Karen Sandler

Tag: rewriting

  • Deadline Hell

    ZakYour regularly scheduled blog will return when The Denking Book is Done. And whoever stole my rewrite fairy wand had better return it NOW.

    Meanwhile, a kitten to soothe you.

     

    Full CoverAwakening Final cover-s

  • The Trials and Tribulations of Book Surgery

    Have you ever had a problem right in the middle of a sewing, craft or home improvement project? You’ve just realized you sewed the sleeve on inside out, or your embroidery thread is tangled in the middle of a satin stitch, or you’ve made the cut on your crown molding at the wrong angle. So you have to grab the seam ripper to remove that sleeve, turn it right-side-out and re-sew. Or snip the embroidery thread below the tangle and get that little short bit back underneath your work. Or schlep to the home improvement store for more crown molding and cut it right this time.

    Sewing MachineIt’s a groan-worthy experience, both because you’ve just spent X amount of time in wasted effort and because you have to spend Y amount of time to make it right (can you tell I was a math major?). That’s about the time I start to yell at my sewing machine (and the poor thing is an inanimate object), saying a few choice words not suitable for polite company. I sometimes feel like chucking the whole thing into the garbage bin, but I never do it. That would truly be a waste because I know with just a little more effort, I’ll soon have a nice shirt/skirt/pair of shorts to wear.

    This is sort of what’s going on with the young adult paranormal book I’ve been working on. After I finished the most recent rewrite, I knew it needed another pair of eyes. So I did a beta-read trade with another author. She had some excellent feedback, some of which I’d already figured out, some that was more of a doh moment. Like I have far too many characters, and several can be eliminated and their actions shifted to the truly important main and secondary characters.

    But to make the changes my beta reader suggested requires some major surgery of the book. Large chunks will be able to remain the same, but they’ll have to be detached with that seam ripper, rearranged the proper way and re-knitted into the story. It’s a good-sized book, rather like a massive quilt, and it’ll be a challenge keeping straight what goes where, particularly with the elimination of several characters.

    It’s like I’ve got my book gutted and on the operating table, but I’m still not sure where all the parts go. I am truly grateful for my beta reader’s feedback. I’m excited by the prospect of making the book better. But wow, what a messy project.

    Awakening Final cover-sI’m really just starting out reassembling this odd garment of a story. I only have a small window to work on it since I’m carving out time before I my editor returns the edited manuscript for Rebellion, the third book of the Tankborn trilogy. I probably don’t have quite enough time to get the YA paranormal rewrite done before I have to shift to Rebellion and then my second Janelle Watkins mystery. It will be so nice to finish it eventually though, to get those last seams pressed and the final bit of embroidery around the neckline. Then I’ll sit back, admire my work…and send it to another beta reader.

    Full CoverSo what projects have you got going, writing, craft, or other? Have they been a straightforward or a tricky job? Share your stories.

    #SFWApro

  • Horse of a Different Color and How Writing Matures

    I’m lucky enough to own a beautiful mare named Belle. She’s half-Andalusian and half-Morgan, and a gorgeous gray. She just turned 16 a couple weeks ago.

    If you don’t know horses, you might not realize that 1) most of the “white” horses you see are actually grays, and 2) gray horses always start out as a different “normal” horse color. They might be black, or bay (brown with black mane, tail, and lower legs), chestnut/sorrel (a coppery color all over), even paint (spotted). Eventually though, they all end up like my mare Belle is now.

    Check out the “before” (when she was about 4 years old) and “after” (taken yesterday at age 16). Yes, same horse.

    Young Belle1Belle Eating2s

    Another interesting fact about gray horses is that in some breeds (Andalusian & Lipizzaner, for instance), nearly all the horses in that breed are gray. In others (Morgans, for instance) few are gray. So a non-gray Andalusian is very desireable, and a gray Morgan would be quite unique. Another fun fact: since a gray horse starts out looking non-gray, breeders will send DNA (hair) to testing labs such as at UC Davis to test for color. If they have a black Andalusian, they want to know for certain it’s going to stay black, especially if they’ll be breeding the stallion or mare.

    Gal canterI didn’t bother testing Belle’s DNA since she was already a dark dapple gray when I bought her. She’s half-Morgan (her dam was chestnut) and half-Andalusian (her sire was gray), and I guess the gray won.

    That’s her at age 8 to the left. You’ll notice that although her body is quite dark, her face is nearly white. Horses tend to start graying on their face. That white star on her forehead you can see it in the first picture above has blended in with her white face.

    So what does this have to do with writing? Well, on the surface, nothing. But it got me thinking about two ways writing and a writer changes and matures just like a gray horse does. First, writing matures through revision, which I talked about in my last blog post. You could say a book matures from its infant self (the rough draft), to its grade-school self (first read-through), to its teen self (post-developmental edit re-write, to its adult self (polished final draft) throughout the stages of revision.

    The second way a writer and her writing matures is through time and experience. That’s mainly experience as a writer, but also experience with the outside world. Years and the kind of life led (different for everyone) change perspective. The things you see happening to others, or participate in yourself, can all become fodder for your writing. What happens in your particular life will change your writing and improve your ability to write your characters and describe their experiences.

    That’s not to say that someone in their teens couldn’t write an elderly character, for instance. I don’t have to be a man to write a male character. I don’t have to be an evil villain to write one. I just have to observe, ask questions, and use my imagination.

    But my years (do I have to mention how many?), maturity, and the experience that comes from writing 20+ books have led me to write that male character or that evil villain much differently than how I would have written him a couple decades ago. In fact, I am right now revising a 20-year-old book from my backlist so I can indie-publish it. While I’m pleasantly surprised that most of the writing holds up, some of the characterization doesn’t. I’ve learned tons more about character since I wrote this book. I also noticed signs of “first time author syndrome” throughout that early book. Overuse of adverbs, trying too hard with descriptive passages, clunky dialogue. What seemed to work twenty years ago I realize has to be revised. Seeing it through the lens of a couple decades of intense experience writing novels makes all the difference.

    So, two lessons to be learned from this. 1) you’re going to write some great stuff early in your writing career. Some of it will be beautiful, just like Belle was a real looker as a 4-year-old (yes, I found a way to turn this back around to horses). 2) You’re going to continually learn and grow and improve. When you look back at your earlier prose, you might cringe. But you’ll also have the satisfaction of knowing you got better as you matured as a writer. Your writing developed and became even more gorgeous (just like Belle :-)).

    photo2Have you seen that progression already? If so, what’s one thing about writing you’ve learned with experience? Or if you’re not a writer, is there another area of expertise in which you’ve learned and grown? I’d love to have you share in the comments. Tell it to the hoof!

  • 10 Must-Do’s for Manuscript Revision

    Awakening Final cover-sA little over a week ago, I turned in Book 3 of the Tankborn trilogy. A few weeks ago in this blog post, I gave tips on how to finish your novel, suggesting among other things to turn off your internal editor and just soldier through to the end. That there’s plenty of time for revision later.

    Well, once I’d finished Book 3, later became now. I had to switch gears from finish the darn thing to polish the darn thing. I finally had to open the door to that infernal, internal editor who’d been cooling her heels in my mental waiting room. It was time to let her inside to start picking things apart.

    In fact, revision is a good time to stuff your ego into that waiting room and let the Evil Blue Pencil Lady rip. Even the most beautiful prose may have to fall to her figurative ax if it has no place in the story.

    So what should your inner editor be looking for? Here are ten areas of focus, from simple and mechanical, to more complex developmental issues.

    1. Fix the typos. That may seem like the most obvious advice ever, but whether you’re planning to indie publish or submit to an editor for traditional publishing, nothing says Amateur more loudly than a typo-riddled manuscript. A reader of indie books might forgive one or two typos (as will an editor at a traditional house), they may never get past the Amazon sample if every other paragraph has a misspelled word or commas where they don’t belong. And if you’re thinking, My word processor will catch my misspellings, Word won’t flag everything, such as an improper use of there, their, or they’re. It takes your own eyeballs to catch that kind of problem.
    2. Watch for repeated words. Sometimes in the rush of writing your book, you don’t realize you’ve used the word shimmer three times in four paragraphs. Or monstrous. Or fantasy. These are just examples of very distinctive words that need to be used sparingly in a manuscript. You won’t always realize that you’ve overused words like this until you’re doing your revision read-through. You might not even spot them yourself, but your beta reader will. If you find you’ve used monstrous three times in one page (because there’s an enormous beast that must be described), it’s time to pull out the thesaurus. Or go to Reverse Dictionary to find alternate words (such as grotesque, unnatural, and colossal).
    3. Double check word choice. Are you using effect when you meant to use affect? Tankborn smlRavenous when you meant to use rapacious? Sometimes our brains play tricks on us in the heat of writing that first draft and we type a word that’s somewhat similar to another that we meant to type. Or there might be a word you thought meant one thing that actually means another. So make sure you’ve chosen the right word for the right situation.
    4. Clear out the redundancies. Since Book 3 is part of a trilogy, I felt the need to occasionally catch up the reader on what happened before. As I read through the book I realized I was overdoing it on the catch-up. I didn’t need to mention four times that GENs could be reset and have their personalities wiped away. Once, maybe twice, was enough. Even if your book isn’t part of a trilogy, you might need to remind a reader of a plot point, but be cautious of being repetitious. Delete those redundancies.
    5. Chuck out your pet weaknesses. What do I mean by pet weaknesses? Just about every writer has a favorite word, type of punctuation, idiomatic expression, or writing device. Sometimes it’s part of their voice, but sometimes it’s just plain habit. For me, it’s the em dash (those long dashes that can break a sentence to insert a separate thought) and its kissing cousin, the ellipse. (…) I allow myself to em dash and ellipse with abandon as I write the draft, then I go back and ruthlessly cut them back. You’ll find a few in the final book, but far fewer than I’d written originally. Make sure you’re not overdoing those pet weaknesses.
    6. Eliminate the ambiguities. If you get confused at your own prose as you’re reading through (What the heck did I mean by that?), obviously you need to fix and clarify. But sometimes you won’t realize that something in a scene is ambiguous because of all that background you’ve got tucked away in your brain. This is where a beta reader is invaluable, because they won’t have the answers in their head the way you do. They will find the ambiguities. For example, if you wrote, Jenna and LaShonda walked into the room, and she picked up her sword, you’ll know it was LaShonda wielding the sword. But the sentence is ambiguous enough that your beta reader might not figure that out with the sentence written that way. Make sure you’re crystal clear.
    7. Delete the extraneous. Sometimes when you’re going with the flow writing that first draft, you’ll write a scene that just seems right. Once you’ve finished the book and you’re reading through, you’ll realize that scene never goes anywhere. It doesn’t move the story forward, doesn’t reveal any new important information to the reader, doesn’t add context to the characters or setting. That scene has to go. If there happens to be one little bit of information in it that is useful, you can place that elsewhere. You’re not allowed to leave it in the book just because you like it.
    8. Pay attention to continuity. Have you ever watched a TV show and in one shot the character’s wine glass is full, then in the next it’s half-full, then it’s full again in the next shot? Someone didn’t pay attention to continuity in that scene. In the case of Book 3 of the Tankborn trilogy, I have a scene early on where the characters have to show their ID to the authorities. Later when my characters encounter the authorities again, I’d forgotten about that entirely. During the revision, I had to put that ID-check into the later scene for continuity’s sake. If you set something up early on in your book, you have to be consistent later.
    9. Make sure your scenes are in the right order. In general, a book should get more and more exciting from beginning to end. The perils should increase, the revelations should be more and more monumental. You should make sure you have “rising action” from start to finish. If you find that a scene that should be closer to your climax appears too early, switch your scenes around. Don’t be afraid to juggle as needed.
    10. Answer all story questions. The worst thing you can do is have a reader finish your book and say, “But, but, but…what about that blue horse?” If you had a blue horse on page 134, you’d better “pay off,” i.e., make clear why that blue horse was there, by the end of the book. Never leave the reader hanging, wondering what the heck a particular scene had to do with the story. In fact if there doesn’t seem to be a way to pay a scene off, see number 7 above.

    There you go, 10 guidelines for revision. Are there any you think I missed? What do you watch out for during your revision process?

  • 5 Proven Ways to Wake Up the Draggy Bits in Your Novel

    Awakening Final cover-sWe’ve all been there. You’re at point A in your story. You can clearly visualize your destination: point B, when that next Wow moment happens. Point B is one of those scenes you’ve been looking forward to writing since you first thought up the story, and you know it’s going to be fantastic.

    But somehow, you’ve lost your road map between A and B. Your character seems to be slogging along with shackles on his feet, and every word out of his mouth sounds kind of lame. You know the story will pick up when you get to that gonzo scene on the horizon, but how do you get from here to there without putting your reader to sleep?

    Here are some methods that I’ve used to kick those pages into higher gear:

    1. Change your point of view character. This one is a favorite of mine. Of course, it assumes you’re using more than one POV in your book. If you are, the problem may be that the wrong character is telling that part of the story. It’s one of the other characters who is doing much more exciting things at the moment. Perhaps they’re in the middle of the action instead of on the sidelines. They’re the one who should be front and center.
    2. Switch from summary to scene. If you’re like me, you’re sometimes in such a hurry to get to that point B scene that you summarize a bunch of action to get there quicker. Summaries are great when you need a time transition and the action that takes place during that summary isn’t particularly important to the story. If it’s a string of ordinary days, better to summarize. If those are the days during which the main character is in captivity by space aliens and having her internal organs reorganized, I think the reader is gonna want more details. A scene with those details is called for.
    3. Get your characters talking. Paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of your characters silently doing things (unless it’s heart-pumping action) can be pretty snoozy after awhile. Often you’re trying to reveal information that moves your story forward. But for a reader, dialogue between two characters is a much more fast-paced way to reveal that information. Note: You don’t want to fall into the expository dialogue trap, e.g., “As you know, Bob, earth has been taken over by space aliens. You and I have had our internal organs reorganized several times now.” Both Bob and the speaker know this already and would never have that conversation.
    4. Get your characters moving. Sometimes even fast-paced dialogue can get a little dull if the characters are just standing in a room bouncing words off one another. Let them walk and talk. Or run and shout. Have them leave their room, or if they’re trapped in a prison, have them trying things to escape. Or they’re at least pacing, somehow in motion.

      El Gato
      El Gato ready to fight the Bad Guys.
    5. Throw in a fight scene. Well, not necessarily a fight, but go for some action. Don’t worry for the moment how it relates to your story. When I’ve gone ahead and written that scene that wasn’t in thesynopsis, that I hadn’t planned for, nearly every time, it magically ends up being a key moment for what comes later. Until I started writing it, I didn’t know I needed that scene. Sometimes I don’t figure out why I wrote that scene until I’m much farther along in the story. And if it turns out what I wrote never meshes with anything else? Just delete it. You probably got things moving just by writing it. That was its purpose and now it’s time to let it go.

    I hope these help. They work for me. Do you have any other methods of juicing up your story when it lags? Let me know in the comments.