Last night we were treated to a stimulating and illuminating talk on editing from writer and editor John Reid of Blackwater Press. To distinguish it from the kind of editing involving line by line vigilance for errors in spelling or grammar, he prefers to call major editing, rewriting. This is a slightly longer blog than usual as I think several people who didn’t make it would find his talk especially interesting.
To start, he urged us to realise that at all writing involves metaphor, a way of describing new things to others. We’ve used from time immemorial in speech and writing. There was much amusement from our attempts to describe to a blindfolded Tony an object John brought – a fuzzy covered pebble from a plant display! He pointed out how many metaphors like ‘head’ or ‘foot’ are used endlessly e.g. foot of a mountain, page etc and that we combine/form new ones to explain new items/experiences. (see Julian Jaynes, Reflections from the Dawn of Consciousness). Language is but ’rampant restlessness in a sea of vocabulary’ It is aways in a state of flux and we must use it afresh to convey meaning to our readers.
Using excerpts from several extracts from drafts of a short story that he had written, John led us through a process to consider.
1 Is our story balanced? Does it have enough metaphor but not too much (overwriting)?
2 Does each sentence have enough ‘charge’ like electricity to keep a reader reading?
3 Does the style avoid overused cliches?
4 Does it avoid ‘clunks’?
5 Is it grammatical but not too ‘safe’ and bland?
6 Does the plot convey the situation adequately?
7 Do the characters have impetus?
If we find a problem, John suggested ‘journalling’ it, i.e. actually writing down what we think is not working. This often clarifies our thoughts, offering a solution to for example, not enough is happening, or a character is not acting as they should, or their motivation is not clear or the narrative is not believable
Other problems we should watch for:
1 A sentence may seem ‘flat’ or too simplistic
2 A section lacks tensions– do we need a twist to send reader off in a different direction?
3 Overall the story isn’t exciting us anymore- do we need a new angle or perspective on IT. For example, might it be better to start in a different time frame, should we move the timescale or use retrospection in first person to convey it better?
4 The flow is’ wrong.’ This is no more important t than other factors.
His general advice included leaving the story for a while (‘to breath!’) Typing it to read in a different font or on a different medium eg. on an iPad. Looking at as character’s motivation: why are they acting so? Is it believable -does it make sense? It can be helpful to make a character one the reader can empathise with. His easiest suggestion is to make them or give them a child! And read a lot of short stories! He suggested a list of differing authors to see how they construct compelling stories and arrange them in layers e.g. Tessa Hadley (who takes a wide lens and uses time jumps, for example) Lorrie Morre, Donald Bartholeme, Colin Barret, George Saunders and a novel essentially comprised of short stories in his view, A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahari.
Above all, he acknowledges rewriting needs patience and time. We should persevere. Everyone is different- there are planners and ‘pantsters ‘(now called ‘discovery’ writers according to Grahame) like John who let characters write the story. It was a stimulating evening that went on through tea break right to the ned with lots of searching questions from members. John has offered to return next year to talk about publishing.