Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

Today I’d like to welcome Bob Sanchez to the blog. Bob, a retired technical writer, has published two novels, When Pigs Fly and Getting Lucky. His blog is http://bobsanchez1.blogspot.com and is the webmaster and frequent reviewer for the Internet Review of Books at http://internetreviewofbooks.com.

Elizabeth asked me for a post on revising—not necessarily how to do it, but how I do it. Writing and revising aren’t separate processes, but are closely bound together. Revising is writing. Before my fingers first hit the keyboard, a debate begins in my head about where to start. That doesn’t last long, because finding the right beginning and ending aren’t essential yet. It’s really okay to begin anywhere.

Yet this next paragraph comes slowly. For one thing, I am already second-guessing my opening sentences and wondering how to write this piece without overusing the first person singular pronoun. But after a few fixes it’s time to read it over, maybe even aloud, forcing me to notice every word. If the passage sounds okay for now, it’s time to move on.

Usually this messy approach continues throughout a rough draft—writing, proofing, reading, then writing some more. Commas become em dashes, typos disappear, words get shuffled or replaced. I’ll delete most adverbs and passive constructions.

Eventually, I have a series of paragraphs representing the bulk of the message. Now come a series of important questions:

• Does the draft make the point I want to make? If not, I still have a lot of work to do.
• Does it flow well? Maybe rearranging or adding paragraphs will make the sequence more logical.
• Does everything fit? This may be the time to delete entire paragraphs.
• Does the tone sound consistent and appropriate? The first draft of this essay had a joke that didn’t feel right, so it’s gone.
• Does the piece have a strong lead and conclusion? If not, now is the time to write them.

Once a draft is complete, I try to set my work aside for awhile and come back to it later. Here’s an example of what can happen when you don’t. I’m an admin on a writing list and felt the need to send out an admonition. This is what I sent:

Okay gang, please remember that this list is all about the craft of writing. Please let’s stick to that. The plight of your favorite bookstore, however interesting, is off topic.

And please note that the old “I know this is off topic, but…” ploy doesn’t justify a post. If you know you shouldn’t post, please don’t.

Five sentences with four pleases? Oh, please. Here is a better version:

Okay gang, remember that this list is all about the craft of writing. The plight of your favorite bookstore, however interesting, is off topic.

Note also that the old “I know this is off topic, but…” ploy doesn’t justify a post. If you know you shouldn’t post, then don’t.

There, that’s better. My early drafts may still contain infelicitous phrases, repeated words and ideas, clichés, misspellings, passive constructions, and unclear pronoun references. Not to mention incomplete sentences. I once asked a good friend, who is an excellent writer, how he makes his work so smooth. He replied, “I just go over it and over it”—and that, I think, is the key.

My third grade daughter brought a children’s chapter book home from her school library a week ago. The book was about a fifth grader who decides that grades and standardized tests aren’t accurate assessments of children’s abilities and can make students feel stigmatized. The girl decides to make straight Ds on her report card.

I know…my eyebrows went up, too. :)

But she’d picked the book out herself, was excited about the novel, and was reading it carefully to take (ironically) a content test on it through the school’s accelerated reading program.

I read it, too, so I could quiz her on it and help her get prepped for her test.

After she finished the book, she said, “Mama, it was only about the report card. The whole thing! How the girl hated report cards, how she decided to fail her report card, how she had a meeting with her teacher and parents about the report card…then she had a meeting with the principal about the report card…”

She had a good point. The entire book dealt with the protagonist vs. her big conflict. Even the protagonist’s conversations with other characters were solely on the conflict.

And, obviously, that’s important. The whole point of the book is the main conflict facing the protagonist. It needs to create obstacles and confrontations for the character.

But we also need to view the protagonist in other ways:

How does he interact with other people?
How does he deal with other conflicts and stresses?
What’s he like in his downtime?

To get a well-rounded view of a character, it really helps to view the character from other angles.

That’s tricky. You don’t need to go veering off the subject for long periods of time. But short subplots or bits of dialogue with characters on topics other than the main conflict are important to develop our characters.

My sleuths don’t talk about the murder the entire book. The murder is a main focus of the book—the whole reason for the book. But I think readers get a multi-dimensional view of my protagonists through other scenes, too—humorous scenes, scenes where they’re working on a different problem, etc.

If we don’t offer the reader glimpses of other sides to our character? We risk having the characters look flat and having our readers get bored.

How do you show other sides to your characters?

Please pop by tomorrow when Bob Sanchez will be guest blogging at Mystery Writing is Murder on his writing process.

My husband’s sister and her husband live in Africa where they work as translators. My sister-in-law speaks French fluently and perfectly accented. Her husband speaks 5 or 6 languages, including Swahili.

For years they lived in Nairobi, Kenya. Life there; apart from election violence over a year ago, living in a guarded housing compound, and occasional run-ins with police (who aren’t like our police); was pretty tame compared to life in their current home in Bunia, Congo. Congo hasn’t historically been the calmest place on the globe to live.

Their day to day life is an adventure: for fresh water, reliable utilities, and even a safe place to live. Their country is exotic…the plants and wildlife are different, the language and customs are different.

In many ways, it’s the perfect place to write. But they’re not writers.

In contrast, I look at my life in suburban America. My adventures are pretty tame in comparison. Will I find my daughter’s missing library book before it becomes overdue? Will I make my deadline? Why is the washing machine making that strange noise?

Some of us write fantasy and sci-fi and the appeal there is completely clear—it’s the escape from reality for readers.

But what about those of us who write using everyday settings about everyday people? What’s the appeal there?

I think it must be that our readers can imagine themselves in the same circumstances. That we’ve made a connection with the ordinary reader. That we’ve either 1) created people like themselves who are suddenly facing extraordinary circumstances (they’re accused of murder, won the lottery, gotten lost in a snowstorm), or 2) we’ve created extraordinary people that our readers wish they could be, but aren’t.

My two protagonists both fall under the first category, I think…ordinary people who have been put in extraordinary situations.

What about you? Do your characters fall into either category? Both? Or do you write a genre where the extraordinary part is the escape from reality?