Picking up on Hints

One of my steps in revising the already partly revised first draft is to catch all the hints and suggestions for ideas to develop that linger in the text. These usually are ideas that could have been developed and taken the story in a different direction, or hints for clues to be planted or red herrings to be dragged through the next twenty scenes that were never used. They have all been rejected if not consciously then de facto. I catch them as I read through, and usually don't think about them again. In any story the options are many before we begin writing, but with each scene they are narrowed. 

In my current WIP, however, I've taken them more seriously as astute suggestions from my unconscious, and not to be ignored. As a result of thinking about them harder, I've solved some problems that I was lazily going to just read past (until the final draft, of course, one of my bad habits). Ginny Means, a social worker whose caseload focuses on teenage girls in foster homes, has already appeared in two short stories in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, with a third in the pipeline. The one hint I grappled with the hardest is the idea of giving Ginny a rescue dog.

In Below the Tree Line, Felicity O'Brien is given a rescue dog after she finds signs of someone getting too close to her barn and house late at night. Virtually every farm has a dog, and here was my main character, owner of a farm, without one. Writing one in was easy, and I enjoyed getting to know Shadow, a little black-haired mutt.

 

In my current WIP I thought the idea of a dog seemed too cliched, since the main character was a single woman who worked, so when I scribbled the line in the first few chapters that Ginny fostered dogs occasionally, I thought I'd just leave it like that. There wasn't really any reason to develop this, so I let it just sit there while I focused on the plot and other characters. 

 

As I kept going I had the usual plot holes to fill, motivations to figure out, and details about her life to clarify. In one instance the presence of a dog could be a crucial clue, and I thought about giving her one of her own. But that posed other issues. She needed to be someone who could roam late into the night without worrying about a dog in the back seat barking loudly at shadows or others in a passing car or walking along on a leash on the sidewalk. But Ginny also had to be seen as compassion outside of her work as well. The idea of the fostered dog reappeared, and once I began to look at this more seriously, I could see all sorts of possibilities for her character as well as another pivotal figure. 

 

I was slightly worried that I was creating another character who had to be seen in part as a villain who had some good qualities. He felt like a cliche and I wasn't sure how to deal with this. I didn't want it to be easy for the reader to dislike him, so somehow he had to be shown to be a decent guy. He got a dog, and Ginny was sympathetic. The foster dog was in.

 

When I talk about writing as a process of discovery I'm usually thinking about the personalities and quirks of specific figures in the story, their appearance and family relationships. I'm not thinking about dogs determining clues and character, but that's what happened in this WIP. Giving Ginny a foster dog to care for occasionally doesn't change other aspects of her life given in previously published short stories, and remains a feature I can use or not depending on the plot. Those hints and suggestions I usually eliminate have turned out to be important sign posts in this WIP and I'm reading them more carefully now. 

 

 

My File of Forgotten Stories

Note: Someone recently asked me how long it took to write a short story. She didn’t like my answer, so here it is, in another form.

Like most of my writing colleagues, I do a lot of editing and revising. Few of my published works have ever had fewer than half a dozen drafts, and then there are the weeks of tinkering, fussing over one particular word or phrase. In general, however, if I put a story aside for any length of time, the odds are good that I’ll never go back to it. 

This morning I opened my short story file thinking it might be time to clear out the deadwood. Some stories were not meant to be revised, salvaged and remade, no matter how much time I spent on them.

The first story I pulled up had several versions, which seemed confusing, so I went to the next one, which I liked and wasn’t sure what to do with. This went on for several stories until I pulled up one that I had enjoyed writing but couldn’t figure out a good ending. I wanted a surprise, but it couldn’t be too complicated because the narrator was an airhead and couldn’t deliver anything complex. As I read it through, I felt the story still had possibilities. I decided to analyze the working (and nonworking) parts to see where I could make improvements.

First, I considered the tone—humorous, light, satirical, just as I prefer. 

Second, I liked the characters. The narrator, Babe, is an airhead and the tone of the story reflects that. She is married to Nick. Her pal Charley, a gay man who was hired as cook and housekeeper, manages her easily, and she adores him. She often finds him trying on her clothes in her walk-in closet, and takes his advice on her wardrobe even if it means giving up a favorite item of clothing. Nick likes Charley because he minds his own business, is a good cook, and keeps Babe occupied.

Third, the plot works up to the last quarter. Babe and Charley discover a dead body, which they then have to get rid of. All of this works, and the two succeed in walking away from the corpse, safe and alive. But the story needs more of an oomph for an ending. Charley needs to be more than a quirky character, and to have more than an accidental role in Babe’s life. Once I trashed the last few pages, I could pare the plot down to something simpler and find the pressure points to build into the story a more complex series of twists. I added a character, altered Charley’s role just a little, and gave a few more hints on Nick’s “occupation.”

The key to being able to rescue this story from the slurping sound of the trash (this is a Mac—my trash basket slurps) was, first, the tone and, second, Babe’s husband’s line of work. As she explained, he spent his time talking “to the boys, whoever they are.”

Not every story will be as easy to rework, and not every story will be worth the effort. This one in particular had more going for it than not—the characters, the tone, the basic setup. With a reworking of the plot, the characters go farther and the story has a nice twist at the end. I’ll give it another polish, work up a better title, and send it out. 

After spending weeks working on a particular history article that turned out to be unnecessary for my graduate research, my professor said, “Nothing is ever wasted.” I’m not sure that’s always true, but in writing fiction, it’s a good principle to keep in mind.

Resting and Revising

For the last three months I've been working on a novel built around a new series character. I followed my usual practice of scratching out on paper a few ideas about the story and making a list of scenes or clues I wanted to include. Then I began writing. Some days I produced only a thousand words, but other days I produced up to five thousand words or more, with my fingers chasing the story across the keyboard. Now, at the end of April, I have 80,000+ words. And it's time to rest.

Using the word resting can be misleading, as other writers know. This is really a period of pausing and stepping back, of forgetting enough of the feel of the story to be able to come to it fresh in three weeks or so. During the first writing period, I might begin a scene and realize that the protagonist is going to interpret a clue in a particular way and I have to prepare the reader for that. This means I have to go back a few scenes or even chapters and set things up. I may want to introduce another character much earlier in the story, and that too may mean returning to an earlier section and dropping in his or her name, or a casual sighting of the person in a cafe or on a sidewalk. Only as I write do I know what I need, and then I can go back and make sure I've supplied it.

During the writing of this draft I rewrote the first forty pages several times. I decided to remove a specific feature of the protagonist's life, and that meant rewriting several earlier scenes. The story is stronger for it, but it means that I've redone the first few chapters several times. On some days I felt like I was never going to get any forward motion, and I might as well have been writing with a quill pen for the time it was taking me to get through the beginning. But the beginning must make sense, so I kept reworking it.

What I regard as the completed first draft is really only the first one I'm willing to print out. I've revised pages and scenes and entire chapters throughout the last three months, but I haven't printed out anything yet. Now I'm ready to print.

The draft I print now will again be revised and rewritten. I may add another character to strengthen a subplot or complicate the villain's plan. I will certainly rewrite some of the critical moments, building suspense or deepening the protagonist's feelings.

Overall I may do as many as thirty drafts. This doesn't mean the entire book has been rewritten thirty times. It means that my perspective on some aspect of the story changed and that change had to be made and carried through the entire manuscript.

In three weeks or so I'll return to the printed manuscript and read it with fresh eyes. The purpose of this reading is to find anything that is jarring or off-putting for the reader, scenes that don't make sense, missing clues or faltering suspense, anything that doesn't work. I may do three or more pass-throughs after this, but I'll know I'm coming to the end of the revision process when I read a new printout and find only a few things here and there to tinker with.

By late June I hope to have a finished novel. I'll let you know if things go as smoothly as I hope.