Rewriting

All writers, no matter how accomplished, can benefit from hearing a second opinion from a thoughtful reader. For many years, I was the second opinion. My functions at Keyboard included copy-editing, technical editing, and some big-picture critiques as well.

Before my first two novels were published, they were edited. I still haven’t quite forgiven Shelly Shapiro at Del Rey for making me change this sentence: “His people were hers’ enemies.” And no, that apostrophe is not a fleck of grit on your screen. This is a perfectly grammatical sentence that happens to contain an almost unique double possessive.

But all that is prelude. What I’m discovering this week is how useful — and how challenging — it can be to have a novel scrutinized by a developmental (big-picture) editor whose role is purely advisory. She can’t require me to change anything: I still get the final call. But boy, am I going to have to roll up my sleeves and do some more work! My Scrivener file now has dozens of embedded notes [in boldface, in brackets] that I’ll be hacking my way through. Some will require moving chunks of text from one chapter to another and then smoothing over the seams. Some scenes will need to be rewritten.

I thought I was done with this book. (Actually, it’s a four-volume series that tells one long continuous story. Whether I call it one novel or four depends mostly on what mood I’m in.) After I went through the whole thing last fall, tidying it up, I said to myself, “Okay, that’s it. No more edits.” But then I started wondering: Would I benefit from hiring an editor?

We all prefer to think, “Oh, my creative work is just wonderful as is! An editor will just tell me, ‘Tweak a couple of adverbs and delete a couple of commas and it will be a best seller!'” But that’s pure delusion. It’s the ego grinding its gears, nothing more.

I scouted around online — carefully, because editing isn’t cheap — and found someone that I was fairly confident would do a decent job. And indeed, I’m not disappointed. Now that I have her notes on Book I of the series, it’s clear that I made some mistakes and missed some opportunities. It’s going to be money well spent, and I have some serious work to do.

That’s not to say that I agree with all of her comments.”Pare this scene down to what is really essential”? Maybe not. Maybe I like it just the way it is. But even in cases like that, her comments lead me to examine the scene more closely. What do I feel is essential, or engaging, or beautiful about this scene? If the editor thinks it’s boring, why does she think that?

When The Wall at the Edge of the World was being edited in 1991, the editor (and I’m chagrined to have to admit that I’ve forgotten her name) said, “The psychic/dream sequence at the end drags on too long. I think you should tighten it up.” I re-read it and said to her, “No, I think it’s too short.” She was getting bored because I hadn’t focused well enough on what was important. I strengthened it, adding a thousand words or so, and she liked what I did, and that’s how it was published.

The point being, an editor’s gut response may be on the money, even if her suggestion isn’t. She may sense a problem, but it’s still my job to understand what problem she’s sensing.

Back in the present tense, one plot point was simply too huge a coincidence for my editor to swallow. So I’ve written an entirely new chapter with a newly devised explanation of how Spindler (who among his other accomplishments is a burglar) happens to climb in that particular window at that particular moment.

At several points the editor suggested that I needed to delve deeper into my characters’ emotions. And she was right. I’m not an emotional person, so I sometimes just write about what happened and forget to mention how the characters felt about it. (I think Hemingway did that sometimes too, but I’m not Hemingway.)

A central point of her critique, which I’m still digesting, was that my lead character “lacks agency.” This is a slightly technical way of saying that too often events happen to the lead character rather than the character taking action to move the plot forward. To take action, to be an agent, a character needs a clear motivation — a keen desire. My lead character’s motivation tends to flicker and flop around. She dithers.

That’s bad, right? But here’s the tricky bit: The lead character is a 17-year-old girl. She works in her uncle’s inn, where she waits tables, changes the sheets, and mops the floor. She has not the faintest idea that she’s anybody important. Yet suddenly she’s confronted with the fact that a god, no less, expects her to rush off and defeat the forces of evil. Plus, she’s not Joan of Arc, okay? She has no army. And the god seems not to have noticed or to care about that detail. Having discovered that she’s the Chosen One, she’s left in the lurch by this lackadaisical deity.

Should this character have a clear motivation? Should she take decisive action? Should she roll up her sleeves and say, “Yes, by golly, I’m going to take charge! I’ll smite the forces of evil!” Or should she maybe keep changing her mind, suffer feelings of confusion and inadequacy, and try to avoid making a commitment?

Plotted fiction works best when the lead character tackles her challenges head-on. Or so we’re assured by those who teach creative writing. And indeed, I already have a couple of ideas about how to get my lead character to be more active. But I don’t want to over-simplify her character. I don’t want to turn her into a little tin caricature. Hey, Hamlet dithered. Maybe dithering is not such a bad thing.

If I hadn’t chosen to hire an editor, I never would have realized this was a topic I needed to explore. Whatever choice I end up making, the book will be stronger — a lot stronger. Or at least, I flatter myself that it will be.