The cats remain fascinated by the classes. They can't figure out who I'm talking to.The Editing class is split into three sections. In this first session, we focused on developmental, or “big picture,” editing.
Some people are taking the class in order to edit their own stuff, others to edit for other folks, a couple for a combination of that. We talked about what a developmental edit is intended to do, and how it’s different from a copy-edit. In fact, you want to avoid copy-editing (other than a couple of cases which I’ll get to in a minute) because often that sentence you’re tinkering with will end up discarded or substantially revised in the final version.
Honing your editing ability to where you can trust it is one way to free yourself up when writing. Instead of listening to the internal editor telling you that sentence isn’t perfect or that you need to check that name on Wikipedia before using it, you can assure that editor it will get its chance during the revision process and go on writing.
Developing a process also helps you know when to stop rewriting. I work from the big picture stuff in, moving to small sentence level details in a second or third draft. Usually my process goes like this:
Bang out a first draft. It may have parenthetical directions like (expand on this) or (transition here) or (describe), but it is a complete story.
(Optional but encouraged) Let it sit for a week or two. This is where procrastination can really bite you in the ass.
Print out the draft and write all over it. This is my developmental edit, in which structures may get changes, sections moved (or eliminated), point of view or tense changed, etc. It’s also where all those parenthetical directions get fulfilled.
Entering these changes onto the computer may involve some more tinkering as I do so, but generally I’m working towards another draft that I can print out.
That draft gets printed out and edited again. This stage is where I read aloud and tinker at the sentence and paragraph level. I may changes names at this point, and I’ll do things like look for adverbs (as discussed in The 10% Solution).
I will probably do another read aloud pass after that’s entered into the computer, depending on how hard a deadline is pressing.
More on developmental editing, what it is, how I do it, and how one needs to adapt editing to genres such as hard SF, dark fantasy, horror, etc, in another post.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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What I'm Working On: The SFWA Cookbook
Watermelon cake: cake or watermelon? I don't think we'll have this recipe, but among what's been promised is tobacco-infused tequila hot chocolate (Kevin Hearne), Muddle-in-the-Middle Mojito (Kay Kenyon) and Elf BBQ (Jim Hines).Beside all the convulsions of moving and prep for travel, I’m doing the usual writing (working on a YA novel and have a slew of stories I’ve been asked for), but I’m also working on a nonfiction project of a type I never thought I’d work on: a cookbook, which I’m co-editing with Fran Wilde.
It’s a SFWA project, and I’m excited about it for a number of reasons.
Next year is SFWA’s 50th anniversary, so this will be part of the celebration. Accordingly, it’s a party-themed cookbook with sections on savory snacks, sweet snacks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and dishes to take to potlucks.
It’s a (hopefully) noncontentious effort that celebrates SFWA’s community, a community which is for me one of the benefits of being a member.
It’s a great chance for me to touch base with a lot of fellow members. I’m fairly certain I’m SFWA’s next vice-president (barring the event of a successful write-in campaign for Randall Garrett) and it’s wonderful to have a reason to interact with them other than problem-solving. I’ve been contacting a few members in advance (there will be a general solicitation to the members next month) and it’s been a lot of fun seeing some illustrious names in my inbox. I’ve talked to a few who I didn’t know had left, and I hope that maybe it’ll persuade some to give the organization another chance.
We get to test a lot of very interesting recipes.
As with so many SFWA projects, I’m learning a lot in the process.
Who doesn’t like a party?
It’s a chance to share my Welsh rarebit recipe with the world. 😉
We’ve got a lot of cool plans that will be revealed over the coming months, so stay tuned.
Description captures so much nuance, and the structure of the sentence can prove integral to its effect, as frequently happens in Dunnett's writing.A series that I come back to repeatedly is Dorothy Dunnett’s marvelous six-volume series The Lymond Chronicles. Dunnett has two strengths: dialogue and its accompanying actions as well as a descriptive gift that I am bitterly envious of. Right now I’m working my way through the books for a third or fourth time, and I’m midway through Book 3, The Disorderly Knights.
In this chapter Lymond and Oonagh are escaping the Turkish camp, and it’s just marvelous.
At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. ‘I cannot swim. You know it?”
The sea is the still dark pool, the brimming edge of freedom and we know that it’s still perilous and questionable because they can’t even see the boat. It’s a passage where words are scarce and breath is conserved, and Dunnett deftly raises the stakes here with that six word exchange.
In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. ‘Trust me.’ And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board.
Right off the bat, the first moment of the paragraph, the terse tense nature of the dialogue is maintained, along with a single detail reminding us of the lack of lighting. And because it’s Lymond, brilliant ephemeral Lymond, that detail backs up the dazzle of his character with its verb masquerading as a noun: flash. The moment where he draws her into the water, first to the lovely image of the phosphorescence around her ankles, then and deeper, and deeper, as though each comma was a wave, is one of those that bludgeons me with despair whenever I read Dunnett, because I don’t think I’ll ever come close to the precision and brilliant construction of that sentence, and she does it line after line after line for six fricking books, plus the eight book Niccolo series and the MacBeth one. HOLY COW. And then she delivers the final stroke with the temperature of the silky water combined with the information that now she’s up to her waist. We’re reminded that Lymond is not in the best physical shape because Dunnett never resists a chance to ratchet up the tension.
After that a long sentence conveys the sense of the journey, starting with the sound and visual of his pale head. Something about the way the sentence is constructed mimics the physical blocking of the scene, with Oonagh being drawn over and through the water with the drive of his body submerged beneath, pulling them both forward. Followed by more journey, and even more sense of the lighting, with the ship black against glossy black.
She never knew how long a swim that was, for she had one task: to make his work possible. Her body limp, her limbs brushing the surface of the sea, she took air at the top of his thrust; learned after the first gagging mistake to close every channel to the sudden dip, the molesting wave that slapped suddenly over one cheek. The hard grip under her armpits never altered, nor did Lymond’s own breathing for a long time vary at all.
That paragraph has a lot of sexual, physical terms (her body limp, her limbs brushing the surface of the sea, she took air at the top of his thrust) that turn violent (learned after the first gagging mistake to close every channel to the sudden dip, the molesting wave that slapped suddenly over her cheek), which echoes Oonagh’s experiences in the book, having been beaten many times by her former lover Cormac MacCarthy. But interestingly, the next sentence shows us that Lymond is steady where the violence is sporadic; he is drawing her forward through it. I’ve noticed Dunnett repeating figures like this over and over before — in Queens’ Play, it’s eyes, for example, so I’ll be curious to see whether this keeps getting repeated — or I may go back to earlier chapters to look at their interactions again.
I urge my writing students to copy out passages like this, to test them sentence by sentence, looking to see how the effects are created. Sometimes it’s just an exercise in angst, when you’re working with a writer that’s much better than you are, but I can’t help but think you always learn something from the practice.
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