Rose Colored Insanity

So I have a premise. Great. Now what? If I seem to be asking that question a lot, it's because I am.

Lajos Egri (and if I seem to be quoting him a lot, it's because I am. I think his book is one of the best on the subject, and most clearly defines the elements that make up story) writes that plot comes from character. You must know everything about your characters before you can know how they will react in a given situation.

For the first draft, I ignored this advice. I decided I would get to know the characters as I went. It worked- by the end, I knew them well, and that was reflected in my writing. But the first two-thirds of the book showed that I didn't know them. This time through, I decided I didn't want to finish another draft and then have all that work left of going back and fixing the characters.

Because Egri is right. The choices humans make are a direct reflection of their life experiences. My story will be richer and deeper if I can make the characters three-dimensional, with motivations that form naturally from their pasts.

So there I sat, thick binder in my lap, pen in hand, ready to edit, when it occurred to me that I had no idea what to do. I started anyway, fixing a few grammar problems here and there, realizing that certain sentences could be phrased more clearly. And about halfway through the first chapter, I stopped. Even I could tell that this haphazard method of editing was not going to result in the masterpiece I was hoping for.

Then I remembered an interview Writer Unboxed had posted with Dave King, co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. The second part of the interview addressed specific techniques for editing that I found interesting- but at the time, I was very skeptical. Rules for editing? I thought I should just be able to edit by instinct.

But with the manuscript actually in my hands, I was desperate for some guidelines, something that would focus all the energy I was throwing into this task. To my surprise, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers was exactly what I was looking for. My second draft of chapter one was much, much better than the rough draft. Some of the ideas I found most useful:

* Watch out for narrative summary- both too much and too little. To my disgust, I found that I had my main character washing dishes for two pages while she thought about something. It was surprisingly easy to work what she was thinking about into a different scene using dialogue.
* Beats. The pauses between words where the character thinks or moves. They're wonderful when well used, but as I discovered, you can easily obscure good dialogue with them. I had two pages of dialogue where every time a character spoke, there was a beat afterward.
* More on beats- what kind of beats are you using? Are they generic or do they help show who your character is? I found that I'd been falling back on generic beats as a kind of writing crutch- after all, it's easier that way. (Of course, that was part of my problem- I didn't really know who my character was, so I couldn't come up with unique beats. More on that later.)

But what I found most useful was something Dave said in the interview with Writer Unboxed:

"...if you’re applying any of these techniques mechanically, then you’re not really writing. Your story has to be a living being, growing and changing according to its own internal spirit. It’s that story that I try to help writers find."

It was surprisingly easy to lose the perspective of the larger story and get absorbed in making sure that I'd eliminated all the -ly adverbs, etc. I need to remember that I'm the writer- it's up to me to decide if my story needs a few -ly adverbs sprinkled in. The guidelines are just there to make sure the story shines through.