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Archive for February, 2011

How stories are distilled

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

One of the best tricks a writer can learn is how to make the research they have done for one specific book or article work for a completely different publication. An even better trick is to figure out a way to make that research work for several different pieces.

One of the keys to working this out is understanding the audience for the text you’re writing so you can identify the best way to present your words. The slant, style and content of a piece may suit one publication but be completely inappropriate for another, leaving you with perhaps pages of research and hours of interview recording left unused.

If you can identify a fresh angle or approach to this same information, your otherwise wasted notes can easily become the makings of a completely different piece that you can send elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, editors need pretty much the same skill set.

The editor needs to be just as aware of audience (though perhaps this seems obvious, given that I’ve said before the editor is there to ensure a written piece works for the reader and the publisher as well as conveying the author’s message).

But this goes further.

Freelance editors for example, like many freelance writers, often work for multiple publications and need to be aware of the different requirements of each editor*, each publication (or publishing house)** and, of course, the audience. They need to take care that the approach of the text they are working on suits the reader and the publication not just when it arrives fresh from the writer, but also once it has been edited.

Subediting magazines or newspapers, often the editor will be required not only to edit, but to cut – sometimes substantially – a piece of writing to fit a layout. This might mean cutting a 1500-word piece down to 500 words, all while keeping the soul and voice of the piece intact. While this involves some rewriting on the editor’s part (hopefully without it being noticeable) the editor must always keep in mind the audience for whom the piece is intended.

One thousand words is a lot to cut from any piece and so the editor must get into much the same mindset to subedit as the writer did in order to write it in the first place.

They need to consider the angle and approach of the piece.

It becomes a precision procedure. That travel story, told from a personal perspective, may contain all sorts of amusing details. So what do you cut and what do you keep? You can change the slant of the whole story, without any rewrites, just by cutting those thousand words.

If, for example, you’re subediting for a travel magazine, you need to keep in mind that the reader might want to recreate the author’s journey and would be more interested in the facts and figures of the trip than the amusing asides.

But the same story in the lifestyle section of a newspaper might be intended as light Sunday brunch reading, for which the entertaining, relatable stories about other hotel guests and getting lost in a foreign city are more suited.

In effect, the subeditor repeats the story distilling process that the writer did at the start.

For each piece, a subeditor needs to determine the most salient details to keep; those most relevant to that particular publication and its readers, discarding spare text that doesn’t fit either stylistically or thematically. At the same time, the editor needs to weave the remainder together, hiding any gaps and reworking the text so it appears this is how it was written in the first place.

This is the invisible craft at work once more.

What are the most pieces you have ever got from a single piece of research? Have you ever been mis-edited (rather like being misquoted)?

*Different editors have different, personal style preferences. (Usually comma-related.) It’s worth finding out what these are before you start marking up pages. While every editor knows that even venturing the word “comma” in an editorial department is a bit like yelling “fire”, I once worked for two different magazines in the same publishing house at the same time. The two editors had completely opposing views on comma usage. Fun times.

** Beyond content, you, as editor, need to know what the “house rules” are for that publication or publishing house. Em-dash or en-dash? And would that be with or without spaces? What’s the general feeling on ellipses? Which dictionary do they use? Which style guide? Do they have a house
style guide? ***

*** Don’t be fooled by these last trick questions. Of course you also need to know if the editorial department actually uses and adheres to these guides. Including the house style. Rather than, say, some alternative style a particularly scary chief editor once implemented that everyone has since soaked up by osmosis or passed on with secret, trembling handshakes…

Tags: editing, research, writing
Posted in Editing, Writing | 2 Comments »

Just a fraction too much fiction

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

People often describe authors as artists or craftsmen, but have you ever thought of them as master manipulators? I recently had a conversation during which a friend informed me that they never read fiction because they “didn’t like to be manipulated”.

At first my reaction was one of incredulity. How can anyone not enjoy stories? And how could such a cold word as “manipulation” be used to describe the process of journeying through someone else’s imagination?

But really, I suppose, that’s exactly what it is.

I have read tales depicting snowstorms so realistic that I have found myself huddled under a blanket in mid-summer and downed gallons of water to quench unreal thirst in sympathy for fictional characters stranded in equally fictional desert lands.

The other night I woke up feeling sick and calmed myself back to sleep when I “remembered” the cause: I had drunk several litres of blood after dinner. It was only the next morning, when I was fully awake, that I realised how odd this was. I had become so absorbed in the story I was reading in the evening that later, in my half-awake state, I’d actually thought I’d lived it.

Clearly, as a reader, I am very suggestible. I should keep that in mind when planning what to read before falling asleep – fewer vampire novels; more stories about sunshine and rainbows. When I get into a book, I really get into it. I absolutely experience the life and emotions of the characters.

And isn’t that what every writer strives for? To get the reader to care? To paint pictures and scenes with words so readers really believe they’re standing in that street? Sitting on that couch?

Of course, as both an editor and a reader, I regard all these experiences as signs of powerful writing – indications that the authors have the ability to captivate their audiences with nothing but words.

My compatriot, I suspect, would suggest that I must suffer from some form of readers’ Stockholm syndrome to view such manipulation in so positive a fashion.

I can’t really take issue with this stance that fiction is a manipulative experience to be avoided.* If someone prefers not to have their emotions falsely tugged or their adrenaline tested by make-believe events perhaps, on the face of it, that’s reasonable. Maybe not everyone is okay with waking up believing they might actually have drunk three litres of blood – who am I to judge?

But it does seem a shame to avoid one’s own imagination in this way.

There’s a kind of magic that takes place when a writer creates something – a person, a scene, a world, an event – with words; but the reader has to submit, yes, yield to the manipulation, in order for the spark to catch.

In some ways, it is a matter of trust. The imaginations of both the writer and the reader must come into play. The reader must trust the author to allow his or her words “in”; the author must trust his or her readers enough to set the words free in the first place.**

I’m still not sure I can see this as harshly as the word “manipulation” implies. There’s too much joy and exhilaration to be found exploring my own imagination and that of others.

I think good writing should touch your readers’ hearts, they should believe in your characters and their experiences. I think a true test of a story is whether your reader emerges at the end believing, even if it’s only for a moment, that it was all real; and I am far too biased to be able to see this as a bad thing.

What do you think? Have you ever felt manipulated by a writer (or a story)? Did this spoil your experience? Are you anti-fiction? How do you feel about trust between author and reader?

* I didn’t ask my friend how he felt about arguably similarly manipulative artistic enjoyments such as art, music or film. And of course, there are another ten blog posts in the idea that even (or especially) non-fiction writing can manipulate too. News, biography, autobiography, history, politics… there’s plenty of fodder there!

** Because let’s not forget, the author is dead. Death is a pretty big price to pay for a little mental manipulation… And now the internet is around and online discussion prevails, there are a lot more corpses.

Tags: editing, fiction, worldbuilding, writing
Posted in Authors, Editing, Reading, Writing | 2 Comments »

You keep using that word…

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

One of the reasons to hire an editor, even if you have run an automated spelling and grammar checker over your document, is to get that all-important second pair of eyes looking over your work. As a second reader, the editor will pick up if you have overused a particular word and they’ll see, where a spellchecker won’t, if you are using the word incorrectly.

Most of us have a particular “tic”, a preferred word that we use frequently. It might be different depending on whether we’re having a conversation (or even who we’re talking to), or whether we’re writing an email or a book or blog post. It may even be different every time. But it’s the sort of thing we are unlikely to pick up ourselves. And unless someone tells us, we may never realise that we’re repeatedly using a certain word incorrectly.

This is where an editor comes in.

Unlike Microsoft Word, your human editor will call you out on attempts to have your action hero bring his fighter jet in for a daredevil landing right inside a wardrobe (ie: on a clothes hanger) when it would be far more advisable to pull in to an aircraft-sized hangar.

If every one of your characters is described as having glowing eyes and skin, and you’re not writing a supernatural or sci-fi thriller, your editor may suggest alternative ways to highlight their features.

When a scene depicts someone in a suit with a separate bathroom, it’s your editor, not spellcheck, who will advise either adding an “e” to clarify that you meant “suite” or adding detail to explain how the catheter arrangement works with the pinstripe.

Often it is the way a character speaks or conducts him- or herself that gives away the tic. In an attempt to avoid overusing “said”, many writers will use action to keep things moving. This is an effective technique, so long as it is not overdone and as long as those tics are kept in check. Again, the editor is there to ensure that a character who “snorts” in response to every comment doesn’t come across as having a drug habit (unless he’s meant to) or that others don’t “shrug” their way through every exchange and seem disinterested.

Punctuation can reveal similar “tics” and it’s only during that close editorial read that it becomes obvious every second sentence ends with an exclamation point or ellipsis that lends the story a jumpy or disjointed flow. Your editor can help smooth these out so that the dramatic effect isn’t lost and the text stays even.

Of course there are ways to try and catch these things yourself. Letting your work rest before you read over it allows your brain to “reboot” and you become your own “fresh eyes”. And becoming friends with your dictionary (and thesaurus) also helps, although yes, that seems obvious. But editors use them all the time.* Even the ones who are themselves “walking dictionaries” use actual dictionaries. Probably even more than other people because they are paranoid about getting caught out. After all, if you’re going to spend your life nitpicking other people’s words you want to make sure you get it right!**

But when all’s said and done, there’s nothing like that second pair of eyes to pick up the things you don’t know you’ve missed.

Do you have any writing tics? Spotted any anywhere? Let us know below!

* Apart from the editors I once met who refused to use dictionaries on the grounds that if a word needed to be looked up then a different word should be chosen. As a word nerd I am still troubled by this years later.

** Seriously, there is no sound like the tone of glee in someone’s voice when they believe they have found an error in an editor’s work. This is possibly understandable. But still…