Done Drafting Your Book? Hooray!! But NOW what??

We're in sunny Tucson, Arizona for American Thanksgiving. So many blessings to send gratitude for!

This week's topic, most apropos for the conclusion of #NaNoWriMo (good work, KAK!) is Finishing Touches: what I do before sending the manuscript in. I bet there will be lots of great advice from the Word Whores this week, though not necessarily in order.

Me, I'm leaping to the final step: the polishing stage. The very last thing I do before sending any stage of a draft to my agent or editor. There's lots of other revision passes before that, which I'm hoping the other amazing writers her will address - it's a huge topic, really - but I'm going to my last pass because I have a concrete list to share.

I keep a running document of my writing tics. These are the little habits that emerge in my writing that need to be removed for the final version. They change a bit over time, which I try to keep up with. I don't bother worrying about them in anything but the draft going out into the greater world, because I'll inevitably introduce them again at the intervening stages. I can't help myself. That's why I call them tics. Every writer has these, no matter how many books they've written. You won't perceive this as a reader, because any writer worth the title will polish these flaws away before the typical reader ever picks up the story.

Here's my list of final polishing steps, as of this fall. It takes me about a full day to do all of this:

1.                   Search for []

2.                   Search for “now”

3.                   Search for “just”

4.                   Search for “much”

5.                   Search for double space

6.                   Search for “like”

7.                   Well

8.                   Search for “back”

9.                   Wordle

10.               Search for “know”

11.               Replace towards with toward

12.               Search for endearment of the day

13.               Search for actions as dialogue tags.

14.               Search for overused dialogue tags.

15.               Search for [overused terms of that story]

Here's the breakdown of what all of that means:

Search for []

As I'm drafting, if I can't think of a word, or I need to name someone or something, I put in [], or [pet name], or [her sister]. Then, later, I search for [, to make sure I got them all. 

Search for “now,” “just,” "know," "like," "well," and "back"

These are my particular crutch words. I'm actually much better than I used to be, with not nearly so many appearances of them as in my earlier books. But, when they do appear, they tend to crop up in batches, with sometimes five in one paragraph. I know. What is my deal?? Nobody knows. But totally fixable. 

Search for double space

One space after a period. All double spaces must die. These mostly creep in during edits, when I accept changes, etc. Mainly a housekeeping move.

Wordle

Wordle.net is a terrific tool for analyzing word overuse in a manuscript. The biggest words are the most used. I use this as a final check for any words besides my usual suspects that I might need to read for and eliminate.

Replace towards with toward

I like "towards" so much better, but it's the UK usage and my American publishers insist on "toward." Alas.

Search for endearment of the day

My characters often use pet names or nicknames. I tend to salt the dialogue with them too freely. Nice that, in writing at least, it's easy to "de-spice" the broth and make it a bit more delicately flavored.

Search for actions as dialogue tags and overused dialogue tags.

I get so bored of "said" and "asked," so I play around a lot with other kinds of dialogue tags. Sometimes, though, they get a bit over-the-top. Characters can only grunt and snarl words so many times before you wonder if they had their jaws wired shut. I also have characters laugh and smile words. Like, "You wish I'd had my jaw wired shut," she laughed. Sometimes that works. Mostly, though, it should be, "You wish I'd had my jaw wired shut," she snarled, then laughed in his face.

Search for [overused terms of that story]

This shows up in Wordle, if I don't know what it is already. Like if a character has unusually green eyes, I can point that out a leetle too often, causing my editor to comment, I dunno, something like, "ENOUGH WITH THE APPLE GREEN GLARING, ALREADY."

*cough*

What about you all - what are the crutch words and tics you have to check for?

Why Drafting Rocks Revising Out of the Water

I love the dramatic cloudscapes of New Mexico's monsoon season.

So, in this week's cage match throw-down over drafting vs. revising, for once I get the last word. That's because I was crazy helping my folks move last weekend and the always-helpful Veronica stepped right up to swap places with me.

It's getting a bit uncanny, how much alike James and I are. I'm glad he copped to feeling like something is wrong with him, because I'm there, too.

I really hate revising.

To me, revising means I screwed up the first time around. Yes, yes - I know you are are shaking your heads at me, perhaps fondly, more likely in irritation. But the truth remains that, in my heart of hearts, I believe that if I got the damn story correct the first time around, I wouldn't have to go back and fix it.

You have to understand that I'm also the girl who literally does crossword puzzles in ink (pencil is way too vague and smudgy). In college, I composed all of my papers on my Brother Correctronic typewriter (a blast from the past for all my fellow pre-PC folks out there) and turned them in that way. I learned early on to never go back and check my answers on exams - as the common wisdom instructs - because, if I changed my first answer, I inevitably changed it wrong.

I don't like getting things wrong.

Oh yes, this is compulsive, likely obsessive, perfectionistic and downright weird, but revising to me means fixing errors and it's wasted time that I could be spending writing the new thing, if only I'd gotten the previous thing right the first go-around.

This is not to say that I don't revise. I do.

And I grumble to myself the whole time.

However, as I become a better, more-practiced writer, my revision passes are becoming less involved. I inevitably have some smoothing to do at the beginning, since I discover all sorts of things along the way. By the time I've found out how the book ends, I usually need to tweak a few details at the beginning.

If I've done my job right, even my critique partner (CP) feedback only requires similar tweaking.

After that, I more or less cheerfully accommodate my editors' edits. The more involved developmental edits sometimes give me that "you screwed up" feeling, but more often I feel like it's taste or massaging to the market. Line and copy edits are no biggie. I don't care about commas. I accept most suggested rewordings.

One of my CPs insists that revision is holy work. That's exactly what she calls it.

For me, writing the story is the holy work. And if I'm diligent, clear-minded and true of heart, I'll get the story right as I write.

It's like being connected to the Tao, to the creative flow of the universe, pouring through me and into the work.

There's nothing else like it. Not even sex - and that's saying a lot.

Not a thing wrong with that.

Buffing the Rough Cut

Okay. Well, Blogspot seems to have a mad hate on for the image I'd planned to tuck into this post. So you'll just have to imagine a typewritten page hemorraghing red ink. K?

As has been previously established, drafting is not my forte. Revision is. Sadly, one cannot revise what one has not yet - you know - drafted. Welcome to my purgatory.

Once I have a POS (Yes, I could have titled this 'polishing the turd'. I didn't. You're welcome.) draft in hand, I patch holes. My drafts are usually a jigsaw puzzle of scenes without transitions betwixt them. Mostly, the scenes are in order. Though, it's not unheard of for the bits to get shuffled in service to the story and conflict. The point for this pass through the MS is to connect all the dots so the story reads from beginning to end.

Stage 1 Check List:

1. Does story flow from beginnng to end
2. Is there a story arc
3. Can conflict be intensified
4. Does it make sense

From there, I move on to Stage 2 polishing - making it sound right to me. You know how in high school, when some smart mouth jerk insulted you and you thought of the perfect come back? At three AM the next morning? That's revising for me. For whatever reason, a wire crossed in the brain, it's easy for me to see how to fix something AFTER I've written it. I may wail and cry and gnash my teeth that it's too hard, but I always know what the story needs. Eventually, I get over myself and I fix what needs repair. This is often dialog between characters and may speak directly to character arcs. This stage requires a clear head and a willingness to listen. Somethings haven't changed since high school. The perfect solutions usually pop into my head at 3am. My family is not keen on my revision process.

Stage 2 Check List:

1. Are character arcs as strong as they could be
2. Do the characters sound like themselves
3. Would anyone REALLY say what I had that character say
4. What would be more fun, more conflict, more unintentionally revealing in any given bit of text I'm obsessing over

Stage 3 is for continuity, repeated words, phrases and gestures. Hi. My name is Marcella, and I am not a detail person. Until it comes to one of my stories. Continuity mistakes in my work make me cringe. Hates it. Hates it with white hot passion. So I've developed the 'picking out continuity issues' muscle. I'd like to pretend it's foolproof. But that was before a novel got to copy-edits with a hero holding a conversation while he was unconscious in surgery. Oops. Or before a short story went out with a massive (to me) science error in it. So clearly, one can never obsess over continuity too much. How do you find it?

Stage 3 Check List:

1. Beta readers/critique group
2. Read the work aloud in the company of a solid crit group - no really - reading aloud is where your repeated words will hit you over the head if your crit group doesn't
3. Reading aloud, mark your characters' physical gestures - how often does he rub a hand down his face, how often does she roll her eyes - fix that. There are more physical manifestations of emotional state than are dreamt of in my tiny drafting vocabulary. Try out a few.
4. Take a break.  A day. A week. Longer if deadlines permit, but let the work sit. Encourage the words to dribble out of head. Then reread. Not aloud. Just read. Watch the typos and the repeated words jump out at you. Fix.

Stage 4 - Release
Here's where I admit I'll never catch everything. This is why there are editors - professional, objective eyes paid to point out where a story doesn't communicate as clearly as it could. So that's the point that I bundle up that MS and ship it. And subsequently and immediately find a slew of typos, repeated words and other mistakes that I missed before shipping.