Editing Your Baby

Issue 3: January 2012

Editing Your Baby

Oh, how bad I've been for two months! I haven't written a word and I've neglected my readers. I've even neglected updating my website. But we writers know, it's not getting stymied that matters, it's overcoming stasis and continuing to write that counts. So here we go again...back on track and back to the keyboard!

Anyone who has attended public schools knows that writing involves four steps:

1. Prewriting
2. Drafting
3. Editing
4. Publishing never go for the heart. Look for the appendix! It's much less painful that way

The most challenging of these steps is editing. Here you have created a story with all your heart, soul and hard work poured into it and you realize it's too long. How do you cut your baby into pieces? The answer is, look for the parts that are not essential to your story. Condensing long descriptions into more concise wording is the key to successful editing.

I recently wrote a story for a contest which required a limit of 500 words. I wrote carefully. I sweated bullets and I was still over the word limit. So I called my sister, who is also an excellent writer, and read the story to her over the phone. Reading your story out loud, whether it's to a family member, a friend or your dog is invaluable. You will hear where the writing becomes awkward and where there is wording you were subconsciously not very happy with. When I read my story to Debbie, she caught two important things wrong. One was a sentence in which I used the word "beast". As I read it, I tripped over the word and she said I should change that sentence a bit. The second thing was an overly long description about the road system in the town. The road layout was important to the story because the roads formed a pentagram. Here's an example of how editing that description helped eliminate unnecessary words. The red parts I changed or completely deleted and the blue parts I added to enhance the story.

Original (339 words):

She pulls over to the curb and unfolds the map she's torn from the yellow pages. Celia highlights the five major roads in orange. Guinevere and Arthur merge to form southbound 1303; Arthur and Percival merge to form northbound 1303. Celia stares at the map for a moment. Amid the hundreds of crisscrossing side roads, she sees the overall layout. These five roads for a five-pointed star outlined by Round Table Road. "Now that's just more than obsessive," Celia says, turning onto Guinevere and following it to where it merges with Lancelot to create west 88. Finally she's on her way home to the dozen unpacked boxes and partially stocked kitchen of her lonely Ranch style home.

Street lights end two blocks outside the city limits and half the roads are unmarked. Suburbia is dramatically transformed into countryside with miles of undeveloped land dipping into dark valleys and climbing onto barren foothills. Celia's property is down this narrow two-lane road which twists and turns until she doesn't know if she's heading north or west. There no should or driveways. No headlights mark a passing car. Blackness surrounds her like a cloak. As the curves sharply to the left, Celia sees a flash of yellow and feels the jolt of hitting something. She touches the breaks, but loses traction on the wet road. The Mustang fishtails left, then right, then left again, finally coming to a stop on the wrong side of the street. Celia sees a yellow form in the reddish tints of her brake lights. "Oh, god...oh, god, I've hit someone's dog!" is all Celia can think, She grabs her umbrella and gets out of the car. A young Gold Retriever lies on the pavement panting. "It’s okay, girl," Celia says as she approaches the animal. Whimper comes from the wound beast and Celia kneels on the puddled pavement to inspect it for injuries. There isn't any blood, but there could be internal injuries. Celia touches the dog's ribs. It lifts its' head and turns to face her.

First Edit (199 words):
She pulls over to the curb and unfolds the map she's torn from the yellow pages. Celia highlights the five major roads in orange. Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Percival and Gawain. Amid the hundreds of crisscrossing side roads, these five roads and Round Table Road create a pentagram encircling the town. "Now that's just more than obsessive," Celia says, heading for the dozen unpacked boxes and partially stocked kitchen of her lonely Ranch style home. Most of the roads are unlit and unmarked just past Round Table Road. Suburbia is dramatically transformed into countryside with miles of undeveloped land dipping into dark, valleys and climbing onto barren foothills. Celia's property is down this narrow two-lane road which twists and turns until she doesn't know if she's heading north or west. There's no shoulder or driveways. No headlights mark a passing car. Blackness surrounds her like a cloak. Principal Wolfe calls it, "Living outside the circle."

I liked some of the darker descriptions that helped set up the isolation of living "outside the circle". It was an important piece of information that I left out of the original. However, I ended writing more words than I cut, so I tried again.

My third edit took the word count down to 154, which helped me meet the limit for this contest:
She pulls over to the curb and unfolds the map she's torn from the yellow pages. Celia highlights the five major roads in orange: Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Percival and Gawain. Amid the hundreds of crisscrossing side roads, these five create a perfect pentagram with Round Table Road as the circumstance. "Now that's just more than obsessive," Celia says, heading for the dozen unpacked boxes and partially stocked kitchen of her lonely Ranch style home. Most of the roads are unlit and unmarked just past Round Table Road. Suburbia dramatically transforms into countryside with miles of undeveloped land dipping into dark valleys and climbing onto barren foothills. Celia's property is down this narrow two-lane road which twists and turns until she doesn't know if she's heading north or west. There's no shoulder or driveways. No headlights mark a passing car and blackness surrounds her like a cloak. Principal Wolfe says she's, "living outside the circle."

Thanks again for reading and sharing!

Rhodes Fitzwilliam

Writing Challenge #2 Mimic the Best

One of the reasons we read the best authors is so we can learn from them and one of the best ways to learn is to mimic. So for this writing challenge I've chosen one paragraph from the first chapter of The Windup Girl. You are to write your own original paragraph using Bacigalupi's as a template. Where there are nouns, use nouns; where there are adjectives, use adjectives. The difference will be in which nouns and what adjectives you use to describe them. Send your finished paragraph to rhodesfitzwilliam@gmail.com in the body of your e-mail. Put "Writing Challenge #2 in the subject line. The three best paragraphs will be published in next month's newsletter. Submissions are due by August 27th. (I am trying to get on track with publishing this newsletter one the 1st of the month!) Here's the paragraph from The Windup Girl to mimic:

"Anderson nods absently. Around him, the market soi bustles with Bangkok's morning shoppers. Mounds of durians fill the alley in reeking piles and water tubs splash with snakehead fish and red-fin furnace. Overhead, palm-oil polymer tarps sag under the blast furnace heat of the tropic sun, shading the market with hand-painted images of clipper ship trading companies and the face of the revered Child Queen. A man jostles past, holding vermilion-combed chickens high as they flap and squawk outrage on their way to slaughter, and women in brightly colored pha sin bargain and smile with the vendors, driving down the price of pirated U-Tex rice and new-variant tomatoes."

Response to Writing Challenge #2

Our second writing challenge was to mimic a paragraph from Paolo Bacigalupi’s Nebula Award-winning novel, The Windup Girl.  Here is the original paragraph:

"Anderson nods absently. Around him, the market soi bustles with Bangkok's morning shoppers. Mounds of durians fill the alley in reeking piles and water tubs splash with snakehead fish and red-fin furnace. Overhead, palm-oil polymer tarps sag under the blast furnace heat of the tropic sun, shading the market with hand-painted images of clipper ship trading companies and the face of the revered Child Queen. A man jostles past, holding vermilion-combed chickens high as they flap and squawk outrage on their way to slaughter, and women in brightly colored pha sin bargain and smile with the vendors, driving down the price of pirated U-Tex rice and new-variant tomatoes."

Here is what I wrote mimicking Bacigalupi’s paragraph:

Hamsted listens quietly. Near him, the child illegal breathes in the office’s cold air. Mounds of flesh expand his chest in rattling rasps and lungs gurgle with aspirated fluids and yellow-filled airways. Nearby, his overworked sick grandmother stands with the stiff backed determination of the only parental figure, refusing to succumb with hard-nosed patience of mountain stone against wind and the face of an undiluted love. The receptionist clatters pans in the kitchen, warning that a suspicious-looking visitor  enters as they search and question ruthlessly to find their hidden prey, and the television is turned loudly to avoid discovery and drowns the visitors in sound, making them yell their belligerent question with new-found vigor.

The Challenge of the Challenge

I chose to utilize this challenge into a short story I’m writing about an Asperger’s child who is marked as illegal by the laws of a futurist government. The most difficult thing I found was keeping my story line intact while staying true to Bacigalupi's style. I’m not entirely sure it worked. I may have to tweak it a bit to also stay true to my own style in the actual story, but you can catch the drift of what I mean by mimicking another author’s style. It’s excellent practice to expand and grow your own voice by “hearing” you words in someone else’s.