Here we are at post #2 in this little series on things to look out for when self-editing. Again, this is in the copyediting stage – not editing for content or rewriting. However, these little things can often make or break your manuscript!

Today we’re looking at…

Character Description in POV

What’s wrong with this?

Jacqueline waltzed into the office, her dark brown hair swishing across the back of her blouse. She dropped her attaché onto the mahogany desk and paused, listening to the sweet sound of employees hard at work.

She glanced at her delicate gold watch. It’s not even nine and they’re already on task. I love Mondays.

Pursing her glossed lips, she pulled her cell from the attaché’s side pocket, flicked it open, and dialed.

First question to ask is: Whose point of view is this?

Second question to ask is: How can the person whose POV we’re in see themselves?

Obviously, they can’t – or else I wouldn’t be asking the question – but it’s surprising how often  this pops up in our own writing (mine, anyway). It’s natural for us to want to describe our main character, but it’s unnatural for someone to think “oh, I’m going to brush my long, blonde hair now”. No, you’d think “I’m going to brush my hair”, right? Same for your character.

One way writers try to get around this is the “mirror scene”. You know what that is – that’s where your character stands in front of a mirror and describes himself or herself. Unless you have a darn good reason for doing this (like I’ve said before, there are exceptions to every rule), this is cliché and you want to avoid it like the plague! (Another cliché, don’t use that either…)

Instead, bring out your character’s description through the eyes of another character. Don’t use them to list every detail at once, but bring it out slowly, and only when or if it matters.

When it comes to character description, less is more.

(Unless you’re writing a fantasy or sci-fi with created races, and then it’s a whole other ball game entirely. But I’m not getting into that right now…!)

So… have you ever written a mirror scene? Or described the character in her own POV? Don’t be shy, we’ve all done it too.

Self-editing… ah, the bane of my existence. Why do I love working on other people’s writing and cringe when it comes to my own? I have no idea. No, that’s not entirely true – maybe it’s the horrors found within my writing that I don’t want to face. Passive sentence structure! Telling! Misplaced modifiers!

To help combat my penchant for putting off edits, this week I’m going to post on some particular things to look out for when self-editing. And a note: These are copyediting things to look out for, not content… I might look at content later in the month.

Here we go…

Beginning vs. Doing

In most cases, when your character begins something, what you mean is that he’s actually doing it.

Example: “He began running toward the store.”

As soon as he starts running, he’s already doing the action. Beginning becomes doing immediately!

Change to: “He ran toward the store.”

This is more active, clearer, and keeps up the story’s pace.

Of course there will be exceptions – there are times when beginning something is the logical description – but in the majority of cases, beginning becomes doing the moment it starts.

Get out that red pen (or, uh… your track changes option) and look for all instances of:

• starts, started, starting
• begins, began, beginning
• commences (*cringe*)

And with that… begin editing! Er, I mean… edit!

***

Is this a particular habit for any of you? I’ve corrected at least two instances in the last five pages of the MS I’m working on…

Three days have come and gone… I’m sitting at 4203/35,000.

I’m planning for this to be a novella that sits on the hard drive — one of those projects you write for the sake of self-indulgence — but it’s been fun so far, and I love having an excuse to turn off the inner editor and just write (I know, that should be all the time… but easier said than done!).

Here on Day 4, the team I’m on — The Preternaturals — sits in 8th place out of 17, so not too shabby! And that’s based on yesterday’s totals.

Today, I plan to research a little bit more about:

• cleaning a neck wound
• varieties of wolfsbane (there are over 250!)
• immune systems — ie. purging toxins and fighting viruses

I’m at that point in How to Revise Your Novel where we sit down with the manuscript and, tools at hand and preparation done, actually cut our manuscript. This is the one-pass revision where I take my novel from the place it is to the place I want it to be.

And that’s a terrifying concept. What if I get it wrong? What if all this lead-up just means failure? What if I make the wrong changes?

Then I think… they’re just words. I’m not physically deleting or throwing anything out, and once I do the type-in I’ll save everything in a new document.

I have my snacks, drinks, blank pages, pens, scissors & tape, worksheets from several months of analysis and prep work. Now all I need is to get over the hurdle of *doing* the revision.

A few weeks from now, I hope to have a fully revised copy of my NaNoWriMo novel from 2007.

Then I’ll do the query, synopsis, etc., and send them out the door. I don’t have high hopes for this one, since I think the market for it is in a very low point, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on it — instead, I’ll think of this revision/query process as a “practice” run.

If I don’t get any bites on it and the market for it picks up in a few years, I’ll do a second pass.

So that’s the plan! Much easier said than done, that’s for darn sure. But learning to revise properly and figuring out where my own weak spots are has been worth every penny I paid for the course…

But here’s where it all comes together and we find out if I can practice what I’ve learned.

Revisions, Day One… go!

***

How do you approach the editing/revision process: do you do analysis/prep work first, or do you dive on in and just start cutting?

Yesterday, CNN posted an article entitled:

I Write Romance Novels — So What?

I agree with the majority of the article, and was thrilled to see it starting to get some momentum around Facebook and Twitter.

Have someone in your life who teases you for reading or writing romance? Someone who doesn’t realize that it’s just as legitimate as writing literary fiction or children’s books? Forward this article to them.

Go on — click through! No matter what genre you write in, the article has something to say to you.

Read it, and allow yourself that feel-good moment before you sit down to do your daily type-in.

During the month of February, I took a synopsis class from Camy Tang (which I mentioned in a previous blog post). It was very helpful, and if you haven’t had the opportunity to try writing a synopsis yet — or if you don’t know where to start — she’s going to be running the same class sometime in May and I highly recommend it. You’ll get personal feedback and likely a new perspective on your novel that you can’t get from revisions alone.

I know — it happened to me!

One of the assignments in the workshop was a character synopsis, followed by multiple-page synopsis based on our 5-paragraph synopsis we did earlier in the month (the names for which escape me at the moment). After completing both of these, I submitted them for feedback and felt fairly confident about what areas I’d be told were weak. I thought I knew what needed to be fixed, so when the feedback came… I was a little surprised.

Camy has a gift for telling you what you need to hear, but doing so in a caring way that doesn’t make you feel upset or affronted — unless you allow yourself to react that way. She basically told me that my character’s motivation wasn’t believable, and it needed to tie in more to her external/internal goals.

Naturally, I went through several stages of emotions upon hearing this: confusion (maybe I didn’t explain things well enough in the synopsis?), frustration (is she serious?), contemplation (what would it be like if I *did* change things…) and finally, acceptance. Yes, she was 100% correct: my main character’s motivation was weak, wasn’t true to her personality, and didn’t really make sense in the whole context of things.

Imagine my surprise when I started brainstorming how to fix things, and realized that my story would be so much stronger for it!

However, I also realized that if I’d let my initial reaction control me, I would never have been able to rationally accept someone else’ s viewpoint. I was too close to the story, so I was blinded by what I *thought* needed fixing and unable to see the real issue.

After this experience, it dawned on me that taking criticism is definitely a learned skill. It’s natural to get defensive about our word babies, but sometimes we just need to step back and let someone else take a look and truly listen to what they have to say.

I’m extremely grateful for Camy’s feedback, and although it took me a few days realize that she was right, I now also know how to graciously accept criticism and put the advice into practice.

I know that not all critiques will have useful information, and sometimes the advice someone gives you will be wrong — but you’re doing yourself an incredibly disservice if you don’t at least consider what that person has to say, and do it seriously.

And let me tell you, if you want to figure out the weak spots in your manuscript? A synopsis is definitely the way to do it. When your story is broken down to the bare bones, can it stand on its own?

How are you at taking advice from critique partners and other sources of feedback? Have you ever had a reaction like me, feeling defensive until you realized that the other person was right?

So you’re working on your latest project, just humming along… until suddenly, out of nowhere, lightning strikes.

It’s a SHINY NEW IDEA. And it’s the BEST IDEA EVER. But you have something you’re working on right now, and you need to get it done… but you don’t want this idea to disappear forever. I’d venture a guess that if it’s an idea you really love, it’ll stay with you even if you try to forget it, but if you don’t want to risk it but want to stay on track with your current project, what are you supposed to do?

First, find a blank piece or paper. Or a fresh page in your idea journal. Or a new, clean document in your Word processor. Grab a pen. And maybe a cookie (I find cookies definitely help with creativity).

Set a timer for 20-30 minutes — you don’t have a lot of time to spend on this, because you’re supposed to be working on your other project!

Now, bring that Shiny New Idea to the forefront of your brain, and start the timer.

5 Things to Write Down So That Shiny New Idea Sticks Around for Later

1. Where does this idea take place, and when?

You probably can envision something about the time or place of this new idea, so jot that down. A quick date or a location will work to bring it back to memory later. If you see something specific in your mind, like a lake or a road leading into a city, write that down. Don’t know what city it is? Then it’s not important right now, because it won’t help you recall the idea later. Write down what you see in your mind, and move on.

2. Who are your characters?

Maybe only one person came to mind. Write down who she is, what she looks like to you right now, and everything that matters about her at this very moment, according to your new idea. Don’t develop new things about her, all you want are the key points that will help you recall this particular figure. If several characters came to mind, write down what you know about them too.

Remember: You don’t want to build them right now, just write down what’s in your idea. You have another project that needs all your focus and attention, and getting caught up in new characters could take you away from the current ones. We’re using key points here.

3. What are the stakes?

This is your conflict. Your idea. The thing that makes the Shiny New Idea wonderful.

If you’re the kind of person who starts with a character and then develops a plot, no problem — here’s where you’d make a quick observation about a conflict that your character could get into. If your New Idea MC is a dragon-hunting feminist priestess from the Order of Voluminous Tomes, she might get into physical conflict (dragons), social conflict (feminism), or religious/political conflict (priestess). You probably have some sort of very basic inkling of conflict for your characters, even if you’re not 100% there yet. That’s okay. That’s why you’re just writing this down now, so you’ll be able to recall and develop things later.

If you’re the kind of person who starts with an idea and develops characters around it, this will be the easiest step for you. Write a very, very basic & bare-bones outline of the idea that came to you. Do it in point form, so you won’t be tempted to sit there and elaborate on things.

4. Pick a genre.

This is quick. Just jot it down, somewhere on your page. If you’re not certain of the genre, pick a few and write them down.

5. Walk away, and allow your brain to get back to the task at hand… your current project.

Once you’ve written the Shiny New Idea down, you should feel a sense of relief. You’ve purged the idea from your head, and your brain no longer has to hold all these details close to the front of your mind out of fear that you’ll forget something. You can focus on your current project without worry.

You’ll probably find that something amazing happens now. Even though you’ve written your S.N.I. down, your Muse still flits back to it now and again, without you even trying to think about it. Your brain takes the idea and lets it heat up — like a slow cooker — making it better and better without even trying. Connections will be made. Conflict details will arise. Characters will start whispering to you about their favorite sweater, or what they always wanted to be when they grew up, or who they have a serious thing for.

And you didn’t even have to try. Write these things down if you want to, as they come to you, but set a timer each time. Stay focused. You don’t want to be the person that flits from idea to idea and never finishes everything! Which, admittedly, I often struggle with as well. (What writer doesn’t, at some point? )

Now you’re free to come back to the Shiny New Idea when you’re ready for it. And, for that matter, when your current project’s characters tell you it’s alright!

Some of you may know, I signed up for Holly Lisle’s How To Revise Your Novel course back in November or December (can’t remember when it went live). I had every intention of revising my 2008 NaNo-Novel for the course, but when I started working on it, I just wasn’t feeling it. Needless to say, I fell behind in the course and felt pretty awful about it…

This week, with my new resolve to revise my 2007 NaNo-Novel, I’m happy to say I’m back on the revision wagon! Yesterday I managed to go through more pages in one sitting than I had in three with the other novel. Mind you, the first pass through for Lesson 1 of the course is essentially identifying problem areas, but my vision is much clearer with this novel than it was for the other one.

Yay for progress!

Have you ever found yourself stuck on a particular project, only to realize that it wasn’t the right thing for you to work on at the time?

This month, I’m taking an online workshop with Camy Tang called ‘You Can Write a Synopsis!’. Now that I’ve decided to go ahead and edit my chick lit/women’s fiction manuscript, I thought it would be a good idea to start really getting serious about things like queries, synopses, and so forth, so when I saw this workshop pop up on the Black Diamond RWA chapter, I scrambled aboard at the last minute.

The first two lessons were tough — really tough — and I suspect I’ll be working on revising and changing what I submitted for quite awhile.

The first assignment was the one-line synopsis. This is what Holly Lisle calls ‘The Sentence’ (and you may have heard me talk about that before), but Camy’s instructions were a little bit different. Still, I did my best to rework the one-line summary of the story. It’s hard! It’s so difficult to put yourself on the outside of the story and pare it down to about 15-18 words.

The second part was the 5-sentence synopsis. While this wasn’t quite as difficult, it was still an enormous challenge to summarize the entire novel in just 5 sentences. You don’t have room for subplots, romantic interests (unless that’s the main point of the novel), or anything beyond the main things that set the character back from accomplishing her goal.

Wow. Talk about some serious big-picture work.

I struggled with this, and I’m really looking forward to hearing Camy’s feedback on the assignments I submitted. She’s going through everyone’s work and commenting, which has been incredibly useful — I’m enjoying reading the work of others and reading her comments, as it’s fantastic to see so many examples of the concept put into action.

Next up… the character summary paragraph. That’s tomorrow’s challenge!

How about you, have you accomplished or attempted the one-line synopsis? How about the 5-sentence elevator pitch? Do you enjoy this part of the process, or are synopses something you dread doing?