Revision: Character

My Perceval characters have their own separate file.  I’ve maintained this file from the beginning.  Initially, I collected photos of people who resembled the characters in my mind, wrote out the answers to a series of questions for each character, and interviewed the three major characters in the first book.  As the series has grown from one book to five, I use the file to hold all my notes on each character by novel.  Each book has its own problem for Evan to solve for himself, so each problem presents opportunities for new people in his life.  All this can get complicated.  I needed a way to keep track of everything about each character in each book, something I could reference during the revision process.

In addition to my characters file, I have another file for the entire series which I call “Perceval Redux.”  In this file I collect notes on the series, my notes on the subplots, notes on the shape of America in 2048-50, Evan’s character arc over the 5 books, a master calendar of events, and a list of characters.  On this list I include for each character name, age, code name, career notes, personality notes, education, citizenship, physical appearance; then a brief summary of what the character does in which book, color coded by book.  When I sit down to do the Perceval revision, before I read through the manuscript, I’ll read through both the characters and the Perceval Redux files and keep them handy as I work on the revision.

Physical appearance:  It’s important for the writer to have a clear picture of each character in her mind, but that doesn’t mean she must provide a detailed description for the reader.  In fact, it’s often wiser to focus on one to three specific characteristics that can also reveal personality traits.  So, as I work through the revision, I will look for passages of “over-description” that will need trimming or deletion and focus in on what physical characteristics can also reveal character.  During revision, it’s also a good thing to keep character continuity in mind, especially about things like hair color, eye color, height, weight, facial hair, etc. if I’ve noted those things.  It can really annoy a reader if in one chapter the main character has brown eyes and in the next they’ve changed to blue.

Motivation: During revision, the main task here is to insure that a character’s motivation remains consistent unless a change has been set-up and executed.  The main character’s motivation will remain the most consistent as it drives the dramatic momentum, which doesn’t mean he can’t have angst and doubt.  Other characters can have more mystery.  Often, what appears to be the case, isn’t.  But the writer needs to be clear in her own mind of each character’s motivation(s) whether she shows that information in the story or not.  One thing to watch for: a too-early reveal concerning motivation.  Withholding this information builds suspense.  I especially love how human behavior can be ambiguous.

Speech and Action: Once I’ve established a character’s speech pattern, I need to maintain it.  During revision, one task is to double check dialogue for inconsistencies in speech or vocabulary patterns.  For action, I focus on character continuity.  If a character does something he physically cannot or morally would not, that action needs change.  If a character fails to act, I ask myself what he would do in the situation I’ve created, and/or why he failed to act in the earlier draft.  Does he know what to do?  Or is the character trying to tell me something about the scene, like that it’s wrong or the setting’s wrong or something?

Scenes: Finally, I go through the scene list for each chapter and update for any revisions I’ve made to the scenes.  The idea for the scene list by chapter came from Noah Lukeman in his book The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life.  The scene list can also be a check for how often a character appears, with whom he appears and interacts, what he does, and for foreshadowing and setting up situations.  I highly recommend Lukeman’s clear, concise book.

Theoretically, with each revision, I would change or edit less.  But my experience has shown that it’s not a cumulative effect.  I expect that even after bookstores, online and off, are selling Perceval, I’ll find something I want to change…..

Writing Tools

Writing tools that come immediately to mind for most people are things like computers, paper, pens, notebooks, typewriters, word processors, word processing software, etc.  Those are not the tools I’m thinking about, however.  I’m thinking about tools far more integral to the writing than instruments for committing words to physical paper or file.  They are tools every professional writer needs to know and use correctly:

Language:  Whatever language you write in, be sure that you know the standard version and usage.  For English, we have some excellent style manuals in America including The Associated Press Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, and of course, where would we be without Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.  Every revision needs to involve a review of language and its usage, i.e. how you have used it to tell your story.

Words:  Yeah, a no-brainer.  Words or vocabulary make up language, and they are the basic building blocks of sentences.  Words occupy different places in a sentence and have different jobs.  Knowing how to write a sentence correctly involves some other tools:

• Grammar – It amazes me as I’m revising just how many grammar mistakes I’ll find on my own.  Trusted readers point out others.  I have grammar reference books to help me with complex sentence constructions, as well as simple things.  Many are available.  A reference can tell you the jobs words do in a sentence, what a clause is, and so on.  I own Barron’s A Pocket Guide to Correct Grammar and Edit Yourself: A manual for everyone who works with words by Bruce Ross-Larson.  For online references, search on “English Grammar.”  A final draft needs to be grammatically correct on every single page.  Mistakes tend to annoy readers and reflect badly on you.
• Active Verbs – Verbs do the heavy lifting in your writing.  Passive sentence construction creates boredom and signals a lazy writer.  During the revision process, for each subsequent revision, watch out for verb constructions that use any form of “to be.”  I usually devote an entire revision to this, highlighting every to be verb .  Each one creates an opportunity for more vivid images in a reader’s mind by thinking about what I really see in my mind and how I want to describe it.
• Spelling – Correct spelling mistakes in each draft during the revision process.  Make certain that you’ve corrected words that spellcheck won’t catch, i.e. homonyms like there, their, they’re.  Become close friends, even intimate friends, with an excellent dictionary whether a book or online.  Rampant spelling mistakes annoy readers!
• Vacuum Adverbs — Adverbs occupy a place in the language but use them sparingly.  The same draft I devote to excising the passive voice also receives a good vacuuming.  If you’re unsure about what adverbs are and what they do, refer to your grammar reference tool.

Word Choice:  Using the right word to create an image or express an idea, to build one sentence after another that also builds suspense demands a solid vocabulary, open mind, and excellent dictionary.  When revising, I pay attention to every word.  I challenge my use of words longer than two syllables.  Often, the best words are the simple ones.  However, if a character is well-educated and especially erudite, then it makes sense to give him a vocabulary of longer words.  The goal of word choice is to tell the story as clearly and easily as possible for the adult reader in language that will evoke the location and time, describe the characters and action with accuracy, and haunt the reader forever.

Format:  I use the same format from first to last draft to keep things simple and easy.  Standard manuscript format for prose, screenplay format for scripts.  Format includes setting margins (top, bottom, left and right), tabs, line and paragraph spacing, headers and footers, font and font size.  Indent five spaces for each new paragraph, two spaces after periods (although it’s acceptable more and more to use only one).   For examples of the different manuscript formats, search “manuscript format examples” and choose the one you want to see.

These are the tools every writer uses and strives to use well.  How a writer uses them gives her her own unique voice and style….

 

Loss of Letters

Historian David McCullough commented on letters in the “10 Questions” section of the June 20, 2011 Time magazine:

“Q: We don’t write letters on paper anymore.  How will this affect the study of history?

McCullough’s Answer: The loss of people writing — writing a composition, a letter or a report — is not just the loss for the record.  It’s the loss of the process of working your thoughts out on paper, of having an idea that you would never have had if you weren’t [writing].  And that’s a handicap.  People [I research] were writing letters every day.  That was calisthenics for the brain.”

Writing is good for the brain!!  Real writing, not texting….

 

 

 

Revision Process — Structure

I swear, how does The Writer know?!  This time, in the July 2011 issue, they’ve provided an entire section on “Revising Your Work” just when I’m gearing up to start revising my work.  It’s uncanny.  And quite welcome.  I needed all the reminders these articles provided for tackling revision.  In thinking about how I begin, I realized that my beginning is with the characters and conflict which for my writing means structure.

The most common narrative structure is 3-act dramatic structure, i.e. beginning, middle and end.  To begin a revision, I read through the story, making notes to myself about where the beginning section changes to the middle section and then the middle to the ending.  The middle, or conflict act, should be at least twice as long as either the beginning or ending sections.  This read-through will expose any problems. 

So what specifically do I look for at the end of each section?  For me, character drives everything, and the main character determines structure.  So, in the beginning, “the set-up,” I introduce my main character in all his glory and warts, establish the characters in his life, and by the end of this section, he needs to face a situation that will force a decision or reveal what he wants.  The main character’s desire propels the action right into the second act.  If this first section seems to be going on and on, the most important question I can ask myself is “What does my main character want?”  Once I have the answer, then I can better correct any issues with this section and the transition to the next act.

The conflict act is the middle of the story, and as its name suggests, it should be chockfull of conflict, of other characters trying to thwart the main character in her attempts or journey to get what she wants.  Each of the other characters also has a desire that needs to be in conflict or opposed to the main character’s.  So, at the beginning of this act, especially if I’m having problems with it, I “interview” all the secondary characters to learn who they are and what they want.  Then I ask this question of each character, including the main character: “What will you do to get what you want?”  The answer for each becomes each character’s strategy for act 2.  In general, there needs to be at least one character diametrically opposed to the main character’s desire and actions to provide enough conflict for the second act, but the more the better.  By the end of act 2, my protagonist’s antagonist(s) haved enjoyed so much success that she is stuck, looking into the face of failure, unless something happens or new information becomes available.  This is followed by….

Relief to the tension of the protagonist stuck with nowhere to go — something does happen or more information does become available.  This “event” needs to be organic, not a deus ex machina, with clues or hints or some kind of a set-up occurring throughout the second act.  Armed with renewed desire and a path to gaining what he wants, the protagonist’s actions come to the climax of the story where either he gets what he wants or not.  The final structural questions I ask myself is just that: “Does he get it or not?  If not, why?”  The “why” leads to a resolution to the third act and the end.

I’ve worked with other structures, and in every one, there is always one character whose desire drives the structure and dramatic momentum.  It doesn’t have to be the main character, but it most often is.  When a main character is an anti-hero, as Evan Quinn is, the structure and what drives it is still the same.  Sometimes, the desire is the anti-hero’s, sometimes it’s the character opposing him.

The helpful article in the July The Writer about character and conflict is “Use a checklist to target character & conflict” by Gregory Martin.  Now I’m ready to get to work….