Lecture Ignite Your Fiction Session Seven
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“Ignite Your Fiction”
Session Seven: Analyzing & Revising EDNA in YOUR Work
By Sally J. Walker
Now that you have the tools for thinking about what your words and phrasing DO, how do you assess and revise to make the most of your skills in each and every story?
No, you do NOT take a highlighter to every story. The objective is to THINK in terms of effect, balance, ease of flow to reach a style that is natural for both you and the reader. Some writers are objective literary stylists akin to journalists. Their sentence and image delivery is bare bones, allowing the reader to draw on their own memories and formulate their own mental images. Other writers are subjective literary stylists who provide lush detail using evocative language, inserting the exact picture into the reader’s mind.
Neither style is right or wrong; they just ARE your style. When you simply “talk” your story as if you are spinning the tale to the reader sitting next to you, you will automatically demonstrate YOUR preferred style. Yes, naturally subjective writers can learn to pare their writing down, just as objective writers can identify where to enhance theirs. THAT is where you begin your assessment of where to do more, where to do less in your revision process. You want to connect with ease, not one phrase or sentence coming off as contrived, trying too hard.
So write the story THEN analyze each paragraph, each page, each chapter for the balance and flow that suits YOU. The conscious effort will pay off the more you write because you will find yourself needing less and less EFFORT to achieve a story in your voice.
The WIP Revision Process
Personally, I perpetually revise as I write. It is the way my brain works. I let the words, sentences, pages flow. When I feel “done for the day,” I go back and reread looking for logic, flow, blatant errors. My next writing session I AGAIN reread what was last written. Frequently even that abbreviated rest period allows my brain to pick up what was skimmed over last time. Doesn’t always work, but it is how I proceed.
I have found in this “next day read” that I tend to focus on looking for balance and my most common writing faults such as sentence style repetition, -ly words and vague pronouns (such as when more that one male in a scene, using “his” and it’s unclear WHICH character is referenced). Have you picked up bad habits that just flow out of you?
The next day read is also where I focus on achieving balance of my own EDNA. I no longer highlight but I do THINK about the purposes of each sentence, phrase, paragraph, description, factual presentation, mannerism or movement, each character’s speech. When I am “in the moment” of actually writing, the words flow out of me fairly fast, sometimes up to five pages an hour. It is on the next day read that I have a tad of logical, analytical distance to assess my intent.
I have found that this analysis sucks my mind back into the story so I can get back to the storytelling on the subsequent designated writing period. The analytical reread has become a mental journey back into living vicariously with my characters.
I am NOT telling you that this should become your process. I am just saying this is my WIP Revision Process that has allowed me to be so prolific (and work on a variety of projects at once).
More importantly, this revising-while-writing process is not my FINAL revision. I know I am not perfect. I know my eyes can slide right over errors because I THINK I got it right (and the fact that I trained myself to speed-read in my teens which is a hindrance when editing my own work). So when a novel or screenplay is entirely done I go back over it several times looking for different things. Trust me, you will NOT be able to see all your faulty writing with one read-through. Only when you look for specific things will you pick up your own frequently committed mistakes.
Step One: General Assessment of Structure
Most writers have had the mantra of “Beginning, Middle, Ending” structure pounded into their psyche. The conscientious writer pays attention to the balance that mantra demands. It is somewhat numerical in that ¼ of a piece of work provides the set-up, the middle 1/2 tells of all the trials and tribulations incorporating all the challenges that push the main character to be someone more than at the beginning and the final ¼ resolves all the uncertainties and PROVES the character has achieved or exceeded their potential overcoming all the antagonist threw at him or her.
If you have a 400-page book that means 100 pages built the main character’s fictional world that has made him or her who they are, the world that changed around pages 80-90 with an event that took the character in a new direction not previously anticipated. In the middle’s first 100 pages new people, new skills, new knowledge created one tentative challenge after another the main character had to react to.
At the midpoint chapter, about pages 180-210, some epiphany event rattled the character’s awareness to the point that he or she took charge of MADE things happen over the next 100 pages. The second 100 pages of this middle are about the character actively, even arrogantly striving toward a goal . . . while the antagonistic element or person is becoming STRONGER THAN the protagonist. At about page 280 the antagonist attacks and beats down the protagonist so completely, the character has only two choices: 1) give up on life or 2) come out fighting for survival.
Viola! This is the spring board into the final 100 pages of intense effort to overcome the antagonist and achieve success. Planning and maneuvering unfold until the ultimate climactic “battle” where the protagonist risks what is most valuable. The experienced writer knows the reader’s reward is to see an ultimate outcome that stimulates the imagination about “life after the novel.” for the protagonist. In other words, you want your reader putting down the book but the characters staying in that reader’s imagination.
The same structure works for a short story. 1/4--1/2--1/4. Only in a short story you are depicting ONE major event in a main character’s life. The time period is more condensed, the cast limited. You do not have time to wander into any subplots contributing to the situation.
Stage plays quite obviously follow this logical structure, more closely to the short story focus on one pivotal event in the main character’s life. But between “Lights up” and “Curtain closes” the audience witnessing the actors right before their eyes still need to travel the same cycle of Setup-Confrontation-Resolution. As one dramatist said: “Get your character up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him down.”
Because films have the luxury of super-imposing change of dates and location and provide instantaneous visuals to ground the audience’s imagination, they are more novelistic in detail and depth. However, they STILL maintain a tight focus on one major thread that changes a character’s life in that same Beginning-Middle-Ending logic.
How does understanding this elemental structure relate to your use of EDNA? Balance, balance, balance. Just as the structure will provide the frame work for story and character growth, your awareness of the tools and the materials of storytelling, the EDNA, will complete the house.
Step Two: Chapter by Chapter Analysis
First, consider each chapter’s opening. It can be contemplative, a reflection of what has just happened. It could even be the RESULTS of what just happened in the end of the previous chapter, but remember this: If you start on the highest point of interest, your chapter has no where to go but down which slows the story pace for your reader. Starting on exposition, even if it is the internalized evaluation of the focal character but keeping it compact and full of questions, gives your chapter a foundation to build on.
Description’s emotional triggers is another elemental building block for chapter beginnings. You immediately suck your reader into commiserating with the character’s experience and lead to the Action-Dialogue the reader seeks.
Now, examine the final scene of each chapter. Is it an action-dialogue scene that jeopardizes some aspect of life for the protagonist (or even the antagonist)? Did you create a major question that results in a “page-turner” chapter ending? Never ever RESOLVE an issue at the end of a chapter. You want that reader anxious to get on with the rest of the story to find out what happens next.
Step Three: Character by Character Analysis
Since you have LIVED with this story and these characters for so long, at this point you should be groaning. Good. That means you KNOW where your characters are living life on the pages you’ve written. You know what scenes they are in and what speeches they have contributed to the story. Here is where you march through the entire work one character at a time looking for all that makes your one character the unique, interesting human being you want.
Look for:
- Description consistency
- Dialogue consistency
- Evidence of growth or tension demonstrated, NOT told!
- Mannerisms, quirks, preferences, talents, faults
Analyze where you said too much or repeated information, remembering that some readers DO read a book at one sitting. If you have the broken hearted young thing remembering again and again and again how his lips felt or the angry soldier recalling the same horrendous battle scene in the same way again and again and again . . . You get the idea. Trust me that only meticulous attention to each character will prevent this sort of over-kill writing. YOU don’t write the book at one sitting so that “faulty writing” can unconsciously, easily appear on your pages.
And, please, don’t do this hunt-and-destroy for just your main characters. Good writers cast many characters in their stories. If you have a reappearing supporting character, be kind enough to track that person throughout as well.
Step Four: Painless Page-by-Page Examination
By the time you arrive at proofing for spelling and typos, I can guarantee you that you WILL recognize where you have written heavy handed exposition . . . or Victorian-style descriptions a male character would not notice . . . or belabored a minor point that needs narration instead . . . or inserted “good idea” saidisms or character actions that sound like a rhythm instead of a natural flow.
If it would make you feel better and provide insight to how much you have grown, I challenge you to get out those highlighters every year or so and mark up your most recent pages then compare how well you write to what you wrote one, two, five years before.
One carefully written, carefully analyzed novel under your belt and you WILL never write thoughtlessly again. From experience, though, I will tell you that you WILL write faster, with more excitement, with greater satisfaction because you will write with UNDERSTANDING of how to best let your story flow out of your mind onto the page and into your reader’s mind.
* * * * *
Exercise for IGNITE Session Seven.
Analyze your own “proofing” and revision style by answering these questions:
Session Seven: Analyzing & Revising EDNA in YOUR Work
By Sally J. Walker
Now that you have the tools for thinking about what your words and phrasing DO, how do you assess and revise to make the most of your skills in each and every story?
No, you do NOT take a highlighter to every story. The objective is to THINK in terms of effect, balance, ease of flow to reach a style that is natural for both you and the reader. Some writers are objective literary stylists akin to journalists. Their sentence and image delivery is bare bones, allowing the reader to draw on their own memories and formulate their own mental images. Other writers are subjective literary stylists who provide lush detail using evocative language, inserting the exact picture into the reader’s mind.
Neither style is right or wrong; they just ARE your style. When you simply “talk” your story as if you are spinning the tale to the reader sitting next to you, you will automatically demonstrate YOUR preferred style. Yes, naturally subjective writers can learn to pare their writing down, just as objective writers can identify where to enhance theirs. THAT is where you begin your assessment of where to do more, where to do less in your revision process. You want to connect with ease, not one phrase or sentence coming off as contrived, trying too hard.
So write the story THEN analyze each paragraph, each page, each chapter for the balance and flow that suits YOU. The conscious effort will pay off the more you write because you will find yourself needing less and less EFFORT to achieve a story in your voice.
The WIP Revision Process
Personally, I perpetually revise as I write. It is the way my brain works. I let the words, sentences, pages flow. When I feel “done for the day,” I go back and reread looking for logic, flow, blatant errors. My next writing session I AGAIN reread what was last written. Frequently even that abbreviated rest period allows my brain to pick up what was skimmed over last time. Doesn’t always work, but it is how I proceed.
I have found in this “next day read” that I tend to focus on looking for balance and my most common writing faults such as sentence style repetition, -ly words and vague pronouns (such as when more that one male in a scene, using “his” and it’s unclear WHICH character is referenced). Have you picked up bad habits that just flow out of you?
The next day read is also where I focus on achieving balance of my own EDNA. I no longer highlight but I do THINK about the purposes of each sentence, phrase, paragraph, description, factual presentation, mannerism or movement, each character’s speech. When I am “in the moment” of actually writing, the words flow out of me fairly fast, sometimes up to five pages an hour. It is on the next day read that I have a tad of logical, analytical distance to assess my intent.
I have found that this analysis sucks my mind back into the story so I can get back to the storytelling on the subsequent designated writing period. The analytical reread has become a mental journey back into living vicariously with my characters.
I am NOT telling you that this should become your process. I am just saying this is my WIP Revision Process that has allowed me to be so prolific (and work on a variety of projects at once).
More importantly, this revising-while-writing process is not my FINAL revision. I know I am not perfect. I know my eyes can slide right over errors because I THINK I got it right (and the fact that I trained myself to speed-read in my teens which is a hindrance when editing my own work). So when a novel or screenplay is entirely done I go back over it several times looking for different things. Trust me, you will NOT be able to see all your faulty writing with one read-through. Only when you look for specific things will you pick up your own frequently committed mistakes.
Step One: General Assessment of Structure
Most writers have had the mantra of “Beginning, Middle, Ending” structure pounded into their psyche. The conscientious writer pays attention to the balance that mantra demands. It is somewhat numerical in that ¼ of a piece of work provides the set-up, the middle 1/2 tells of all the trials and tribulations incorporating all the challenges that push the main character to be someone more than at the beginning and the final ¼ resolves all the uncertainties and PROVES the character has achieved or exceeded their potential overcoming all the antagonist threw at him or her.
If you have a 400-page book that means 100 pages built the main character’s fictional world that has made him or her who they are, the world that changed around pages 80-90 with an event that took the character in a new direction not previously anticipated. In the middle’s first 100 pages new people, new skills, new knowledge created one tentative challenge after another the main character had to react to.
At the midpoint chapter, about pages 180-210, some epiphany event rattled the character’s awareness to the point that he or she took charge of MADE things happen over the next 100 pages. The second 100 pages of this middle are about the character actively, even arrogantly striving toward a goal . . . while the antagonistic element or person is becoming STRONGER THAN the protagonist. At about page 280 the antagonist attacks and beats down the protagonist so completely, the character has only two choices: 1) give up on life or 2) come out fighting for survival.
Viola! This is the spring board into the final 100 pages of intense effort to overcome the antagonist and achieve success. Planning and maneuvering unfold until the ultimate climactic “battle” where the protagonist risks what is most valuable. The experienced writer knows the reader’s reward is to see an ultimate outcome that stimulates the imagination about “life after the novel.” for the protagonist. In other words, you want your reader putting down the book but the characters staying in that reader’s imagination.
The same structure works for a short story. 1/4--1/2--1/4. Only in a short story you are depicting ONE major event in a main character’s life. The time period is more condensed, the cast limited. You do not have time to wander into any subplots contributing to the situation.
Stage plays quite obviously follow this logical structure, more closely to the short story focus on one pivotal event in the main character’s life. But between “Lights up” and “Curtain closes” the audience witnessing the actors right before their eyes still need to travel the same cycle of Setup-Confrontation-Resolution. As one dramatist said: “Get your character up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him down.”
Because films have the luxury of super-imposing change of dates and location and provide instantaneous visuals to ground the audience’s imagination, they are more novelistic in detail and depth. However, they STILL maintain a tight focus on one major thread that changes a character’s life in that same Beginning-Middle-Ending logic.
How does understanding this elemental structure relate to your use of EDNA? Balance, balance, balance. Just as the structure will provide the frame work for story and character growth, your awareness of the tools and the materials of storytelling, the EDNA, will complete the house.
Step Two: Chapter by Chapter Analysis
First, consider each chapter’s opening. It can be contemplative, a reflection of what has just happened. It could even be the RESULTS of what just happened in the end of the previous chapter, but remember this: If you start on the highest point of interest, your chapter has no where to go but down which slows the story pace for your reader. Starting on exposition, even if it is the internalized evaluation of the focal character but keeping it compact and full of questions, gives your chapter a foundation to build on.
Description’s emotional triggers is another elemental building block for chapter beginnings. You immediately suck your reader into commiserating with the character’s experience and lead to the Action-Dialogue the reader seeks.
Now, examine the final scene of each chapter. Is it an action-dialogue scene that jeopardizes some aspect of life for the protagonist (or even the antagonist)? Did you create a major question that results in a “page-turner” chapter ending? Never ever RESOLVE an issue at the end of a chapter. You want that reader anxious to get on with the rest of the story to find out what happens next.
Step Three: Character by Character Analysis
Since you have LIVED with this story and these characters for so long, at this point you should be groaning. Good. That means you KNOW where your characters are living life on the pages you’ve written. You know what scenes they are in and what speeches they have contributed to the story. Here is where you march through the entire work one character at a time looking for all that makes your one character the unique, interesting human being you want.
Look for:
- Description consistency
- Dialogue consistency
- Evidence of growth or tension demonstrated, NOT told!
- Mannerisms, quirks, preferences, talents, faults
Analyze where you said too much or repeated information, remembering that some readers DO read a book at one sitting. If you have the broken hearted young thing remembering again and again and again how his lips felt or the angry soldier recalling the same horrendous battle scene in the same way again and again and again . . . You get the idea. Trust me that only meticulous attention to each character will prevent this sort of over-kill writing. YOU don’t write the book at one sitting so that “faulty writing” can unconsciously, easily appear on your pages.
And, please, don’t do this hunt-and-destroy for just your main characters. Good writers cast many characters in their stories. If you have a reappearing supporting character, be kind enough to track that person throughout as well.
Step Four: Painless Page-by-Page Examination
By the time you arrive at proofing for spelling and typos, I can guarantee you that you WILL recognize where you have written heavy handed exposition . . . or Victorian-style descriptions a male character would not notice . . . or belabored a minor point that needs narration instead . . . or inserted “good idea” saidisms or character actions that sound like a rhythm instead of a natural flow.
If it would make you feel better and provide insight to how much you have grown, I challenge you to get out those highlighters every year or so and mark up your most recent pages then compare how well you write to what you wrote one, two, five years before.
One carefully written, carefully analyzed novel under your belt and you WILL never write thoughtlessly again. From experience, though, I will tell you that you WILL write faster, with more excitement, with greater satisfaction because you will write with UNDERSTANDING of how to best let your story flow out of your mind onto the page and into your reader’s mind.
* * * * *
Exercise for IGNITE Session Seven.
Analyze your own “proofing” and revision style by answering these questions:
- Do I write fast or meticulously focus to get every sentence-paragraph-page perfect before moving on? What is good or bad about my approach?
- How much do I write at one sitting? How much do I WANT to write?
- Do I engage my internal editor BEFORE I have completed a scene?
- What holds me back from completing a first draft novel in as short a time as possible?
- What is my greatest creative weakness?
- What is my greatest creative STRENGTH?
- Do I dread revision or tackle it with a sense of joy?
- Do I understand the nuances and balance of E.D.N.A.?
- What one task or habit can I change TODAY to improve the quality of my output?
- Do I require validation from other writers/critiquers ? Why?
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