

So I have gone through the whole manuscript a few times, working on the arcs, the pacing, weeding out unnecessary words, sentences, and some paragraphs, and punching up the dialog. I've stood back and looked at the story from a wider perspective to make sure it all fits together and works as a drama. I'm satisfied with what I've got.

Now I do the little dirty work: proofreading. I run spell checker constantly as I write and revise day by day. However, errors still make it through. I know a few of my pet errors, the kind of typos that a spell checker won't catch. For example, I seldom write the word "form" in a story but I do use "from" a lot, but I tend to type "form" instead of "from" so I will run a special find-and-replace for that thorn in my side (and a few others).

Other funny typos are where I've made a correction of a perfectly good word during revision so the correct word is now incorrect. I found a typo in one of my books where what showed was "he" but the correct word should've been "the".  Yes, that was so funny (not); try finding that needle in a haystack. Sometimes I write "by ear" so I'll find an error I've spelled as "won" which should be "one". It is maddening.

I have a short list of words I specifically check because I know I overuse them: all, now, then, that, almost...and so on. A lot of typos that survive scrutiny and remain in the finished book are the result of the proofreading itself: the imperfect cutting or inserting of text, where something is left behind. That includes punctuation. Cut a phrase from a sentence and put a period where the comma used to be? Done. Or maybe not. Maybe the period is next to the comma that didn't get deleted! Aaargh!

One thing I'll admit to is when the page is laid out "justified" (the text goes evenly from margin to margin like printed books have it), I get a little OCD if there is too much spread, the gaps between words are too wide - also if the line of text is too compressed. I will often rewrite the sentence to reduce the gaps or the crowding in the line as it lays on the page just to improve the "look" of the page.

Then I will give the manuscript one final read after putting it away for a bit, trying to be a typical reader, avoiding the urge to change anything - other than a lingering typo. My finished manuscripts average 1 typo per 10,000 words, which for an old full-time English teacher with fading eyesight, is rather good. Don't misunderstand: The work done in Parts 7 and 8 is a long process requiring many reads, a lot of searches, plenty of word wrangling. It is not a one and done step.

NEXT: The hard part (writing a blurb)



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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Fictional Fathers for Father's Day - Updated

Last month, for Mother's Day, I waxed poetic on the three kinds of mothers I happened to have in my novels. Well, turnabout seems fair play, so let me ponder the types of fathers I find in my novels and consider their source.

So I'm sitting comfortably at home this summer, counting the sales of my latest novel, and it hits me! I should be promoting my Father's Day novel, the one titled AIKO. It's a kind of Father's Day story, after all. And because Father's Day is here again, everyone is doing a grad and dad marketing blitz. My just launched novel EXCHANGE has a dad at its center. Unfortunately he has lost his wife and his daughter in a mass shooting, but there are many "dad" tropes as he struggles to put his life back together and find meaning in what remains.

Everyone knows that grads are tired of reading. Dads tend to be reading averse, too. So maybe books do not make the best gifts. Job search books for grads, perhaps. A book on whatever is dad's current hobby, maybe. But fiction too often falls to the dark, dusty shelf of well-intended gifts. Beside the neckties. My own father would rather read through a stack of history and politics books before he would ever crack the cover of a novel. He is ok with wearing a necktie, however.

So how many books are there that feature Father's Day, anyway? Or about fathers in general? Mothers are easy. Brothers and sisters are common. The sweet aunt and the generous uncle are often seen in literature. Fathers are generally the bad guys, villainous, cruel, authoritarian, mean, and uncaring. They are more often than not portrayed as abusers. Sometimes they only appear as the bad memory of a protagonist and we get a couple of graphic incidents to showcase dad's unpleasantness. (I had to do that in A BEAUTIFUL CHILL and A GIRL CALLED WOLF because they were based on real people and their lives; however, fathers in my other novels are thankfully less abusive.) It's almost a stereotype. Fathers get a bad rap, I think. We tend to only hear about the bad ones. Think of Darth Vader, a.k.a. "Dark Father", and others of his ilk.

I think about the fathers in my other novels. My protagonists seem to relate to their fathers very much like I relate to my own father. Funny, that coincidence, right? Write what you know, they say. Or am I drawing on the only role model I have? (Curiously, I'm an only child and my protagonists tend not to have siblings, also - or siblings that are throw-away characters, mentioned but not active in the story. In AFTER ILIUM, the young hero dislikes his dentist father's strictness and is glad to be on his own touring Greece and Turkey after college. In EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS, our dragonslayer hero's father was a military commander killed in battle, so our hero carries only the memory of a violent, frightening man. In A DRY PATCH OF SKIN, the first volume of my vampire trilogy, our poor hero is transforming into a vampire. He is angry at his father for not warning him and for sending him away to live with an aunt. Otherwise, that fictional dad sounds an awful lot like my own father: haughty, disinterested, aloof. In volume 2, SUNRISE, the father comes across disturbingly like my own father at the time I was writing the book: well-meaning but still authoritarian to an uncomfortable degree.

In AIKO, our hero discovers he is a father, then struggles to find his child. There is a brief mention of his own father being stationed in Japan after WWII - like my own father was. After the war, my father went to college on the G.I. Bill and became a social studies teacher, then later a librarian. Now he is deep into retirement, having put his books away for poor eyesight and sleepier days, not to mention the devastation of a hurricane.

When I think of my father, the image that comes most readily to my mind is of him sitting in his reading chair, reading: reading in such a focused, determined manner that I could get away with literally anything because nothing could disturb him. Thus, he was separated from my everyday activities, always there but on the sidelines, uninvolved in my youthful experiences. And that is what I learned of fatherhood: 1) provide the family income, 2) relax at home after the job, 3) fix things around the house and yard. Also, 4) be master of the castle, 5) enforce the rules, and when necessary (6) represent the family like a knight in shining armor when some authority or institution challenges us. He is the (7) champion, the protector, the lord of the manor. And that is, for better or worse, how I portray the fathers in my novels: powerful yet distant. 

If you've been following this blog you probably know I'm a dad. It's a weird feeling knowing there is someone living in the world partly as a result of my actions. Sure, we can imagine clones, or cyborgs, but another human? That's crazy. Like us and yet not like us. And eventually they go their own ways and have their own lives and we scratch our heads and think What just happened? Now my offspring is finishing college, studying to be something in the medical field. This is after going through Army training to be a combat medic.

As I think back on the past 23 years, I can pinpoint a few things I did that might have helped raise this baby to adulthood. But there are just as many other things I did about which I have no clue. Maybe they helped, maybe not. Only my grown child can tell. I'm pleased, even proud, of how this googly little bundle of joy overnight became this awesome adult who vaguely resembles me in appearance and words and behavior. 

So for now, I must pass the reins to my protégé. No longer do I need to concern myself so much with me doing great things and achieving this and that and telling my child about, you know, the things I can boast about. Now it is time for me to boast about my grown child, to note what this new adult is doing, and praise the new things, the new deeds, of this adult - to praise and be proud of what my child has done more than being happy at what I have done. I've actually inserted this idea into the thoughts of my protagonist dad in EXCHANGE. Oh, I will still write books, of course - until the keyboard is ripped from my cold, dead fingers. But now it's no longer all about me. It's about the generation we produce and what they will do as we fade gently into that good night.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Solitude, part 6

Yes, there's good news and some bad news. As always. The good news is that life is returning to the normal we consider normal in our daily lives. The bad news is that it's not happening everywhere and it's not quite the same for everyone. For that matter, some people don't want that same kind of same. But that is a whole other blog post. When life becomes unfathomable, I dive into a good book and swim about at my leisure.

For writers there's always a good news / bad news dichotomy, too. Oh my God! I finished! I finally finished this thing! (Good news.) But now I have to revise, and edit, and proofread.... (Bad news.) After writing several novels I've developed a process which seems to fit my lifestyle and my inane sense of story, which I use to guide me through The Process. Having just launched my latest novel, a crime drama, I can easily look back and see how I went through the process of writing the book.

First, we have to finish the manuscript. And there's no better way than having a climax. That, too, has a good news, bad news convention. If all has gone well thus far, we are at the top of that dramatic arc and ready to pull the trigger on that gun we mentioned in the first act lay upon the mantlepiece. If we have set up this moment effectively, it's a crowning achievement we can smile about for a long time. That's good news. If we have wandered about, we may still stumble upon the idea that it's about time to do something else...which would be the bad news. Ultimately, we should have planned this sooner, at least by the two-thirds mark in the story - if we even know where that is when we are at the starting point.

Note: Almost a year ago, while driving around the country, I figured out my own writing process and made it into a lecture, something I might share with young writers, my students, and anyone who asks.

Part 6

I have an innate sense of pacing when writing a novel. I keep everything in my head with very few notes, seldom more than a few Post-Its. Other writers I know create an elaborate outline with every detail in its place, but that's not for me. I write, as they say, "by the seat of my pants".  (See previous post for apologies and explanations.) So as I arrive at the two-thirds point in a book, I must survey all my subplots and see how to resolve them (if I hadn't known previously, and I often don't). As I look at my shelf of books, I know I have usually resolved the subplots just before the main plot ends.

Here is where pacing is so important. The chapters tend to get shorter, the descriptions briefer, as action takes over the story. The pace quickens. Chases, fights, desperation time. However, even as the reader feels the quickening pace, I slow down writing it. I often go to slow-mo. I think like a movie camera and a film director. I choreograph action scenes in my head, then try to describe the action. One minute of action in the manuscript may take two days to write and fourteen days to rewrite.

When I get to the climax of the book, the big scene where all is revealed to reader and protagonist, I like to gently hammer home the theme. Not in a preachy manner but still clear enough it is not missed. The theme is not a message; it is a stylistic mantra that has been woven through the foundation of the story. Theme can often be stated in a single word; I seem to write a lot about Redemption and use that as the theme in so many of my stories: people going through hell to find themselves or their passion or their reason for being or why the dragons exist at all. My protagonist carries that theme in his/her final decisions and actions. A lot depends on whether the protagonist will survive or not - which would be a spoiler. (In only two of my novels does the protagonist not make it out alive.)

I know when I've arrived at the end. I've been feeling the downhill momentum for several scenes - despite the rising dramatic arc, ironically. Some stories will have the great confrontation between protagonist and antagonist: a swordfight or a fistfight or a well-stated argument that crushes a soul or the revelation of who he/she really is! The last scene is hard to write - hard to get it right, to make it perfect. The final few lines are important. It has to end with the perfect description, line of dialog, thought or feeling. I work on the last page a lot. And by last, I do not mean the exact final page. because there is always the denouement (my favorite French word after croissant), the "wrapping up". For a TV show, it's the two minute scene following the last commercial break, a summarizing of what has transpired and perhaps, if a sequel is on the horizon, a glimpse of what may come.

Then I go back to the beginning and read through the whole manuscript. I edit as I go, of course, but I do not yet enter the revision stage. Eventually, I know I must accept the bad news and force myself to switch hats from writer to editor. I often feel silly with the different hats, but they do keep my hair from blowing into a mess, and for that I am grateful.

NEXT: The actual revision tips. 

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(C) Copyright 2010-2020 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.