Tag: how to write a novel

How to edit your novel: 7 practical tips that really work

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You’re drowning in words. There are a million things wrong with this book. And you’re so busy trying to figure out why page thirty-five sounds so blooming doofy that it’s months before you notice the whole first half of the book drags and your characters are totally flat.

Further down the road, after countless rewrites, you will finally realize you’re the wrong person to edit your work. You’re too close to it. The picture of what you want your novel to be is so huge in your mind’s eye that it leaves no room for what the novel actually is. You can get your friends to read it, but they’re not editors either, and can’t tell you much. And you sure as heck can’t afford to pay a professional a few thousand dollars to take a look at it.

So…a hopeless case?

Not so.

You just need a plan.

For starters, forget about your novel for a couple of weeks, at least. You need a break. Use the time to catch up on your reading and write a short story or some flash fiction. When you’re ready, take a deep breath and proceed to the next paragraph:

Nathan Bransford has the excellent advice of starting with the biggest stuff and working your way down from there. You don’t want to waste time making a bunch of tiny changes in a section you’ll end up cutting or completely rewriting later on. Nathan also has a fantastic editing checklist.

But if you’re like me, you need help seeing the big stuff. Because right now, you can’t see the forest for the trees (er…the story for the words?).

Here are some practical steps that work for me.

Part One: The Forest

Plot, Tension, and Character Development

 

1. Summarize. Quickly skim each chapter and, in a separate document, list everything that happens, in order (incomplete sentences are fine). My Chapter 3 summary looks like this:

Meets R. Discovers language problem. Walks to castle. Intro J, planning to leave. They meet. J shocked. Debates his life or hers. Tells her truth. She doesn’t believe it. Hear ship outside.

2. Highlight tension and clues. Pick two colors and highlight the parts of your summary that indicate either an escalation of tension (dramatic stuff like explosions, death, getting fired, or discovering a cheating spouse) or the revealing of clues (interesting information that will be important later, like footprints, mysterious notes, or snippets of conversation). The colors may overlap sometimes.

3. Highlight character development. With a third color, highlight everything that indicates character development. That includes background, expressions of love or hate, and any important decisions the character makes. You might use different colors for each major character. Do each character’s actions fit with his or her personality? Do they change as the story progresses?

4. Review the plot. Looking over your summary (highlighted in at least three colors by now), pay attention to the progression of the plot. Which characters cause which events? Did those characters have logical reasons for acting that way (plausible motives)? Does each event lead logically into the next? If not, hold a brainstorming session to find a way to make it work (critique partners are invaluable for this kind of thing).

5. Rearrange. Once you’ve got your plot squared away, again look at the highlighted portions. Make sure you have an increase in tension at least once in every chapter, preferably at the end (keep readers reading). Make sure your “clues” are spread fairly evenly throughout and not clumped together (nothing worse than a huge pile of plot exposition at the climax). Move chapter breaks around if necessary.

6. Compare each character’s dialogue separately. Now back to the actual manuscript. Using the “Find” feature of your word processor, search for your main character’s name. Stop at each place you find dialogue by that character. Copy and paste it into another document if necessary. Make sure everything that character says consistently matches his upbringing and personality. Tweak as necessary. Then, do the same for the next major character down, and so on.

7. Contrast dialogue between characters. Make sure your characters don’t all talk the same way. Adults speak differently from children, blue collar workers from desk jockeys, Northerners from Southerners, and aliens from dragons. Play around with accents, slang, and verbal ticks.

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Got any editing tips? Leave them in the comments!

Now posted: how to look at the “trees” of your novel.

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7 tips for naming your characters

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StanleyYelnats. Dreadful Spiller. The Artful Dodger. Lemony Snicket. Ebenezer Scrooge. Arwen Undomiel. Atreyu. Ender Wiggin. Their names are sealed in our hearts forever. So how do we find names for our own characters that have the same staying power?

Baby Name Books

Yes, people actually buy entire books to help them name the two or three children they will have. And then they give the books to used book stores where us hardcore namers can pick them up for half price. These books have lists of first names with meanings, and often etymology, associations in popular culture, and Most Popular lists. There are also several websites that do the same thing. This one, for instance. Or this one, which has popular names from a variety of countries.

Phone Books

Yes! Printed phone books still have a purpose! The residential white pages offer a plethora of options for last names. So if you don’t want all your characters named Smith or Jones or Garcia or Nguyen, pull a real phone book out of the paper recycling and stash it on your bookshelf. Any old edition will do (YellowPages.com isn’t exactly browse-able).

Translation Dictionaries

If your story takes place in a fictional world that presumably speaks a different language, pick up a couple of translation dictionaries in some languages that strike your fancy. Then find a cool sounding word, and change the letters around until it sounds right for your made-up culture. This can work for first and last names.

The Thesaurus

If you want to get a little more whimsical, play around with some synonyms. This often works best for nicknames, but there are no rules.

Bible Names

There are tons of cool names in the Bible—and not just the obvious ones like Adam, Abraham, Sarah, and David. Ishmael is a Bible name. Or there’s Nimrod, Mor’decai, and Eleazar. Start in Genesis 4-5, 10-11 for some good lists, and flip around at your leisure for more.

Choose Different Initials

Characters named Mark and Matt and Mary and Molly can confuse your readers pretty quickly. Make sure to choose names with a variety of first letters to help your readers keep characters straight. Sometimes, however, giving siblings or other family members similar names helps readers to remember how they relate to each other (like Fili and Kili and Oin and Gloin and so on).

Choose for Phonaesthetics

Phonaesthetics refers to the beauty or ugliness of words based on the way they sound, not on their meaning (for instance, beauty and pulchritude are synonyms, but the former is far more phonaesthetically pleasing than the latter). Giving an evil villain an ugly name, or your hero a noble-sounding name, or your comic relief a name that’s fun to say can make those names stick in your readers’ heads.

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What are some of your favorite character names—read or written?

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How to kill your hero

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SPOILER ALERT: The following includes spoilers for City ofAngels(Sparks), Message in a Bottle (Sparks), A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens), The Brothers Bloom (movie), and Stranger Than Fiction (movie).

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I’ve blogged about sadism, I’ve blogged about happy vs. sad endings, but this recent InMon piece from LoveTheBadGuy made me want to hit on a more specific topic:

When—and how—to kill a main character. Because sometimes you have to.

But here’s the thing: if you find yourself choosing between preserving the integrity of the story, and pleasing your readers—you are doing something wrong. Readers (the only ones you care about, anyway) will only be pleased if you preserve the integrity of the story.

Or maybe you just want to avoid the clichéd happy ending. But if the ending is that predictable, the ending isn’t the problem; the rest of the book is. Killing the hero because letting him live is cliché is like painting your daughter’s nursery black because pink is cliché. It’s a stunt. Controversy for its own sake, instead of what’s good for the story.

What you’re really looking for is surprise—a twist the readers weren’t expecting. But ask yourself what kind of surprise you’re giving them—good or bad?

Nicholas Sparks’s Unfailing Examples:

  • An angel falls in love with a human, eventually decides to become human himself, so they are finally free to be together when suddenly she gets hit by a car.
  • A reporter finds a heartbreakingly romantic message in a bottle and goes on a search to find its writer, who turns out to be a rugged sailor in the throes of depression over the death of his wife. As he finally opens himself up to love again, he suddenly dies in a shipwreck.

We’re on the edge of our seats rooting for these people to get together, and then—whammo! Sorry, kids, here comes the rainy funeral scene!

Two Reasons This Sucks:

1. While many people like sad endings, nobody likes rude surprises.

2. It’s the same as the pot-bellied uncle who begs “gimme five,” and pulls his hand back at the instant you go to slap it. It’s not clever. It’s just mean.

The Surprise Death

If the death must be a surprise, then it must be meaningful, and the whole story should lead up to it.

When Sydney Carton dies in A Tale of Two Cities, we look back and see that his resemblance to Charles Darnay, his love for Darnay’s wife, and his regret that he has wasted his life, all lead him to give his life for Darnay, so Darnay and wife can live happily ever after.

The Brothers Bloom appears to be a charming heist movie—we aren’t expecting any good guys to die. Bloom, who has wanted out of the crime business for a long time, reluctantly follows his big brother, Stephen, into yet another con. Bloom doesn’t discover until the end that the con involved Stephen sacrificing himself to get Bloom out of the business for good—with a pretty girl, to boot.

“You don’t understand what my brother does. He writes his cons the way dead Russians write novels, with thematic arcs and embedded symbolism and s****. And he wrote me as the vulnerable anti-hero. And that’s why you think you want to kiss me. It’s a con.”

 – Bloom in The Brothers Bloom

The Expected Death

“The woman I loved is…dead.”

–         Christian narrating the beginning of Moulin Rouge

Like all of Sparks’s books, Moulin Rouge tells the story of two unlikely lovers who overcome multiple obstacles to be together—until one of them up and dies at the end, for no apparent reason. The difference? Moulin Rouge warns us at the very beginning. Do I miss the thrill of not knowing? No, because instead of holding out for a last-minute victory and then being sorely disappointed, I’m free to enjoy the story for what it is—a beautiful tragedy.

The Surprise Survival!

Or you can turn it around and hint—even state outright—that you are going to kill your hero, and then up and save him. Happy surprise! But be careful; the same rule for the surprise death applies for the surprise survival: it must make sense. In Stranger Than Fiction, for instance, Eiffel saved Harold Crick with his wrist watch, which had itself been a character since the beginning.

 

Hilbert: Why did you change the book?
Eiffel: Lots of reasons. I realized I just couldn’t do it.

Hilbert: Because he’s real? 
Eiffel: Because it’s a book about a man who doesn’t know he’s about to die. And then dies. But if a man does know he’s about to die and dies anyway. Dies- dies willingly, knowing that he could stop it, then- I mean, isn’t that the type of man who you want to keep alive? 

–         from the final scene of Stranger Than Fiction

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Agree? Disagree? Tell me why in the comments!

NaNoWriMo and manuscript formatting: videos!

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It occured to me this week that my How to Format Your Manuscript post would have been much easier to understand in video form. So I made a video! The sound is a little tinny, but still understandable:

Got questions? Got ideas for other instructional videos? Leave them in the comments!

And for all you NaNoWriMo warriors, here’s a music video from italktosnakes dedicated to the November challenge:

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How to get rid of background exposition PART 2

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 So let’s finish up Example Number 2 from last week.

Once again, the background exposition (telling):

I had been the youngest ever accepted into the Academy, and the quickest ever to graduate. Since then, I had sought out every acclaimed blade-wielder in the five kingdoms, and defeated them all. I had come to this city for one reason only; to challenge the last.

The fix (showing):

I rapped my knuckles on the bar to get the innkeeper’s attention. He finished drying a tankard before leaning towards me.

“What’ll ye have?”

“I need a room.”

“Name?”

“Lister.”

He snorted. “Any relation to Gavin Lister?”

“That’s me.”

The innkeeper chuckled.

Then he saw my serious expression and sobered momentarily in disbelief.

Then he laughed even louder.

“Ye want me to believe you’re the fellow made the best swordsmen in five kingdoms look like fools wavin’ broom handles? Ye’re not even old enough to go to the Academy.”

I sighed. Starting tomorrow, I was growing a beard. “Why don’t you pick out the best swordsman in this room?”

“And?”

“And if he kills me, you get everything I’m carrying here, which is more than enough gold to pay someone to mop up the blood. If I kill him, I get a room.”

My confidence made him hesitate, but as he eyed me, I saw him decide that I was bluffing. He smiled and began scanning the room for a suitable challenger.

A quarter of an hour later, I was following the innkeeper up a narrow flight of stairs. He kept glancing back over his shoulder at me, and after opening the door to my room, he stood aside to let me pass, his chin hanging open as if he was trying to say something.

“You’re…here to fight the Sword Master, then?” he said at last. His tone was a pleading, pathetic version of what it had been.

“That’s right.”

“No man has ever crossed blades with him and lived.”

“Good,” I said. “I’d hate to be unevenly matched.”

I shut the door and locked it.

So, did we hit the same points we hit last week? Let’s see…

Show the past by telling the present consequences

His past: accomplishing a lot at a very young age. The consequence: difficulty convincing strangers he really is Lister due to his young appearance.

Give your reader clues, not facts

We know he’s new in town because he’s looking for a room. We know he’s famous, because a stranger knows his name and history. We know he’s young because of the innkeeper’s disbelieving comments.

Work those clues into the action and dialogue

I let the innkeeper talk about Lister’s reputation, rather than letting Lister think it to himself; otherwise it sounds like bragging. Also, Lister’s action in actually fighting someone shows us he’s the real deal, rather than just somebody who forged a fake reputation and talks big. Lastly, as an added bonus, we see that he readily kills his opponents, and that he’s undefeated.

Be careful with dialogue, though. It’s easy to shove all your background exposition into dialogue and think it’s okay. It’s not.

Remember this rule of thumb: never make a character say something he wouldn’t naturally say. If you’re forcing words into his mouth, that’s how it will sound—forced.

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Read more:

Show Don’t Tell on: description, telling to show, and character development.

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