How Soon Do You Start Critiques?

I've been workshopping a new novel, one that has less than 20,000 words so far. I haven't let so many people see my words so early before. I always thought that I needed to get a story into decent shape before people could have something solid to critique. However, now I realize that showing an early draft to critique partners can help you create that shape.

I sent my first two chapters for critique last December, and I asked the group to focus on character, not plot. I had an idea of how the plot would reveal itself, but at I wanted to know if my characters were compelling. And my workshop told me who they liked and who they didn't. What they were curious to know about each character's background and what details they didn't need to get weighed down in.

At the end of the critique, the group speculated about where the story was going and what could happen next. A few folks picked out the plot path I was heading on, but what was more interesting to me was hearing new possibilities of what could happen to these characters that I'd never dreamed of. They gave me some potential directions to investigate.

I'd been hesitant to toss pages out for critique so early before, but now I'm going to get early stuff out there sooner. And in my notes I submitted with my pages, I asked the group to focus on a certain aspect (character) that I needed the most help with, and the group kindly obliged.

Once you have a full first draft, it might be harder to change direction and press that delete key so often. It has been for me at times. But now that I'm sharing these early pages, I feel like making changes won't be as gut-wrenching because I'm not tossing away so much time and effort.

What have your experiences been with getting critiques at various stages in your drafting process?

A Novel in Pieces

I’ve been hanging out in revision mode and making slow yet steady progress. I’ve focused on the first 100 pages and have tightened up the plot. The beginning needed the most work, plot wise. The middle and end are okay, but I know there are a few specific spots where I need to weave in my higher-stakes plot just right to make the story sing all the way to the end.

But looking at 85,000 words, how could I find those problem spots? And find them efficiently. I use a spreadsheet to keep track of all my scenes. So the other day I assigned each scene a status regarding plot: fine, needs a few tweaks, or in deep trouble. The only other detail I will tell you about this spreadsheet (and therefore about me) is that it is color-coded on three different variables.

So now there were colors and labels and I knew there were spots that needed more work than others. Yet looking at my colorful contraption, I got overwhelmed. I’ve been going over and over the book so much I’ve started to feel like I’m not making as much progress. I needed to stir things up.

I learned long ago that when a task feels unmanageable, breaking it up into smaller pieces and focusing on one at a time really works for me. The task of “clean house top to bottom before entire family comes over for a party” sounds daunting. But what about “vacuum the living room?” Heck, I can handle that. “Clean the second bathroom?” Easy as pie.

Well the same thing works with novels, because a novel is just a bunch of little chapters. I seemed to forget this part. When I started revising and moved scenes around drastically, I kicked chapter numbers to the curb. I didn’t know what was going to end up where and labeled (alphanumerically) my scenes. Yes, each and every individual scene -- right now, there are 94 of them.

Now that everything is in the right place – story starts where the trouble starts, a nice reversal about halfway through – I felt like I could chunk the scenes back into chapters. And you know what? Seeing those chapter numbers (each set of scenes with their own individual border in the spreadsheet, of course) really made it manageable.

And of all those scenes, I identified eight chapters where I need to tinker with the plot. In some spots, it's just one scene that needs a fix. In others the whole chapter needs a good talking to. Before, I thought I was up against a whole novel. But now it's just eight chapters. I can handle eight chapters.

So take that, big bad scary novel. You’re just a bunch of little ole chapters after all.

Getting Unstuck

September was not the best writing month I’ve ever had. I spent more time being stuck than being productive. I'd been working on weaving a stronger, meatier plot into my novel. It was a big undertaking, but I knew I had to get it right. But I got stuck, and for a lot longer than ever before.

Good news is that I’m finally back on the horse of productive writing and revising at a respectable pace. So I thought I'd share a few things that helped me stay on track.

I took a little break.
I knew I was facing a big change and I knew I didn’t know how to solve it. The words were spinning in front of me and I couldn’t see any story. So instead of writing, I went to movies in the afternoon. I watched a lot of Gilmore Girls. I took a few mid-day naps. Of course, at the time I was distraught by all these non-writing activities. But I see now that my brain needed a break from the book and I let it have it.

I didn’t give up.
After a couple weeks of pure nothing, I felt like I indulged enough. But I kept opening the document, and looking at it, and thinking about it. For one brief second, I questioned if I should just abandon the book. Then I questioned it some more. It was a good, important question. Was my approach of writing by the seat of my pants failing me? Did I discover the right plot too late and used up all the creativity I had on this story? But I knew if I gave up on the book I’d feel so disappointed in myself. Believe me, I’m a fan of walking away from things that just aren’t working for me. I don’t believe in banging my head against a wall. But I believed in this book, in this story. I knew if I gave up I’d feel like a failure. So even if the book never gets published, at least I know I finished what I started and gave the story a chance.

I talked about it.
No hiding in shame here. When people would ask how my book was going, I would gleefully shout, “Just awful! It’s a big mess and I don’t know how to fix it!” And these kind friends, writers or not, would listen and I would talk about what I was struggling with. By the seventh, or eight, or eighteenth explanation of what was wrong with my story, my mind started to jump alive with ideas on how to make it right.

I wrote new words.
At first, I kept trying to move the existing scenes around. If that approached worked by putting my inciting event in the right place, wouldn’t it work for the rest of my chapters? Couldn’t I just add a little paragraph here and a couple sentences there to support my new plot point? Unfortunately, no. The best thing that helped me see the story was to write brand new scenes. Entire, full scenes. I learned more about my characters and what they wanted. And I felt like I was making progress.

I kept sending pages out for critique.
Even though I knew I had a problem in a specific spot, I sent other chapters that were in decent shape out for critique. My critique partners were kind and patient enough to review what I had. And learning about what worked and what didn’t work in those other chapters helped me see the whole story and determine what I needed to add.

I stayed focused.
Mid-afternoon movies and naps aside, when I was working through this problem in the beginning of the book, I stayed focused on the beginning of the book. I focused on the first fifty pages, and when I got them in order, I focused on the next fifty pages. That’s where I had the biggest issue. But I knew that every word I would write past page 100 had to be supported by what happened in pages 1-100. And because I knew I was struggling with a plot issue, working on another section of the novel wouldn’t serve me well. I refused to move forward in the story until I got that section sorted out.

I didn’t give up.
This is worth saying twice. Sure, you can argue that no one is going to publish a really awful book (definition of awful is subjective, just leave Dan Brown alone, he’s getting people to read, he’s found an audience that loves his work). But what I really believe to be true is that no one is going to publish a book that isn’t finished. And if you don’t believe me, listen to agent Jessica Faust over at BookEnds when she says: Never Give Up. It's a tough business, and like any business, problems will pop up. But whether it’s during the first draft, final revisions, or agent search, you must just keep going. And keep writing.

Where Does Your Story Start?

As I continue to learn about the writing process, I'm always excited when I hear a piece of advice for the millionth time. It means that piece of advice is probably pretty accurate.

I had this experience at a recent seminar that was filled with people who really hadn't even written a single word of fiction yet. I wish I had heard this piece of advice when I was just starting out, because it is perfect and true.

"In your first draft, your story probably doesn't really start until chapter four."

Or chapter seven. Or, in my most recent first draft, I'm pretty sure it was chapter fourteen. But that's okay, because that's what, as Anne Lamott calls them, shitty first drafts are for.

They're for feeling out your character, finding your voice, edging your way into the story. But, as you revise, you have to be able to lift away the muck that was your warming up writing and yank it out of the story. Get that gunk out of there. Delete it. Or, if you're like me, save it in a different precious little Word document so you can always go back and grab those words if you need them. Another piece of advice: you'll probably never need them.

It's hard to take a hatchet to your book. But your story will be better served if you can get right down to it sooner. So write away. Then as you revise, take a close look at where things really start shaking, and let your story begin there.

Fun with numbers

I wish I could remind myself that it's really not necessary to count drafts. But I like having concrete goals and accomplishing specific tasks. It feels so fantastic to say, "Do you know what I did these past few months? I finished the third draft of my novel." Specific, concrete, and tangible. But hey, do you know what's not always specific, concrete, and tangible? Creative writing.

I wrapped up my second draft in mid-June, three very long months ago. And I've been plugging away at the book for most of those days, but certainly not all. There's been some stuckage. And I'm starting to make my way through the muck the past week or so. But when I solve the problem in one scene (for example, what happened to my antagonist? Why hasn't he shown up in forty pages?), another one awaits me right around the corner.

I've been doing a lot of cutting editing. When I cut a big chunk out of a current draft (anything more than two sentences) I save the text in a document called Extras. And just as I was getting frustrated about working hard yet feeling like I was going nowhere fast, I noticed some interesting math in my word count.

Word count draft one: 88,260

Word count draft two: 72,911

Current word count of draft three: 79,646

Current word count of Extras I deleted from draft two: 5,908

We all know that a first draft is often full of awful, extra, excessive, unnecessary, redundant words. But let's take a look at what's happened between drafts two and three. My good friends over at Excel tell me this means that while I've cut about 6,000 words out of draft three so far, I've added in 12,000 new ones. My story isn't getting completely hacked away after all! And hopefully my sentences are getting more efficient. If I said it in ten words, could I say it just as well in eight?

So back to the challenges ahead. One word at a time.

I'm Starting to See a Pattern

I've finally been writing long enough that I'm starting to notice patterns in my writing habits. Note that I didn't say I've started to develop patterns. They've likely always been there. I'm just now noticing they exist.

For example, my first draft is usually overloaded with dialogue. And to this, do I say, heck, I'll just take up screenwriting? Oh no, I do not. Probably because screenwriting is a completely different animal with its own rules of craft and I'm just starting to become good friends the fiction craft rules and they are all my brain can handle for now.

What I do instead is create a lot of backstory. Oodles of it! Piles of delicious, luxurious, how my character felt about her elbows in third grade backstory.

Problem is, backstory sucks. It's a little indulgent for both the character and the writer, not to mention super boring to read. But alas, it comes out of me. I cannot stop it.

I've considered trying to just turn off the backstory spout (as if I could even locate that precious valve in my brain). But it has spit out some interesting nuggets about my characters. Instead, I take out the backstory hatchet.

I do not know how to properly use said hatchet just yet. I don't know how much to cut vs. save vs. move. But I have the tool in my hand and I'll figure out how to use it little by little. (Hey, adverbs, are you listening? Scared, aren't you?) Anyway, I'm just glad I know that I need the backstory hatchet.

So for now, I'm just going to write how I write. My plan is to take whatever writing pattern comes and work with it. Because if I run away from it I will have nothing but a blinking cursor and a really high score on must pop words.

What are some of your writing patterns?

Writing Without a Blueprint

The past few weeks as I’ve been struggling with the mess of the first draft, I’ve questioned if my organic, writing by the seat of my pants with no outline or idea where I’m heading approach was really a good idea. But now I think it is. I never, ever would have sat down and dreamed up this story. Or these characters. They just kind of happened. And then stuff happened to them. As I got to understand my characters, I could put more story around their lives, finally build some tension, understand their goals and figure out what the big climax they’re all heading toward actually is.

I really did like the ending of the first draft. The beginning was slow, as early beginnings tend to be in my world, but it had potential. Actually, I liked the whole first draft, the way you love a four-year-old’s weird crayon self portrait that is really just two squiggly lines, because hello, the kid is just four.

So I say to my first draft, you are just a first draft, you don’t know any better. But you will grow up into a final draft, one of these days. You just need a little time and practice.

Anyway, as I’m deleting and moving so much stuff in this next draft, I wonder if I could’ve made life easier for myself by writing under a more structured plan – i.e., an outline. I hear that people do this, yet I’ve never ever tried it. It just doesn’t feel, well, creative.

My husband Mike suggested that how I write a first draft is like building a house without a blueprint. I know a house needs some basic things: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room. I know a story needs some basic things: inciting event, conflict, voice, characters, climax, resolution.

So I kind of built a house that has all the basic elements, but not so much in the right place. The structure of my first draft is kind of like a house where the front door opens right into the bathroom, and you have to step over the toilet, into the tub and then through the kitchen to get to the living room. My inciting event was on page 74 or something like that.

On the second draft, I’m tearing down walls and really thinking about if I want an open floor living space or a separate kitchen and dining room. And I’m patching up that big hole in the roof. And I’m taking down the four by four room in the middle of the house with no windows or closets because who needs something like that?

It’s pretty fun, this rehabbing of my story. Would I build a house this way? No, that would be super expensive and there’d be a heck of a lot of dust. But for a story, building it without a blueprint works just fine.

So after I get the layout of the house in the right shape (plot), then I have the future drafts where I’m painting and buying furniture. And the final draft of polishing where I’m decorating and finding just the right piece of art to hang on the wall and candlesticks for the dining room table.

And then I’ll have a real house, built in stages, little by little, nail by nail. And inside it will be my book that I wrote, also in stages, little by little, word by word.

Character, Story, Language

I’m tinkering with my writing process, figuring out what is most effective, motivating, efficient, practical, productive, etc. Last night, my shiny new critique group talked about our writing process. I am still a firm believer in writing draft one without an outline or even an idea.

For this book, I used draft one to discover my character, Sadie, and figure out what she was like, how she talked, where she lived, how she spent her weekends. I found her voice.

In the second draft I’ve worked on the story. I asked myself questions about Sadie. Now that I know her personality, what is it that Sadie wants? Why does she want it? And what’s the obstacle that’s getting in the way of this? What’s at stake if she doesn’t get it? This helped me develop the story I was telling about Sadie, aka the plot.

The questions I answered (which I really forced myself to think about in this novel) are important and, frustratingly connected in different ways. I was happy when I was certain that I knew what Sadie wanted, then defeated when I realized I didn’t know why. I had an obstacle, but wasn’t sure what was at stake that motivates her to keep moving in the face of conflict. I’ll be spending at least one more draft (I wasn’t going to count them, but here I am doing it) working out the story.

And then, once I my character is strong and my story is in the right place, I’ll focus on language. That’s when I’ll tinker for hours over one paragraph. That’s when I’ll search for opportunities to add metaphors and similes. That’s when I’ll decide if someone’s face is beet red or wine red.

This is just one type of process, and it works for me right now. I may evolve into another process. Some people swear by outlines but that approach just doesn’t move me. Although, I’ve never seriously tried it, and someday I should to see if it works for me or if there’s anything I can take from that approach and apply it to my writing process.

I don’t think it matters how you write, just that you keep writing. Whatever tricks you need to do to keep those fingers dancing across the keyboard is just fine.

What's your process like?

The More You Know

Hey, remember those cheesy self-help public announcements NBC used to do on Saturday mornings with the soft music and rainbow? Some star would talk to you about self-image or whatever and the tagline was “The More You Know?” Are they still doing those? I also heard a rumor that Saturday morning cartoons don’t even exist anymore. Thanks a lot, Saved by the Bell.

Anyway, I had one of those learning moments about writing where I realized “Boy, the more I know about this, the more I learn how much I don’t know.” The longer I spend searching for things to fix in this draft, the more holes I discover. This is a good thing, I tell myself. The last thing I want to do is try to write a book thinking I know it all. I realize that I do not; but I still continue to amaze myself by learning exactly how much I don’t know.

How about an example? I realized that my character doesn’t really change in the end! How dare she! There is a nice climax, a payoff for the reader, and a decent resolution. But this stuff happens to her. It’s not quite deus ex machina; the climax has been set up pretty decently, following a series of events leading it up to be believable. But Sadie isn’t the one calling the shots in the climax. She should be.

The climax is the place in the story where something’s gotta give; something absolutely has to happen to change the course of events. My character is backed into a corner, and someone has to make a move.

But what I realize is that Sadie has to be the one to make that move. She should be the one to affect change, not someone else. And the choice she makes should be evident of how she’s changed as a character since she embarked on this journey at the beginning of the story.

This all seems obvious as I write it now. I’ve read it in countless writing books, heard it in plenty of workshops. But I didn’t know it was missing from this book until I sat around and stared at my story, going over and over it in my mind.

Does this mean the climax of my story is going to change drastically? No, the end result will be pretty similar. There are only a few options on how the story can end (at least without getting aliens involved).

What I need to do now is figure out how Sadie will change in the end. This is a very big question. It ties into the one I’ve nailed down recently of What does Sadie want? But I’m still fuzzy on the Why does she want it? I have to spend more time with her figuring out her motivation.

To learn more about Sadie, I have to write more scenes for her and see what she does. Then once I know more about her, I can decide (or she will show me, really) how she’s changing or where she needs to change and why. Then I can decide which option for my climax would fit her actions, and go on from there.

And then, hopefully, when Sadie is backed into the corner, she’s going to be the one calling the shots and we’ll all understand why she makes the choice she does.

Chopping Block

I have deleted a lot of stuff from the second draft. I have now gotten over the need to delete just about everything. I think the plot is in the right order. I need to add new scenes and still flesh things out, but the sequence of events is finally right. But let’s take a look at what I’m left with now, shall we?

First draft was 314 pages, 88,260 words long. Second draft, as it stands today, is 240 pages and 67,344 words long. This might look like I cut 74 pages. But really I’ve saved 43 of them in a lovely document titled “Extras.” This is the stuff that doesn’t fit right now, might not work, but I might be able to salvage later. Who knows, those pages might end up in the trash eventually, but I like that they are ready for me to plunk them back in if I can figure out where they best help the story.

Looking at chapters as they were numbered in the first draft, the order is sort of like this now: 1, 2, 14, 5, New, 7, 3, 17, 4, 6-10, 20-21, 11, 14, 12, 15, 22, 15-16, 24, 17-18, 19, 18, 23-33.

Do you see how those last ten chapters get to stay in their nice tidy order? Do you see how I had to wiggle the opening chapters around a bit to make the reader (aka agent) stick around long enough to get to those final chapters? Because the last thing you want to do is send an agent a book where you’re thinking, the first 200 pages are rather odd, but that last 100 is just perfect!

I have things in order. At least, enough of an order to move on. Now I have the time to add in more scenes, heighten the conflict, and deepen the characters. The fun just does not stop!

Moving Parts

As I started to dig into the second (sort of) draft, I realized pretty early on that I’d buried a lot of good conflict way down in the second half of the book. So I started moving things up and down and out and I got my first fifty pages in solid enough shape to move on.

Then I started working on next fifty pages. I kept moving scenes around and deleting stuff there, too. Now I’m getting into pages 100-150 and I’m still trying to move things around some more. But do you know what? Those chapters are kind of in an okay order. Yes, there’s still plenty of stuff to delete and expand on. The writing is still lanky, awkward, sluggish first draft writing. But, the plot, the story itself, is not so bad there.

I was nervous to rewrite a draft I’d received no feedback on. Would I really be able to find the problems on my own? But once I discovered I needed to better solidify the main conflict, I was relieved that I identified a problem and had a solution to fix it. But then I started to apply this solution to the entire book.

The rest of the book doesn’t need this particular fix. The middle has its own problems. One of them, I think, is keeping track of a few different subplots. So maybe I should focus on fixing that area instead of other problems that aren’t really there.

Second Draft, Sort Of

The first few chapters are safely in the hands of trusted critique partners. So exciting! It took me about a week longer than I expected to get things in shape, but I wasn’t off my goal by far.

By the way, when you change the point of view in a story, do you know how many times you need to look at a chapter before you’ll be able to find every instance of the old POV? Me neither! Third person is still popping up everywhere I look.

I was reading a post by Anna David on Editor Unleashed the other day where she says she doesn’t know how to count her drafts. Being a very goal-oriented, make a list and cross things off it kind of person, I’m very motivated by knowing what draft I’m in. But that post made me reconsider this.

The first draft was clear, I wrote it front to back, no stopping. The second draft has been a much more iterative process. At first, I’ve focused heavily on the first fifty or so pages. Then I focused on the second fifty pages a ton. Then I went back to the first fifty pages to make sure they were set up properly so the stuff in the second fifty made sense. Should I be counting these as different drafts? Does it matter? No, not really.

I’m going to stick with calling it a second draft for now, because I know I’m further along than the first, and nowhere near the final polishing draft. I’m moving forward, and that’s really all that matters.

Rewriting and Reordering

Remember how I said I created an intricate numbering system to keep track of my scenes? Well, I’ve moved some things around and that exercise sure came in handy. Take a look at the new order of the scenes:

1B
1C (and some new stuff)
1D
2A
2B
14A
14C
5A
7A
3B
4E
6B
6C

This is only up to page 34, but I bet you get the picture. And do you know what was buried in chapter 14 of the first draft? Only the inciting event, the crisis moment that invokes a conflict that starts everything out that makes a character’s story interesting to tell right now at this very moment in their life. Yeah, that part. I thought I had it right there in chapter two, but it was kind of weak. It was an idea of a conflict, but when the actual forces started competing against one another in chapter 14 – 100 pages into the book – oh boy did things get good.

And for the record, here are the scenes I’ve deleted so far: 1A, 2C (what I thought was my inciting event), 3A, 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D, 5B-D, 6A, 6D. Okay, so maybe you could’ve figured things out by process of elimination, but I am here to make things easy for you.

My goal for the week (which you know already if you follow me at twitter.com/fictioncity) is to focus on getting the first fifty pages in shape to hand off for critique. For my first book, I wrote each draft linearly. I still absolutely believe in this approach for draft one. But the topic, and therefore structure, of this book is different from the first one and so the story feels more fuzzy to me this early on. I knew I really had to get a hold of what the story was about, what the main conflict was, what was at stake, etc. before I could write about the results of those things in the second draft.

Character Flaws

I finished marking up the entire first draft of the book this week. I’m not certain what my next step will be, so I’ve been thinking about the book a lot. This completely counts as writing, by the way, even though there’s no typing going on. I’m writing in my head, I swear.

I am clear on a few things in this book. What’s the main conflict? Sadie wants to get the big job. What’s the obstacle? The new boss promotes Sadie’s co-worker instead.

I also wanted to create a young, contemporary woman who was kind of the anti-Bridget Jones. Don’t get me wrong, I love that book, I just can’t help it. But it’s been done and sequeled and imitated. I wanted to create a character who wasn’t falling into goofball situations at work, who didn’t have credit card debt, who wasn’t obsessed with her weight struggles, wasn’t unable to maintain a normal relationship. So what if my character was smart, successful, ambitious and driven? You know, like most of the women I know in my life and who I can actually relate to.

So I made Sadie strong (but also sassy). I put her through the rigmarole at work, gave her lots of roadblocks, and never made things easy. After re-reading the first draft, I see I need a lot more of this, but the building blocks are there.

And lately, with all this thinking that’s been going on, I discovered a problem I had with the main character in my first book has potential to pop up in this book as well. Like Rebecca, Sadie is a little too good at everything. She’s sometimes too smart, too quick on her feet, too confident around guys, too unflappable.

I’ve realized that she needs a lot more flaws. One of the hardest to receive, yet really important to hear, pieces of feedback about my first book was that it was a little too after-school special. The story was perhaps too pleasant, too uplifting, too optimistic.

I can see the possibility of that happening in this novel. But now that I know this, I can work to avoid it. This is what writing the second novel will teach you. Can you imagine the stuff I’ll learn when I’m writing my seventh unpublished book? I’ll be like an unpublished book writing pro. Now that’s something to aim for.

But seriously, it’s interesting to see how much you can learn by just plugging away and practicing. It’s just like playing the scales on the piano or doing twenty math problems every night in seventh grade algebra. Eventually, things come easier, and you get a little stronger.

So in this situation, to get stronger as a writer, I have to make my characters a little weaker.

Notes on Rewriting

I’ve got rewriting on the brain. I started going through my writing books and reviewing sections on rewriting. For as much as everyone says “writing is rewriting,” writing books seem to have awfully small sections on revision. Anyway, I re-read parts of Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver recently, and thought I’d share some of my favorite tidbits. Back in the day when I started this innocent hobby (or so I thought) of creative writing, this was the first book on writing I read. It’s very helpful and a pretty easy read. Good starter book.

• “Rewriting is not polishing.” So good to remember. You aren’t ready to get things perfect on the second draft. Continue to let yourself experiment and make mistakes. Don’t try to get every synonym down and every comma in the right place. Polishing comes later.
  
• Cleaver suggests it takes, on average, about five drafts to get a story right.
  
• When you’re starting out, don’t always try to get a story perfect. Get it as good as you can get it for where you are as a writer. Then start another project.
  
• Cleaver refers to rewriting as “craft in progress.” Mmm. Love that phrase.
  
• What to do when you’re lost? Go back to the main elements of Want, Obstacle, Action. He suggests that if you avoid these main points of the story “It’s like waxing your car when it needs a new engine.”
  
• When you’re revising and thinking about your story and if it has what it needs, “don’t work in your head.” Find the proof on the page. If you can’t point to the exact words that back up how obvious it is, then they are only in your mind and will never be in reader’s. I am guilty of this a lot!
  
• Resolution “is simply a matter of a victory or a defeat.” Did the character get what they want or not? Mini-resolutions occur throughout your story as your character faces her obstacle and chips away at it bit by bit.
  
• Don’t forget emotion. This “is where the ultimate connection is made.”
  
• “Showing is creating the experience.” Don’t just talk about what happened; write it so the reader can really experience it herself.
  
• “Let nothing be easy for anyone ever.” Who wants to read about someone’s easy breezy life? No fun! Make things tough, always.
  
• Use double duty: every little action and scene in the story has to reveal character. If you send your character to a cocktail party, this event better have some significant connection to your character. Is the person who’s creating an obstacle there and can help/hinder your character? Does your character have a drinking problem? Is your character socially awkward and full of anxiety about attending cocktail parties? Make it all count.
  
• History and biography doesn’t develop character. “Your character is developed by the way he acts in the present, the way he deals with his problems.” Don’t rely on too much backstory. Show what’s going on now.
  
• Ask yourself “why” about everything. Be specific. Why is this event relevant to this specific character? “In fiction, we’re looking for the root cause, the deepest level of the experience, the most personal and specific reasons.”
  

Revising a Short Story

I’m revising a short story I first started more than two years ago. I got critiques from writing groups on two different versions. I just went back into my file cabinet and looked for the mark-ups from workshop and they’re gone. I remember throwing them out. This is why I (usually) never throw things out.

But still, I was able to remember feedback from the critique. The most important feedback I received from this story was that my climax was too early. There was also a scene that pretty much everyone found confusing and terrible (although they were nice enough not to say terrible). Now, all I have to tell you about this scene to make you understand why it didn’t work was that it was backstory. I thought it was important, but I can see now that it wasn’t. Talk about taking time away from your stories. I removed this scene during the last draft I did (about a year ago) simply because everyone had a problem with it. I just didn’t get what the problem was then. Today I do – it slowed down the story.

When I studied Journalism in college we had a professor that gave us ten cardinal rules to follow. The one I remember is “Don’t slow down the reader.” I have used that in journalism, technical writing, creative writing – everywhere I write.

And this scene of backstory did just that. I thought it provided more character development, but all it did was pull the reader out of the immediate story. It was too clunky. I needed to show what was going on with the character in the present.

So, I started moving bits and pieces around and I think I finally got the order right. I still have too much slow business at the front of the story. But if I cut out the slow business, I will have more room for a perhaps a nice long dinner scene where I can show what the character is thinking, feeling, doing, etc., right now as the story is happening.

I have three different versions of this story on my hard drive. After I did the above revising, I went back to the original version. The story as it stands now is pretty much the same content as my first draft, but without the awful backstory and with the crucial flashback broken up and spread throughout the story, and climax in the right spot. This is an example of writing more than you need and taking away what doesn’t work. It took me a long time to get there, but now I can really see it.