Writing – editing - look out!

The other day I picked up one of my wife’s newly purchased paperbacks by a successful and popular author and opened it at random, page 280. I immediately thought that the author and editor had not really given the work enough consideration, if this example was anything to go by:

            She looked alarmed. “You’ll come back to London soon, I hope.”

            “If you’re there, then I’ll devise a good excuse.” He looked at her fondly, but his smile faltered.

            “I’m looking forward to riding out. I haven’t ridden a horse in years.”

            “Don’t worry, (the horse) is very placid. She’ll look after you. And so will I!”

No author name, no book title. That’s not the point. Let's consider this as an exercise in editing.

I checked the previous page and a bit. The scene is from the heroine’s point of view. So how can she ‘look alarmed’ since she can’t see herself? She felt alarmed, if we want to be simplistic, though this is virtually ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’. She could show ‘alarm’ in several ways – stepping back, a hand to her throat or covering her heart, her lip quivering, her heart tripping, all visual or emotional responses.

As for ‘looked’ – we have variants of that repeated no less than four times in 8 lines of contiguous text in the book. They’re ‘echo words’ – lodged in the subconscious and spewed out in the first draft phase; but they should be expunged in the later editing sessions.

She looked alarmed. “You’ll come back to London soon, I hope.”

            “If you’re there, then I’ll devise a good excuse.” He looked at her fondly, but his smile faltered.

            “I’m looking forward to riding out. I haven’t ridden a horse in years.”

            “Don’t worry, (the horse) is very placid. She’ll look after you. And so will I!”

It’s quite simple to get rid of all those repetitions, look:

            Her throat tightened in alarm at the prospect of him never leaving here. “You’ll come back to London soon, I hope.”

            “If you’re there,” he said with a gentle smile, “then I’ll devise a good excuse.” But the curve of his lips faltered.

            “I’m excited about riding out. I haven’t ridden a horse in years.”

            “Don’t worry, (the horse) is very placid. She’ll take care of you. And so will I!”

As they’re both in a foreign country as they talk, perhaps she should have said, “You’ll return to London…” rather than “come back”.

And there’s still the question of why his smile faltered. Did he mean what he promised or not? As she noted it, wouldn’t she dwell on that, fearing his sincerity?

What caused the sudden switch to riding on a horse – when riding was last mentioned about a page earlier? No continuity of thought or speech, no leading phrase to generate the thoughts or words about riding; no flow.

Yes, this is a trifle unfair, a section 'taken out of context'. How many authors (me included) self-edit every little section of a book that can be about 100,000 words long? I’d argue that we try. But perhaps as some authors become successful, like this one, they become lazy and don’t exert themselves. On the other hand, in my humble opinion the editors aren’t doing their job, either.

So, look out for those irritating repetitions.

Writing – analysing a writer’s work-2

Many years ago, when I embarked on writing fiction, I studied a good number of novels in an attempt to see how they worked – paragraph structure, dialogue, scene changes, pace, characterisation, etc. It’s a useful exercise for beginners.

I’m going to post the occasional analysis in this blog, though it’s a little invidious, analysing a writer with only one sample of his (or her) work, but here goes.

The Writer: D.H. Lawrence
The Work: Love Among the Haystacks, 1930 (reviewed in my blog here)

If you’re intent on writing short stories, it makes sense to read short stories – preferably in the market you’re aiming at. Sadly, in the magazine world, there are no outlets these days for men’s adventure and action short stories; women’s magazines still proliferate, the most popular being Women’s Weekly and The People’s Friend in the UK. To counter-balance this state of affairs, there are a good number of online webzine outlets worth investigating.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to review short stories by accredited masters of the form. One of these is D.H. Lawrence, who wrote many, which can be read in collections such as The Prussian Officer, England, My England, The Woman Who Rode Away, The Princess and Other Stories, The Mortal Coil and Other Stories and Love Among the Haystacks.

The stories in this collection (Love Among the Haystacks) are a mixed bag and I feel they are not the best of his work. Of course his bucolic descriptions put the reader into the scene: ‘The two large fields lay on a hillside facing south. Being newly cleared of hay, they were golden green, and they shone almost blindingly in the sunlight…’ This is the beginning of the story. Modern critics and writers tend to avoid setting the scene like this at the start of a short story, and advocate diving straight in, perhaps with dialogue between the protagonists. The scene can be glimpsed through the eyes of one character, too, unlike here where it’s conveyed  with an omniscient point of view.

The omniscient POV is sometimes necessary for a short story, due to the limited length. Here, it’s ‘tell’ all the way, with little emotional involvement. ‘Geoffrey turned white to the lips, and remained standing, listening. He heard the fall. Then a flush of darkness came over him…’ (p14) He has just knocked his brother Maurice off the top of the haystack, but there’s no mention of gut-wrenching shock, the stopping of his heart, no physiological change in response to this potentially fatal action.

I was surprised to discover lazy writing, too.

‘Nay, lass,’ smiled Maurice.

‘Aye, in a bit,’ smiled Maurice.

‘There’s nowt ails me, father,’ he laughed. (pp18/19)

This kind of writing occurs frequently in popular fiction, but I’m surprised that it is present in literary fiction. As I’ve written in my book Write a Western in 30 Days: Ever tried smiling while speaking? There should be a full stop at the end of the speech and ‘He smiled’ capitalized. (p125)

You will have noticed his use of dialect, too. This can limit a readership and slow down the story. Is it correct, anyway? It’s so easy to get it wrong. There are little ways to suggest dialect without going overboard. A few recent TV productions have suffered due to a director’s insistence on realistic vernacular. Why do they do it? If we’re writing about French people, or Russians, we don’t write in their language, we use English – perhaps with the odd word or phrase (artificially thrown in). Avoid dialect!

Word repetition. All writers suffer from this ailment and only dedicated self-editing can remove the repetitions. Usually, they’re word-echoes, lingering in the head while putting down the first draft. There’s nothing wrong with using the same word more than once in the text, but preferably not on the same page or even in the same paragraph. On p65, we have ‘look of unspeakable irritability’ and five paragraphs lower, ‘crumpled mask of unspeakable irritability’ followed in the next paragraph with ‘almost gibbering irritability’. That’s enough to make most readers irritable. In four consecutive paragraphs there are four repetitions of ‘repulsion/repulsive’ on p119.

Yet his writing is famous for good reason. Digging deep into human psyche, perhaps: ‘She leaned down to him and gripped him tightly round the neck, pressing him to her bosom in a little frenzy of pain. Her bitter disillusionment with life, her unalleviated shame and degradation during the last four years, had driven her into loneliness, and hardened her till a large part of her nature was caked and sterile.’ (p40)  And from the other point of view, we have: ‘Geoffrey pressed her to his bosom: having her, he felt he could bruise the lips of the scornful, and pass on erect, unabateable. With her to complete him, to form the core of him, he was firm and whole. Needing her so much, he loved her fervently.’ (p41) Nothing graphic, but heartfelt, it seems.

No man is an island, yet each person has the potential to be isolated and alone even in a crowded room. In many of these stories, he tackles that aloneness, trying to come to terms with it.

From time to time writers need to read earlier writers’ work, to learn how they did it. And of course if you’re planning on writing a historical piece, then immerse yourself in the work of writers from that period, to gauge the style of dialogue and the vocabulary used.

My favourite D.H. Lawrence books are The Rainbow and Women in Love.

Writing - self-edit - repeated words

My latest ‘completed’ book hit a little over 126,000 words. 
 

[I’ve put ‘completed’ in quotes because a book is never finished, it’s abandoned after you’ve done all you can to polish it. Looking at it again after even a small gap of time, you’ll always find the need to change things. This constant pressure to perfect the work will mean it will never see the light of day. Be bold. Do the necessary re-reads, self-edits and then let it go.]

Part of the self-edit process is to identify commonly repeated words; these may differ for every writer.

The words I’ve noticed I’m prone to over-using are listed below. They’re not exhaustive, naturally. The number of times the words appeared in a search of the text are shown (and in brackets the number they were reduced to after checking); I never blanket change, that can lead to nonsense words cropping up.

The reduction of repetitions can be processed in various ways: often, the word isn’t necessary at all; sometimes the dialogue is sufficient; if repetitions are close together on the page then I find a new word.

I've made additional comments at the end.

My repetition word list

Smiled – 55 (invariably overused) (15)

Nodded – 115 (again, overused, often close together on the page!) (44)

Laughed – 24 (this is good, I made a conscious effort while writing to avoid using this!) (14)

Grinned – 27 – (not bad, either, since it is very common usage) (11)

Sighed – 11 (again, I was on the look-out for this while writing so they are few) (7)

Looked – 48 (35)

Moment – 81 (45)

Glanced – 61 (30)

Few – 84 (53)

Down – 163 (103) (e.g. why use ‘sat down’ when ‘sat’ works as well?)

Up – 255 (horrendous! Search entails a space in front of and after this word) (163)

Out – 252 (same applies as above…) (176)

Back – 105 (ditto) (91)

Just – 70 (an insidious word, but often used in speech so many retained) (45)

Called – 52 (45)

Saw – 23 (21)

Walked – 41 (0)

Ran – 52 (35)

Pointed – 45 (0)

Suddenly – 15 (not bad, but probably too many) (3)

Seemed – 122 (86)

Felt – 77 (often the feelings can be conveyed without using ‘felt’) (49)

Thought – 60 (50)

Though – 101 (I've noticed in other books that sometimes this is used when the writer meant 'thought' and vice versa) (84)

Shrugged – 25 (again, while writing I tried to avoid using this, but it can still be reduced) (15)

Stepped – 60 (surprised at this, but this number was reduced) (36)

Turned – 103 (far too many!) (82)

Shook – 58 (not a big reduction, but I validated them all) (46)

Appeared – 27 (25)

Peered – 37 (32)

Some – 139 (another insidious word!) (77)

Abruptly – 29 (used instead of ‘suddenly’ sometimes) (17)

Eyed – 30 (instead of ‘looked at’ etc) (27)

Gazed – 3 (2)

Comment

In the scheme of things, very few of these repetitions are too bad when you consider the total number of words is in excess of 126,000. But the process serves to validate the text from a different perspective.

Naturally, there’s a need to be careful about substituting with a new word only to find that the ‘new’ word is a repetition you’ve already reduced!

This is only one strategy in the self-edit process. I normally do this after the final read-through. That read should concentrate on the narrative flow, the internal logic of the story, and detecting any inconsistencies.

Earlier read-throughs or self-edits will have considered point-of-view aspects, emotional content in a scene, character motivation and visualisation of a scene, to name a few.

Happy self-editing!

Writing - Editing tip - Work in progress progresses – 2

Catalyst - #1 in the 'Avenging Cat' series

It’s that time again. My next novel Cataclysm, #3 in the ‘Avenging Cat’ series, is completed, and the self-edit is ongoing, prior to it being vetted by Jennifer, my wife, before being sent to the publisher, Crooked Cat.

Part of that self-edit process involves tackling word-repetitions. Some are word-echoes, repetitions that occur more than once often in the same page, while others are simply examples of lazy writing that needs livening up.

The repetitions I’ve identified by using the Word search are shown below. I’ve started work on these; some have been reduced in number already (see brackets); be wary of replacing one repetition with another, however!

Smiled – 23 (9)

Nodded – 48 (18)

Laughed – 8 (this is good, I made a conscious effort while writing to avoid using this!) (3)

Grinned – 14 – (not bad, either) (6)

Sighed – 4 (again, I was on the look-out for this so they are few) (3)

Looked – 26 (22)

Moment – 37 (11)

Glanced – 40

Few – 40

Down – 58

Up – 145 (horrendous! Search entails a space in front of and after this word)

Out – 142 (same applies as above…)

Back – 72 (ditto)

Just – 36 (I tried to avoid using this word so much, will definitely excise most)

Called – 34

Saw – 19

Walked – 37

Ran – 32

Pointed – 22

Suddenly – 5 (not bad, but probably too many)

Seemed – 49

Felt – 52

Thought – 49

Though – 30 (I've noticed in other books that sometimes this is used when the writer meant 'thought')

Shrugged – 14 (again, while writing I tried to avoid using this, but it can still be reduced)

Stepped – 46 (surprised at this, but this number will get reduced)

Turned – 75 (far too many!)

Shook – 33

What’s the point of all this?  Often, the repeated word (and its associated phrase) is redundant. And tidying up at this stage can improve the narrative flow.

 

The above list shows those words I’m familiar with in the repetition stakes; there may be others, of course, and hopefully they will come to light in the final re-read.