Tag: editing

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Cameron’s Rule

Last week, I was called a perfectionist, not as an insult but as a statement of fact. It is true I like to siphon out as many errors as possible – all of them, ideally – before the public ever see it. But what’s the best way to make sure mistakes are picked up?

Read a printed copy

Many authors are in the habit of writing their work directly into a PC. In many ways, this is ideal because the words are in digital form and can be corrected without fuss, or sent to a third party. But it is more difficult to pick up errors: Scientific American has a detailed article on the subject.

So consider printing out your work to give yourself the best chance. Some people also like to change the font. I accept that printing is not good for the environment, so I keep a folder of used paper and print on the back where possible.

Read it out loud

When many people read, they like to ‘hear’ each word in their heads as if it’s being read aloud by someone else. So reading out loud as an author enables you to imagine how the reader will interpret your words, and can highlight any overlong sentences or incorrect punctuation use.

If you’re unable to find the privacy to read out loud, the next best solution is to use text-to-speech software, plenty of which is available on the Web. You can then listen to it spoken through headphones. The voice tends to be a monotone – although still miles ahead of Stephen Hawking’s antiquated synthesiser – allowing you to concentrate more on the words themselves.

Ask a friend or a professional

Be careful who you pick for this: family members or friends might gloss over the bad bits. Make sure you pick someone who’ll tell you honestly what’s wrong with it, but will also pick out what you’ve done right. Asking a professional proofreader is a more expensive option, yet it can be vital in a novel-length work.

Pocket watch, savonette-type. Italiano: Orolog...
Pocket watch, savonette-type. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Give it time

When you’ve finished a draft, one of the best moves you can make is to leave it alone for a while. If you go back too quickly, it’s possible to read what you want to see rather than what’s actually on the page because your mind’s still thinking about the words that have just been written.

But how long should you leave it for? That’s a question I’ve been wrestling with. After much thought, I’ve come up with my personal method, which I’d like to name, in an egotistical manner…

Cameron’s Rule

As a bare minimum, for work of:

  • 1500 words or fewer, leave it 24 hours;
  • 1501 words and above, allow one minute per word.

By this method, flash fiction and some short stories would be left a day, while an 80,000-word novel would be left for nearly two months. Bear in mind these are merely minimum times. There’s no harm in putting away work – especially shorter pieces – for a longer time.

 

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I’ve started so I’ll finish.

Normally, blog entries come to me easily. It might be prompted by a comment during the week, or be inspired by a particular problem I’m having.

This week, however, I’ve been struggling to complete an entry. I started on the topic of swearing, then about gaps in your writing CV, then about third-person biographies, but none of these topics were going anywhere. I might return to them in the future, but today’s entry is about finishing what you start.

I normally good at finishing stories and poems, but I have a few that have been untouched since the first draft. Most recently, I was asked to respond to an exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts. I abandoned my original idea after four verses because it was much too wordy and I wanted to take the narrative in a different direction. Here are those four verses:

We saw the archipelago of masts
while sailing over Dogger Bank in gale
force six conditions. They displayed full sails
like pirate vessels of the ancient past.
They numbered in the twenties. We informed
our captain. She immediately warned

them of our presence with a blast,
instructed us to try the radio.
All frequencies, all wattages, yet no
response was heard. When 30 minutes passed,
she ordered that her ship should deviate
of-course toward the masts, though gale force eight

was forecast. Once we had a closer view,
we noticed something out of place. The decks
were underwater. So it seemed. We checked
again. Correct. All decks submerged, no crew,
no skeletons, no personal effects,
just masts with sails and ragged flags. Perplexed,

we asked the captain where to go. Perplexed,
she stopped us by the archipelago.
Again we tried to use the radio
as gale force eight turned into 10. The next
the next we knew, the bow was pointing in the air.
It knocked us to the deck.

This needs a lot of work done. There are a number of options to breathe new life into it: cut out unnecessary words and phrases, continue to add verses, rewrite it as prose, recycle elements of it into other works, and/or cut it into individual phrases and shuffle them about.

To make what became the response, I used some elements of this story, cut out a lot of detail and rendered it as prose. The final result mimicked the shipping forecast on Radio 4.

I’ve done something similar for older pieces. Around 2011, I wasn’t writing much poetry and I thought what I had was quite a good piece. Four years later, I revisited it while answering a writing prompt and it wasn’t as good as I remembered. I took the same idea but structured the verse differently and I’m now happy with it.

Some writers seem scared to finish pieces, as if they’ll think of a better word or structure as soon as it’s been submitted to a publisher. But if its publication you’re looking for, there comes a time when you need to let go of it. Remember there will be every opportunity to amend it if it’s rejected, and some publishers will allow – or insist upon – amendments if it’s accepted.

I’ve been asked before how I know when I’ve finished a piece. That’s not an easy one to answer, but the best measure I have is when I stop thinking about it day-to-day. That’s when I leave it alone for a while, then revisit it with fresh eyes later on.

It’s a good idea to finish what you start, at least to the best of your ability. If you see the perfect outlet for your piece, it’s much easier to tweak it than to have to add or remove significant portions. You might then be able to submit it comfortably before the deadline.

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Patronising: that’s where you talk down to someone.

The other day, I saw a petrol tanker. It had a sentence painted on the side that said, as far as I can recall:

We take the petrol to the pump so you don’t have to go to the refinery to collect it.

I thought this rather insulted the intelligence of the audience. That’s how you might explain it if a child asked. But if you’re old enough to buy petrol, you’re old enough to understand what a tanker does. A friend’s daughter used to work in the media and often encountered this kind of tone. She brands it infantilisation.

It’s timeworn advice not to think about your audience while you’re writing fiction, but I do think it’s important while editing. Let’s say your character plays a musical instrument. It’s probable your audience would know what a balalaika is, but would they be familiar with a theremin?

If you’re unsure how a passage will be received by an audience, give it to other people. If it’s not clear to the majority of them, can your meaning be shown through dialogue or action rather than plain description? For the balalaika, you might only need the action:

Becky strummed her balalaika every evening, adding a fresh twist to popular rock classics.

Whereas the theremin might need more explanation, done here through dialogue:

An Etherwave-Theremin, assembled from Robert M...
An Etherwave-Theremin, assembled from Robert Moog’s kit: the loop antenna on the left controls the volume while the upright antenna controls the pitch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“What’s that aerial thingy?”
“This? It’s a theremin; it’s what I play.”
“How do you play that?”
“Put your hand near it and it makes a noise.”

Also ask yourself whether something actually needs to be explained. It’s a common habit of beginner writers to overexplain:

Jessica pushed down the door handle and pulled the door towards her. She stepped back as it opened and she saw Fiona in the room. Fiona was sitting in a chair and clasped in her hand a stack of £50 notes. When Jessica looked at her, she raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth wide, knowing she had been caught with the takings from the shop.

Whereas this could be made less flabby by allowing the reader to make the mental leap between actions:

Jessica entered the room. There was Fiona; £50 notes in her hand. The takings from the shop. “This is not what it looks like,” said Fiona.

Notice in the second passage that the focus is on the actions that drive the plot forward. Here, the facial expressions are of little relevance to the story; the reader wants to know what happened to the money. The question of relevance is key to pitching your text at the right level.

If anyone sees that oil truck, please pass on my comments to the company.

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When you don’t like your own work.

Last week, I discussed what to do when you don’t like someone else’s work, be it a novel or a live event, and a big thank-you for all the responses I received. However, I had an experience last week where I didn’t like part of my own work.

I was invited to write a piece inspired by the D’Arcy Thompson Museum at the University of Dundee, which would then be performed in the museum a few weeks later. Sir D’Arcy was a naturalist who disagreed with some aspects of Charles Darwin’s work, and the museum houses his surviving specimens.

I’m quite used to turning round work very quickly: I write it, leave it alone for a few days or a few weeks – depending on the deadline – then give it an edit. If I’ve time, I might be able to repeat this process, refining further each time.

With the Sir D’Arcy piece, I struggled to come up with the idea in the first place even after two long visits to the collection. Finally, I wrote a short poetic monologue inspired by a seven-foot narwhal tusk on the wall. The piece imagines what might have happened when the tusk was delivered to Sir D’Arcy and his students, and uses this to demonstrate that some of his ideas and views are now accepted by today’s scientists.

I was happy with the first section of the piece, but was less happy with the second, which I felt broke the Show, don’t tell rule. I felt it was too factual as the story was not shown through the actions of a character, as in the first section. The actual reading went well, but if I had more time, I could have improved it; in the process of writing this entry, I’ve thought of a possible way.

However, unless I’m invited back for a second performance – and that is a hint to the organisers – I have to accept that I put out what I consider to be substandard work.

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Putting quill to parchment.

Many authors are asked the same questions over and over again. One of these is often Do you write longhand or into a computer?

But however repetitive it becomes, it’s a question worth considering. A commercial novel averages around 80,000 words, and that’s just the final product, not taking into account the many redrafts that will inevitably have gone before.

Let’s consider the different ways that different authors physically externalise their words, and the alternative approaches that could be taken.

Learn to touch-type

One of the best choices I ever made at school was learning how to type with 10 fingers, as it’s a skill that served me well in my working life. There are a couple of huge advantages over using just two or three fingers: your word speed can more than double, and it spreads the effort between all your fingers rather than straining just a few of them.

Be advised that it takes a while to master initially, but you’ll eventually be able to do it without conscious thought. A word about tablet computers as well. These have virtual keyboards, so it is possible to touch-type on these, but you’ll need to keep an eye on your finger position as you won’t be able to feel for the keys.

Choose an alternative keyboard

It’s a well-known story that the QWERTY keyboard was originally designed to slow down typists as the first machines were prone to jamming. It’s less well-known that the jamming problem had been solved by the 1930s. This allowed August Dvorak to invent an improved keyboard to help typists increase their speed by placing the most common letters on the middle row.

Sadly, it failed to catch on widely, but it is available on every major operating system. I’ve used the Dvorak layout for some years and it has the edge over QWERTY in terms of word speed. To increase it further, you could try a chorded keyboard. Clerks of court and TV subtitlers use these to keep up with the pace of normal speech. I haven’t used one myself.

Open your notepad

Unless you’re employing a shorthand system, this slows down your thoughts to the speed of the pen or pencil, and some authors are convinced it makes for higher quality writing. Martina Cole claims to be able to tell when a novel has been written directly into a laptop, while James Ellroy sends his handwritten work to a typist.

Be aware, however, that there’s no backup unless you’re using carbon paper. I’ve been told that a highly regarded author was forced to rewrite a large section of a novel when the paper blew out of an open window.

Be a dictator

Barbara Cartland famously dictated her words to an assistant, sometimes producing around 7000 words a day. Happily, you no longer need to pay someone for this service, as voice dictation is supported by many devices.

When I first tried this in the late 1990s, I gave it up as a bad joke. It. Required. Each. Word. To. Be. Spoken. Individually. Today’s software works with normal speech to a reasonable degree of accuracy without any training, even with my Scottish accent, although I recommend doing some to improve it even further.

I often use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which can also be used to control many of your computer’s functions. In my experience, the actual dictation is fairly quick; it’s the formatting that tends to take a while.

Unconventional means

Probably most famous user of assistive technology is Stephen Hawking. He uses a switch activated by his cheek to choose words and letters from a computer screen.

But another author had to use a more difficult method. Jean-Dominique Bauby was struck by Locked-in Syndrome, so he could only blink and move his neck in a restricted manner. He wrote every word of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by listening to somebody physically reading out the alphabet and blinking at the correct letter.

 

There are many ways to put your words out there, and not all of these will work for every author. For me, it’s through necessity that I use voice dictation and handwriting because my fingers are currently strained with typing too much. So until they improve, that’s how I’ll be writing my work.

But I’ve long thought that when you’re forced to take a certain action, you can always learn something useful from it. And that’ll be the theme of next week’s entry.

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The Finish Line.

Every April, there’s a contest called Camp NaNoWriMo, an offshoot of November’s National Novel Writing Month. In November, the aim is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Camp, by contrast, allows participants to choose a word goal starting at 10,000 and to work on any type of writing.

I intended to do more work on one of my unpublished novels, which is mostly written but needed extra scenes. I did write a few thousand words of it, but I didn’t feel the same enthusiasm as I did when I edited it a couple of months ago. Rather than bore myself stupid with it, I changed focus.

A piece of advice often given to new writers is Finish what you start. It’s rare that I don’t finish work, but I did have a few short stories that had gone nowhere. I therefore used the opportunity to finish two of them.

One had started off as a little self-indulgence but rereading it after this time allowed me to work out and deliver the message I was trying to convey. The other one should have been written in one session, but I was interrupted and never went back to it. I now have a satisfactory ending for both pieces and they’re ready for a second redraft – and a ruthless reduction in their word counts. As for the novel, I will redraft it when my enthusiasm returns.

Camp NaNo is traditionally done without a group leader and without meet ups in person. In Dundee, however,  we’ve been fortunate enough to have active members who have met up every Tuesday in April to work on their respective pieces. I set my own target at 10,000 words as I also had a university paper to hand in around the same time, but thanks to these meetings, I managed to reach the goal.

If you’re also in Dundee, by the way, there’s a new monthly Literary Lock-in at the George Orwell up the Perth Road. There are no speeches or readings, just an opportunity for writers to mingle and speak with each other. The next one is on 25 May.

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Over Your Shoulder.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see a special screening of Local Hero. It’s an excellent film, and if you have the opportunity, you should see it.

The director Bill Forsyth was brought in at the end to hold a question-and-answer session with the audience. He mentioned at the beginning that he hadn’t seen the film in years, and an audience member asked why this was. He answered that he wasn’t ashamed of his work, simply that he wasn’t interested in looking back, and questioned whether – for example – a writer would be interested in rereading their old stories.

Contrary to the director’s opinion, my answer is a definite yes. I openly admit that being a writer wasn’t a childhood dream, and I therefore don’t have notepad upon notepad of embarrassing teenage musings. Rather, I wrote my first fiction in late 2010, just before I turned 27, and looking back enables me to keep a weather eye on how I’ve improved.

Even if I come across an old piece that I find jarring, I know I only need to rewrite it, or in extreme cases, deconstruct it, to bring it up to my current standards.

A prime example of such a jarring piece is one of the first poems I wrote, called The Cooler, a short verse about a character’s self-imprisonment. Looking at it now, it needs to be longer to fully convey the situation, as it’s currently unclear, and the clumsy language needs to be trimmed, eg, “It stays cold all night like a fridge.” Now I’ve looked back at it, I can think about these issues and improve the work.

In my next entry, I intend to cover the issue of rewriting in a more in-depth fashion.

I mentioned I’ve been writing fiction for less than four years, but I was a blogger long before that, discussing the issues on my mind at that moment, much as I do here. That writing is a little embarrassing, but it’s only by looking back that I can see how much I’ve moved on. Here’s a typical entry from almost exactly ten years ago.

There are many writers who started later in life, and I found out recently that John Grisham is one of them. He didn’t write his first novel until he was in his 30s, and didn’t give up his work as a lawyer until his second was published.

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Long May It Last.

A couple of entries ago, I riffed upon the art of shortening the short story. But having thought a little more about it, I’ve come to realise a lot of the short stories I’m most proud of are actually longer than 2000 words. I have written novels, but they’re a different class entirely.

My longest short is called An Abundance of Apples, clocking in at around 4500 words. This tells the story of a man who trades 26 items, each beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. This was always going to be the approximate length, and it gave some room to manoeuvre when telling the story.

Another of my favourites is The Cracked Goldfish Bowl, about a man with an amazing memory but no self-confidence. The final word count was 4300 words, but that’s merely because I kept thinking of new challenges to face the main character rather than creating an overarching plan.

I tend to approach my short stories from the top downwards. Sometimes I know where I’m going to end up, but often I let the story wander as it wishes. An artist I know, Jennifer Robson, prefers the meandering approach to her sewing, as she doesn’t feel challenged if she knows what the end result will be.

I’m a strong believer in writing a proper ending to a story, whether that ending is known beforehand or not. Sadly I’ve read too many ‘two-thirds’ pieces with a great set up, and enjoyable narrative, but the writer has omitted a satisfactory conclusion, leaving it to flop out with a vague sentence or two. That final third might have made all the difference.

What I’m saying is that some stories need cut down to size, as discussed in that last entry, while others require some room to breathe. The question is which approach is the best one to take for that particular story.