I've been thinking about revisions lately. A couple of months ago, while working on my final-year portfolio, I asked my creative writing tutor (the brilliant Jo Baker) how long it took her to make her novels exactly what she wanted them to be.
Her answer?
"Well, I still haven't managed to do that," she said, laughing.
I asked her why, of course. I mean, was it because no book is ever going to be as perfect as you hoped it would be in your head? Is it because characters can rebel and refuse to be exactly what you want them to be (but there, after all, is where the story's life is, don't you think?)
Jo told me that it's partly not being able to get things the way they are in your head, which I could understand. But she also mentioned that it's because, over time, what you want from your story changes. Not a lot, maybe, but enough to make you feel oddly discontented with what you were so pleased about last month.
This is so true for me now. In my current, edited manuscript of ECHOES (the full manuscript that's still out with agents, being considered), I have a scene in which two characters on the run, in an attempt to forget they're being hunted for a little while, go wandering around London. While this felt right and in character at the time, and even after several rounds of revisions, I now feel irritated by this. Yes, it still kind of works, but it's also not appropriate to that chapter and that part of the story, and I think it diminishes the impact of the tension and conflict in those pages.
Maybe it can be re-written to work better? Maybe it should be scrapped altogether? Either way, it's not the only small thing niggling at me, and I now feel like my book needs another round of revisions.
Question is, does time away from a project give you necessary perspective, and how much of this perspective should you trust? Should you revise a book every single time you feel a little discontented with it, or should you just let it be sometimes and put your discontent down to restlessness? Does waiting to hear from agents/editors/readers contribute to this feeling of discontent with your story?
Is a book ever really complete? Or can it always stand more editing, even if that editing at some point stops being helpful and becomes something that takes away from your original story?
Do you ever struggle with this kind of thing? Does time reveal flaws in your project you never saw before, or does it just make you restless and start picking at tiny things that aren't really a problem?
On an unrelated note, do join my Character Interview Blogfest! Sign-up sheet is in the sidebar, and I can't wait to read all your entries!
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Editing a Novel (Part Two)
While this is part of my collection of posts relating to the popular choices in my recent poll, it's also, I admit, a rather overdue post that I've been promising to do for a while. A follow-up to my post Editing a Novel (Part One) and loosely related to Anatomy of a Night Out vs. Editing a Novel, this is a fairly accurate account of how I edit my work.
Warning: enormous post ahead.
It bears mentioning that my editing process has evolved a great deal since I first started writing novels. I was not quite sixteen when I first sent query letters out about a project I'd written (needless to say, my queries and sample chapters were politely rejected because that book, while not quite tripe, was not very good), but I was about thirteen or fourteen when I finished my first novel, a 70,000-word epic fantasy called The Seventh Saviour. Believe it or not, I still have spiral-bound copies of it, mostly because I'm sentimental like that. When it doesn't make me cringe, it makes me laugh at some of the crap I came up with and occasionally, very occasionally, think 'oh, that's quite a nice line there' or 'hey, good paragraph'.
Before the age of submissions, I didn't bother to edit my work. This was because I wrote it for my own pleasure, purely, and I never had the slightest expectation of ever having this stuff published. So I'd write a book, put it aside, and rush straight on to the next one. Often, I started many a novel and never finished it. In my entire life, I must have written about twelve entire novels, ranging between 70,000 and 160,000 words, and started or written large chunks of about fifty others. And no, I'm not actually exaggerating. Those figures come from counting the documents filed neatly on my laptop, along with estimating as to all the files and spiral-bound copies I've lost through one careless mistake or another. (I still have a strong sense of regret about the loss of a nearly-finished novel I wrote at the age of fourteen. I'm sure it was lousy, but I still love its characters and story, even if it did owe an embarrassing amount to Sleepers and The Godfather.)
Anyway, that rambling introduction aside, my point is: my editing process didn't really exist as such when I was sixteen and first sending out my query letters. You might marvel at my arrogance, thinking that anything written at the age of sixteen could have been worth publishing. But although I wasn't good enough and didn't know enough, I really think age has nothing to do with how good a writer you are.
In describing my editing process, therefore, I'm going to focus almost entirely on ECHOES, which is the last project I've edited and also the first I edited extensively.
If you've read my post about my 'first drafts', you'll know that I don't really have first drafts, at least not in the strictest sense of the word. When I've written a few pages, or a chapter, I always go back to fix sentences or flesh something out or whatever takes my fancy. I've got serious OCD when it comes to writing, so if I don't feel a chapter's quite right (for now), I can't move on to the next one.
But, once I had the completed 'first draft' of ECHOES (going by the above definition whereby a lot of it had already been tweaked along the way), this is how I edited it:
1. While out shopping for food, I stopped off in the stationery aisle and bought the following:
2. I made a list of all the Big edits that needed to be made. These things include adding entire scenes, or subplots, or changing a character's character, and so forth. These were things that might have struck me while writing my 'first draft', or while thinking about the book late at night, and I just didn't have the time or energy to make the changes at the time. Two of the things on my list, for example, were 'weave Esmeralda in through the book' and 'rewrite scenes from Amarra's POV': the former involved incorporating an entire, though small, subplot into the narrative while the latter meant focusing closely on a few scenes/letters that were written from the point of view of a character who wasn't my narrator.
3. I put aside everything except my list and the notebook and started reading through the entire manuscript on the laptop, chapter by chapter. While doing so, I edited: I rewrote entire paragraphs and sometimes chapters, I incorporated the above subplot, I worked on the above character's voice, I cut out unnecessary words that struck me, and, the biggest change of all, I changed my opening chapter about three times.
While doing this, I also simultaneously made character notes. I didn't make enough, for which I'm sorry because I'll now have to go through it again and make more. These notes include noting down your characters' hair and eye colours, their tastes, etc. You'll need this if you're writing a sequel or trilogy or series, as ECHOES is supposed to be. You don't want to search the manuscript every time you wanted to be reminded of a minor character's eye colour.
This was a brutal stage of the process for me, mostly because big changes had to be made, and it's difficult to muster the strength to make such changes when it means so much more work and slicing into your newborn. But it almost always makes the book better, so bear with it.
4. Once I had gone through the entire manuscript this way (in the course of which I managed to cut my ridiculous word count of 139,000 - far too long for anything remotely classified as young adult fiction - to 128,000, which just goes to show how much of a first draft involves unnecessary uses of 'very', 'suddenly' and other extraneous sentences, clauses and words that you'll feel bogged down by as you read back through it), I printed it off. Let me tell you, that cost me, printing off 450 flipping pages.
5. Armed with my shiny new materials (and it's amazing how professional and cool those shiny new materials will make you feel) and my whopping whale-sized manuscript, I sat down, with Steve, and got to work.
Steve was only up in Lancaster with me for a few days, so we couldn't go through the entire manuscript this way, but we managed to edit the first few chapters thus: I would sit down with different coloured pens and read carefully through a chapter. I would circle, underline or make notes next to any sentences that needed changing, words that needed cutting, mistakes, or typos. Then I would hand the chapter over to Steve, who would go through it with a pencil and make his own notes and mark out anything that struck him as unwieldy, awkward, not clear enough, or unnecessary.
After Steve left, we did this largely by email, but I also went through the manuscript by myself. I can't stress enough the importance of having someone else read your work before you consider sending it out anywhere: someone you trust, who will be honest but not cruel, and who, preferably, is an avid reader and knows what makes a good book and story. Steve is thankfully all three, and though I think he's biased, he is one of the reasons I managed to a) finish ECHOES and b) make it worthy of being rejected, yes, but also of having three very, very good agents read some of it and then ask to see more. So far.
I owe Steve for that, and for being exceedingly patient whenever I went into a tizzy.
6. I'm listing this as a separate step, though #5 and #6 are interwoven. Each time I finished editing a chapter on paper, I would get on the laptop and make the changes on screen. I did it this way so that each change would be fresh in my mind, rather than wait until I'd done the entire manuscript before starting over.
7. Once I had finished #6, making the changes to the final chapter, I would have very nearly been finished had it not been for an email from an agent who had read 30 pages and then, politely, passed. He told me the plot felt too scattered. And while I have to say that you shouldn't make changes just because one person tells you they feel this way (because, after all, everyone will have different opinions and it's up to you to be sensible and humble about what you listen to and what you respectfully decide you aren't going to change), I made changes because the agent had made a good point. I had also felt that the opening tried to cram too much in and in too varied a form. So I rewrote the opening. More editing.
8. And finally, what was more or less the last stage of my process. The final proofread. This might not be necessary for other writers, depending on how thoroughly they did their earlier edits and with how sharp an eye. But I change little things so often (a sentence there, a paragraph here, correcting a mistake) that I often don't note down every change. So, to be sure I hadn't made any mistakes while editing (because when rewriting a sentence, you can as easily throw in a typo as you might in writing that sentence in the first place), I went through the manuscript again.
This time, I resisted the urge to change much. As I mentioned before, I have terrible OCD about manuscripts, which I hope the rest of you are spared. If sentences don't align properly on the screen, if words don't look right, I feel that they're bad writing and must be changed. So I will often add unnecessary words or cut out words just to make a sentence look better.
So this is what I tried to resist and succeeded. Mostly. I caught a few more typos, tweaked a few more sentences that felt awkward, and stopped.
Phew. Done.
Final word count: just under 125,000. Still long for a YA, and indeed for a debut novel of any genre except epic fantasy or sci-fi, but it couldn't be helped.
There is such a thing as too much editing. It's what happens when you keep tweaking, and changing, and checking a manuscript, either because you're afraid of it being finished because that means having to put it out there, or because you're a compulsive perfectionist. While no manuscript being sent out into the world is ever going to be perfect, I really believe that there comes a point when it truly is the best you can make it. And that's when you should stop, take a deep breath, and send it out if that's what you want to do with it, because from this point on, I think only someone who knows how they're going to market it (i.e. an agent or editor) can make it any better or more polished. There's little more you can do alone.
(Or so I tell myself. But I daresay my manuscript is nowhere near as good as it needs to be.)
Warning: enormous post ahead.
It bears mentioning that my editing process has evolved a great deal since I first started writing novels. I was not quite sixteen when I first sent query letters out about a project I'd written (needless to say, my queries and sample chapters were politely rejected because that book, while not quite tripe, was not very good), but I was about thirteen or fourteen when I finished my first novel, a 70,000-word epic fantasy called The Seventh Saviour. Believe it or not, I still have spiral-bound copies of it, mostly because I'm sentimental like that. When it doesn't make me cringe, it makes me laugh at some of the crap I came up with and occasionally, very occasionally, think 'oh, that's quite a nice line there' or 'hey, good paragraph'.
Before the age of submissions, I didn't bother to edit my work. This was because I wrote it for my own pleasure, purely, and I never had the slightest expectation of ever having this stuff published. So I'd write a book, put it aside, and rush straight on to the next one. Often, I started many a novel and never finished it. In my entire life, I must have written about twelve entire novels, ranging between 70,000 and 160,000 words, and started or written large chunks of about fifty others. And no, I'm not actually exaggerating. Those figures come from counting the documents filed neatly on my laptop, along with estimating as to all the files and spiral-bound copies I've lost through one careless mistake or another. (I still have a strong sense of regret about the loss of a nearly-finished novel I wrote at the age of fourteen. I'm sure it was lousy, but I still love its characters and story, even if it did owe an embarrassing amount to Sleepers and The Godfather.)
Anyway, that rambling introduction aside, my point is: my editing process didn't really exist as such when I was sixteen and first sending out my query letters. You might marvel at my arrogance, thinking that anything written at the age of sixteen could have been worth publishing. But although I wasn't good enough and didn't know enough, I really think age has nothing to do with how good a writer you are.
In describing my editing process, therefore, I'm going to focus almost entirely on ECHOES, which is the last project I've edited and also the first I edited extensively.
If you've read my post about my 'first drafts', you'll know that I don't really have first drafts, at least not in the strictest sense of the word. When I've written a few pages, or a chapter, I always go back to fix sentences or flesh something out or whatever takes my fancy. I've got serious OCD when it comes to writing, so if I don't feel a chapter's quite right (for now), I can't move on to the next one.
But, once I had the completed 'first draft' of ECHOES (going by the above definition whereby a lot of it had already been tweaked along the way), this is how I edited it:
1. While out shopping for food, I stopped off in the stationery aisle and bought the following:
- a packet of fifteen coloured gel pens
- a notebook for world-building, character and plot notes as well as for tracking submissions and queries
- a yellow-papered notepad
- and, when back on campus (this was this February), I bought some printing credit too.
2. I made a list of all the Big edits that needed to be made. These things include adding entire scenes, or subplots, or changing a character's character, and so forth. These were things that might have struck me while writing my 'first draft', or while thinking about the book late at night, and I just didn't have the time or energy to make the changes at the time. Two of the things on my list, for example, were 'weave Esmeralda in through the book' and 'rewrite scenes from Amarra's POV': the former involved incorporating an entire, though small, subplot into the narrative while the latter meant focusing closely on a few scenes/letters that were written from the point of view of a character who wasn't my narrator.
3. I put aside everything except my list and the notebook and started reading through the entire manuscript on the laptop, chapter by chapter. While doing so, I edited: I rewrote entire paragraphs and sometimes chapters, I incorporated the above subplot, I worked on the above character's voice, I cut out unnecessary words that struck me, and, the biggest change of all, I changed my opening chapter about three times.
While doing this, I also simultaneously made character notes. I didn't make enough, for which I'm sorry because I'll now have to go through it again and make more. These notes include noting down your characters' hair and eye colours, their tastes, etc. You'll need this if you're writing a sequel or trilogy or series, as ECHOES is supposed to be. You don't want to search the manuscript every time you wanted to be reminded of a minor character's eye colour.
This was a brutal stage of the process for me, mostly because big changes had to be made, and it's difficult to muster the strength to make such changes when it means so much more work and slicing into your newborn. But it almost always makes the book better, so bear with it.
4. Once I had gone through the entire manuscript this way (in the course of which I managed to cut my ridiculous word count of 139,000 - far too long for anything remotely classified as young adult fiction - to 128,000, which just goes to show how much of a first draft involves unnecessary uses of 'very', 'suddenly' and other extraneous sentences, clauses and words that you'll feel bogged down by as you read back through it), I printed it off. Let me tell you, that cost me, printing off 450 flipping pages.
5. Armed with my shiny new materials (and it's amazing how professional and cool those shiny new materials will make you feel) and my whopping whale-sized manuscript, I sat down, with Steve, and got to work.
Steve was only up in Lancaster with me for a few days, so we couldn't go through the entire manuscript this way, but we managed to edit the first few chapters thus: I would sit down with different coloured pens and read carefully through a chapter. I would circle, underline or make notes next to any sentences that needed changing, words that needed cutting, mistakes, or typos. Then I would hand the chapter over to Steve, who would go through it with a pencil and make his own notes and mark out anything that struck him as unwieldy, awkward, not clear enough, or unnecessary.
After Steve left, we did this largely by email, but I also went through the manuscript by myself. I can't stress enough the importance of having someone else read your work before you consider sending it out anywhere: someone you trust, who will be honest but not cruel, and who, preferably, is an avid reader and knows what makes a good book and story. Steve is thankfully all three, and though I think he's biased, he is one of the reasons I managed to a) finish ECHOES and b) make it worthy of being rejected, yes, but also of having three very, very good agents read some of it and then ask to see more. So far.
I owe Steve for that, and for being exceedingly patient whenever I went into a tizzy.
6. I'm listing this as a separate step, though #5 and #6 are interwoven. Each time I finished editing a chapter on paper, I would get on the laptop and make the changes on screen. I did it this way so that each change would be fresh in my mind, rather than wait until I'd done the entire manuscript before starting over.
7. Once I had finished #6, making the changes to the final chapter, I would have very nearly been finished had it not been for an email from an agent who had read 30 pages and then, politely, passed. He told me the plot felt too scattered. And while I have to say that you shouldn't make changes just because one person tells you they feel this way (because, after all, everyone will have different opinions and it's up to you to be sensible and humble about what you listen to and what you respectfully decide you aren't going to change), I made changes because the agent had made a good point. I had also felt that the opening tried to cram too much in and in too varied a form. So I rewrote the opening. More editing.
8. And finally, what was more or less the last stage of my process. The final proofread. This might not be necessary for other writers, depending on how thoroughly they did their earlier edits and with how sharp an eye. But I change little things so often (a sentence there, a paragraph here, correcting a mistake) that I often don't note down every change. So, to be sure I hadn't made any mistakes while editing (because when rewriting a sentence, you can as easily throw in a typo as you might in writing that sentence in the first place), I went through the manuscript again.
This time, I resisted the urge to change much. As I mentioned before, I have terrible OCD about manuscripts, which I hope the rest of you are spared. If sentences don't align properly on the screen, if words don't look right, I feel that they're bad writing and must be changed. So I will often add unnecessary words or cut out words just to make a sentence look better.
So this is what I tried to resist and succeeded. Mostly. I caught a few more typos, tweaked a few more sentences that felt awkward, and stopped.
Phew. Done.
Final word count: just under 125,000. Still long for a YA, and indeed for a debut novel of any genre except epic fantasy or sci-fi, but it couldn't be helped.
There is such a thing as too much editing. It's what happens when you keep tweaking, and changing, and checking a manuscript, either because you're afraid of it being finished because that means having to put it out there, or because you're a compulsive perfectionist. While no manuscript being sent out into the world is ever going to be perfect, I really believe that there comes a point when it truly is the best you can make it. And that's when you should stop, take a deep breath, and send it out if that's what you want to do with it, because from this point on, I think only someone who knows how they're going to market it (i.e. an agent or editor) can make it any better or more polished. There's little more you can do alone.
(Or so I tell myself. But I daresay my manuscript is nowhere near as good as it needs to be.)
Monday, 12 April 2010
Anatomy of a Night Out vs. Editing a Novel
It occurred to me this afternoon, for no reason whatsoever, that my 'getting ready' process for a night out is actually very similar to my process for editing a novel. So, I thought, why not write about it? To anyone to whom either of these processes is familiar, I hope it gives you a laugh, and to anyone to whom they aren't, I hope it's amusing and enlightening anyway.
Imagine your bedroom is your manuscript. Your wardrobe is each individual chapter, your clothes represent each scene element, and your dressing table is the prose you layer your plot, characters and setting with.
Step One: Clothes and Re-Drafting
Every time you choose a new outfit, or discard one skirt in favour of another, or choose to wear jeans instead of a dress, you're rewriting a scene. So when you choose your outfit, you're picking a chapter to work on. Then you decide you don't like the blue denim skirt, so why not try the black tulip one instead? What's really happening, of course, is the fact that you don't like that your two characters kiss in this scene, it doesn't feel natural. So you wear the black tulip skirt, and you heighten the tension in the scene, building up anticipation for the kiss that will come later. When you decide the dress isn't working and you have to wear jeans instead, you're tearing the scene apart. It simply wasn't working, so you're going to have your protagonist go to London in this chapter instead.
You might go through six or seven different outfits in one evening, before settling on one that feels right. Similarly, you might change a scene six or seven times before it works the way you want it to. You really have to be brutal to get the best results. (Sorry if this is difficult for male readers to identify with.) You wouldn't want to go out if your shoes were uncomfortable, would you? In much the same way, I find I can't rest easy if I know I've left a chapter less than I could have made it.
Repeat this process for every single night out, and every single scene, and every single chapter.
Step Two: Make Up and Prose
This is where you make your face look prettier, and your manuscript read nicer.
You apply some sort of base. This can be moisturiser, toner or some kind of expensive make-up base if you're an 'expensive make-up base' kind of girl. Your base is your re-drafted manuscript, where every scene works and every chapter seems just right... except for the actual, technical writing of it.
Then comes the foundation, the bronzer/blusher, the lipstick, the eyeliner. These are all the things that enhance your features, highlight the best parts of your face. These are the things that enhance your manuscript, highlight the best parts of your characters and plot. But be warned: too much lipstick/lip gloss and you look like a clown, too much foundation and you start to look chalky, too much eyeliner and the first droplet of rain will destroy you.
Keep the metaphors, similes and beautiful imagery to places where it works. Don't overdo any of it. Less is more. No one wants to go out with gloopy red lips and no one can wade through a manuscript bogged down with far too many gloopy red metaphors. If you're going to work with bold lips, keep eye makeup to a minimum and vice versa. I try to avoid using similes, metaphor and imagery in the same sentence. Too much.
Dot on a bit of concealer to hide the flaws, and leave behind a smooth finish. The natural look works best. There are elements of every story that a writer will look at and think oh, dear. For me, it's my action sequences. I hate writing action because I'm bad at it, I don't particularly enjoy it, and it never gets my pulse racing like great character scenes do. I'll bet every writer feels they have a weak spot, and ninety-nine per cent of the time, you have to use the weak bits too. Very few fantasy novels can work without an action sequence somewhere in the midst of it, and I write a lot of fantasy. So, what do I do? How do I hide the little flaws on my face, the bits of my manuscript I don't like?
Solution: you do the best you can. You dot on the concealer, gently, carefully. You camouflage your weak spots with what you feel are your strongest. If I have an action sequence, I sandwich it between character scenes I absolutely love, or bits of dialogue I can't wait to write. The strong will enhance the weak and, sometimes, you might discover that what you think you're bad at isn't so bad at all. [Steve insists my action scenes aren't as bad as I think they are. Maybe I'm good at camouflage?]
Step Three: Hair and the Final Polish
When you do your hair, you might have to work at it a few times to get it just right. Whether you're keeping it simple or going for an elaborate 'do, it needs a little bit of work. So does that final polish of the manuscript, the final details that make it sparkle. Does your title work? Have you got your chapters numbered correctly? Have you straightened your layers but forgotten to straighten that sneaky little fringe? Do your characters' eye colours stay consistent throughout the story?
This is what I do last. My hair, and the nitty-gritty. I give the manuscript a final look to make sure every detail and technical glitch has been fixed. Sometimes I miss a typo here and there. You can't help that. You'll never get every single hair in place. I think that's okay.
So, what do you think? Amusing? Enlightening? Am I stretching the analogy a bit too far?
Imagine your bedroom is your manuscript. Your wardrobe is each individual chapter, your clothes represent each scene element, and your dressing table is the prose you layer your plot, characters and setting with.
Step One: Clothes and Re-Drafting
Every time you choose a new outfit, or discard one skirt in favour of another, or choose to wear jeans instead of a dress, you're rewriting a scene. So when you choose your outfit, you're picking a chapter to work on. Then you decide you don't like the blue denim skirt, so why not try the black tulip one instead? What's really happening, of course, is the fact that you don't like that your two characters kiss in this scene, it doesn't feel natural. So you wear the black tulip skirt, and you heighten the tension in the scene, building up anticipation for the kiss that will come later. When you decide the dress isn't working and you have to wear jeans instead, you're tearing the scene apart. It simply wasn't working, so you're going to have your protagonist go to London in this chapter instead.
You might go through six or seven different outfits in one evening, before settling on one that feels right. Similarly, you might change a scene six or seven times before it works the way you want it to. You really have to be brutal to get the best results. (Sorry if this is difficult for male readers to identify with.) You wouldn't want to go out if your shoes were uncomfortable, would you? In much the same way, I find I can't rest easy if I know I've left a chapter less than I could have made it.
Repeat this process for every single night out, and every single scene, and every single chapter.
This is where you make your face look prettier, and your manuscript read nicer.
You apply some sort of base. This can be moisturiser, toner or some kind of expensive make-up base if you're an 'expensive make-up base' kind of girl. Your base is your re-drafted manuscript, where every scene works and every chapter seems just right... except for the actual, technical writing of it.
Then comes the foundation, the bronzer/blusher, the lipstick, the eyeliner. These are all the things that enhance your features, highlight the best parts of your face. These are the things that enhance your manuscript, highlight the best parts of your characters and plot. But be warned: too much lipstick/lip gloss and you look like a clown, too much foundation and you start to look chalky, too much eyeliner and the first droplet of rain will destroy you.
Keep the metaphors, similes and beautiful imagery to places where it works. Don't overdo any of it. Less is more. No one wants to go out with gloopy red lips and no one can wade through a manuscript bogged down with far too many gloopy red metaphors. If you're going to work with bold lips, keep eye makeup to a minimum and vice versa. I try to avoid using similes, metaphor and imagery in the same sentence. Too much.
Dot on a bit of concealer to hide the flaws, and leave behind a smooth finish. The natural look works best. There are elements of every story that a writer will look at and think oh, dear. For me, it's my action sequences. I hate writing action because I'm bad at it, I don't particularly enjoy it, and it never gets my pulse racing like great character scenes do. I'll bet every writer feels they have a weak spot, and ninety-nine per cent of the time, you have to use the weak bits too. Very few fantasy novels can work without an action sequence somewhere in the midst of it, and I write a lot of fantasy. So, what do I do? How do I hide the little flaws on my face, the bits of my manuscript I don't like?
Solution: you do the best you can. You dot on the concealer, gently, carefully. You camouflage your weak spots with what you feel are your strongest. If I have an action sequence, I sandwich it between character scenes I absolutely love, or bits of dialogue I can't wait to write. The strong will enhance the weak and, sometimes, you might discover that what you think you're bad at isn't so bad at all. [Steve insists my action scenes aren't as bad as I think they are. Maybe I'm good at camouflage?]
Step Three: Hair and the Final Polish
When you do your hair, you might have to work at it a few times to get it just right. Whether you're keeping it simple or going for an elaborate 'do, it needs a little bit of work. So does that final polish of the manuscript, the final details that make it sparkle. Does your title work? Have you got your chapters numbered correctly? Have you straightened your layers but forgotten to straighten that sneaky little fringe? Do your characters' eye colours stay consistent throughout the story?
This is what I do last. My hair, and the nitty-gritty. I give the manuscript a final look to make sure every detail and technical glitch has been fixed. Sometimes I miss a typo here and there. You can't help that. You'll never get every single hair in place. I think that's okay.
So, what do you think? Amusing? Enlightening? Am I stretching the analogy a bit too far?
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