The "Dreaded" Edits

Hi, everyone. Well, the WIP is coming along. I'm into the climax portion. I keep on ratcheting things up for my main characters. Every time I think I've done enough to them, some evil plot hatches into my brain and I can't resist.

Well, this post isn't about those evil plots, but I do hope you are finding ways of making things horrible for your heroes and heroines.

Today I wanted to show you a portion of what I'm working from here and how I would change it, or why, or maybe you'll see something and think it should be changed. I'm working from typed pages from the old manuscript.

THE SET UP:
I've got Rachel Mohr in a vehicle with Erik, who is a vampire, only she doesn't know it. She just knows that she really shouldn't stay with him...and you'll see why.
All corrections are on the typed page and I'm writing it as is--the strike-throughs are on the typed page.
(the following is from Vampire Legacy, 2004-05)

"I heard a noise under the truck when I crossed those tracks. I'd better check it out." Erik pulled into a parking lot and made a tight u-turn and parked it. He killed the lights, and turned off the engine.

Rachel wanted to believe him, but everything inside her was sending up red flags. His eyes, his skin tone, now this. It just didn't feel right. In fact he didn't sound like the Erik she knew. She sat in the truck, watching him walk around the truck (it), bend low as if to look under it.

Headlights blared suddenly. Blinding her, and then the beams rocked up and down as they went over the tracks, and again speared their way. <toward them.

She watched the vehicle turn into the lot. She hoped it was a police car. But it wasn't. It was long, and sleek. {and gray] She was perplexed to see a stretch limo enter such unsavory parts of town. In fact she wasn't all that crazy about being here herself.


Okay, this is about all I'll go through for now.

The highlighting are areas that need to either be re-worded, re-worked or taken out. In a way this creates the backdrop, but it's rough and possibly we need more emotion from Rachel, because basically she's been abducted. The word perplexed also doesn't fit here at all. Perplexed is too soft a word. Maybe "shocked" would be better.

A rewritten version could possibly go more like this:

"I heard a noise under the truck," Erik said. "I'd better go check it out." Erik pulled into a parking lot and made a U-turn and parked. He killed the lights and turned off the engine.

Dubious, Rachel sat assessing the situation. Everything about Erik sent up red flags. His eyes, which glowed oddly in the dark, and his skin tone, which was white, not the nice tan she remembered--all of it making him look more like a stranger. She sat watching him walk around, and dip down, looking at the under carriage. Right, something wrong with the truck, like he's never used that excuse before.

Headlights blared into the cab, blinding her. The beams rocked up and down as the car went over the tracks, then turned back to spear her eyes again.

The vehicle turned into the lot. She hoped it might be a police cruiser, but it wasn't. Long, gray and sleek, she was startled to see a stretch limo in this part of town. I'm not too crazy about it myself.

Well, that's better, I guess. I wanted to show those of you who aren't really sure about edits, what can be done, and what you might want to look for. Since I'd written this several years ago, I've coached myself in how to find places in my writing that is weak. Not saying that I don't still have weakness in my writing, and that's what your beta readers are for--to point these out to you.

I've added the Italics for Rachel's thoughts, here. The addition helps in creating suspense here. That's what you want to build in a scene like this, if you are building up to something--which I am. Who's in the limo? Why is it here?

Next time I'm going to show you how to add suspense to your scenes. To build the suspense takes a little trick I've learned from reading Writer's Digest for years. It's not hard and for now I'll give you the four basics:

ACTION
THOUGHTS
DIALOGUE
DESCRIPTION
and to that I want to put with dialogue, "internal thoughts".
I'll try and find an excerpt to show you an example.

Okay, until next time--happy writing!

Let me know what you think, what stage you're at in your WIP, anything you like!

Do You Have The Guts to Kill?....

I'm talking about killing scenes, chapters, booting characters out of the book--"Get out! I don't need you any more!"--in your WIP, of course!

Do you have a manuscript that got out of control, has copious amounts of pages, and many chapters and yet it goes nowhere?

"I know I have an 800 pound gorilla on my back! Got a shovel?"

Well, hey. It's a new year! Go ahead and shake 2013 off your back. Clean the belly button of your mouse out (seriously, mine was clogged up. I had no idea you could open it up and clean out the cakes of dust it accumulated over the years!), and get to work!

This is what I've been doing with an older manuscript of mine for the last six weeks. Some of you might be working on something more recent than mine, which I originally began in 1999, and thought was finished in 2004, but at some point was 800 pages with scenes and characters that I didn't need. I reduced it to 400 pages, and I could still write a whole new book from what I'm taking out!

I've been working on this these past few weeks we've had off--a glorious 2 weeks (no pay), and I've gotten over 72K words down in the new mss.

But how? How do you take a mss. and cut from it things you don't need?

You would ask that question, wouldn't you? It's called "tough love", or  Kill Your Darlings--and this means characters, even great chapters you're in love with, and so forth.

Ask yourself: Will anyone miss this if I chuck it? If you can take a chapter, a character or a whole thread out and it isn't missed, then you need to do that, my dears. Take those sections out [put into another file] and then put the thing back together and do a read through. If something is needed you put that something back. But if you can read through and the message/story is still there, then you've done the job! Have a beta reader read it too, someone who hasn't read it yet, to make sure you've done it right. They ask what happened here, or to such and such, then you know you need to add something back, or rewrite it.

Since my mss. (Vampire Legacy/Dhampire Legacy), was something I hadn't seen since before I had the Internet, but I did have typed copies from both a typewriter and a printer from a computer, I took it out and went through it. Although what I had wasn't like the picture above, it was close. I realized that I had many drafts/rewrites. There might be as many as 4 different versions of any one chapter, and I had to separate these versions. I used tables, chairs and a couch, and at one point the floor, to separate the chaff from the wheat--or something like that. I found chapters with people/characters who were not the main ones that carried the story. I had to chuck them.

You have to remember that in order for anyone to care about your story, and how it ends, you have to develop your characters! If you introduce new ones, somewhere late in the game, readers may become confused and slam the book shut, and might never buy your books again.

I realized had a whole other story going (which was why I set it aside and went to other things for a decade). I had scenes that prolonged the whole story, in fact, and I could see--now that my writing has matured--that the actual climax was getting bogged down, pushed back, and the middle part where there is what we call a "lull" was drawing the story into another direction. Can't have that. The plot must keep going toward the climax. The upward movement to the CRISIS has to be there and then you go for the lull, and after the lull you make things even worse for your main characters. (See below-yeah I just drew this so you guys know what I'm talking about! Hey, it's free for the grabbing, be my guest!)

Lorelei's plot graph

I knew that portions of it was salvageable. My two main characters are detective (Jan Vladislav), who is from Gypsy stock, and a man (Phil Green) who left his home town for at least three reasons to seek his fortune. They both are, or become, a vampire slayers. These are my two main guys, and one teenage girl--Lucy, the daughter of the detective--who by no real fault of her own, is snagged by the vampires. I have a romance angle, two actually, but the romance between Phil and Collette doesn't bloom right away--but the posibility is there since they once had been engaged, and she is now divorced. Problem for him is that she has come under the master vampire's thrall, and her daughter is taken by another vampire.

The town is terrorized when people go missing, a baby and its babysitter is abducted at the beginning of the story, and eventually the baby is found dead--blood drained from her--in a graveyard next to St. John's Church, which as been burned down prior to the opening of the story, and on the other side is the Lockwood Mansion, which a mysterious wealthy man has bought. I made this harder on my detective, as the baby is his sister-in-law's, and his wife died of lung cancer a year ago. So he's trying to deal with this, and has a real reason to get this murderer.

My work in going through each chapter is still underway, I've got it corralled to two tables--one holds the chapters I'm working from, the other holds future chapters. And one box has my discarded material, and one other place has chapters which I won't use in this, but could be used in some other future project.

In some cases I have to write a scene from scratch, not using any material at all. That's what I had to do yesterday and managed to spit out more than 2,000 words.

So, my dears, do you have a mss. in a bin, or are working on that needs a little help? You need to disassociate yourself from it first, and be brave. Take that editing knife and cut, cut, cut!

 Let me know how you're dealing with a wayward manuscript! I would love to hear from you!

Happy New Year!

A big thank you to all of you who have stopped by my blog here over the last year! Many blessings to you all and hope to see you in 2014!

A Poem About Writing

I don't often post my poems because as a rule they are subjective to the reader, and most people don't like reading them, unless they too are poets,or enjoy reading poetry. It's why I won't publish a book of poetry--it'll just be an exercise in a pathetic waste of time. But this poem is about writing and I actually came across it in an old notebook. I wrote it in 2005. (They call poems about poetry "Ars Poetica".)

Poems are
the relentless current
a seductive stimuli
footprints across the page
anyone can leave behind
where ink is the water
and the waves are our thin
swift dreams...
poems, like our personal struggles,
in a swift current that snag
on rocks, eventually
freed
until the next logjam

I discovered poetry and had help in learning how to write them (not that I'm great at it), from the book The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser a Poet Laureate. The book was helpful where most were not. I recommend it to anyone who wants to write better poems. I've had several of my poems published soon after I read this book and worked on my poetry using his advice. I couldn't have done it without Ted. But I never could achieve my hope to have a poem published in ByLine. Oh well... it no longer matters to me. I've got a blog where I can post and anyone who wishes may read and enjoy.

Here is one more very short one it's called
A Page of Latte
Words stare back at me,
Unblinking, black on white.
They won't bow, won't budge
The syntax is obstinate!
There's no imagery, no form
It's like squeezing water
from cork board.
Ink leaks from my finger tips,
I put them to my lips...
Tastes a lot like latte.

On that note I want to let you know I am expanding my blogs to a new one called "A Page of Latte" Here I hope to not only share my poetry, but also invite anyone (yes, anyone), to share their poetry, or troubles with it, if they wish, and discuss (if desired), how to improve upon it. I will introduce certain types of poetry--like the "Tanka", which is similar but different from Haiku, and darn fun to work on.

I'm going to also post some notes from various places where I've learned a few things about writing poetry. I've been writing poetry (on and off) for decades and my first ones were really crappy, so don't think yours could be anywhere near as crappy as mine, if you are just starting out. I want to encourage anyone, beginners and more experienced poets to come and share your thoughts, and get in on the discussion. I'm also going to offer guest posts, too. So come and have a look-see, or at least give me a good send off, in the very least. It's going to be bare bones right now, but it will evolve into a nice little nook for poets. I hope!

So, come and join me if you wish here is the link: A Page of Latte

My hope for this blog is to continue on writing themes, and what I'm working on. I may post some basics here in coming weeks--this is for newer/beginning writers. So, I hope to see some new faces here in the next few weeks and I invite everyone to check out my new blog A Page of Latte.

Thank you for following me here, and commenting every once in a while. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and we will chat in the coming New Year!

It's looking a bit like this outside today...

The Suffrage of your Characters

This morning my husband and I sat and watched an old Bonanza show. This one starred Ricardo Montalbon. He played an outcast Indian--a son of a chief. He is outcast because he married an Indian maiden from another tribe played by Madlyn Rhue. This woman spent 3 years with a white family and learned to read the Bible.

Madlyn Rhye as Hatoya

In the opening, Ben Cartwright is ambushed by an Indian, and stabbed. Just before the Indian can finish him off, Matsou (Montalban), stops him. He talks his blood-lusting white man hating brother to leave him. After which he takes Ben to his tee-pee and his wife cares for him. Matsou is convoluted over his being so soft about a white man, but he is, after all on Cartwright land.

His brother comes along and asks what happened to the white man. Matsou lies, tells him he hid the body and took his horse. His brother wants to check his tee-pee but Matsou won't allow it. His brother, Lagos, says they are about to have a war party against the people of the land. Not great news, but Matsou isn't half as worried about that as he is about the white man he saved. Eventually Ben becomes well enough, he is grateful and offers Matsou some land to farm. His wife is happy, and wants him to try to farm. Matsou is still in two minds about it, but he and she both pray about it--in their separate ways and he softens and accepts. They build a home, he cuts his hair (which in reality he would not do--a lot of things wrong with what the Indians believed in and did, but I'm not going to harp on this). His wife is pregnant and they are happy about this, but he hates that he has become a farmer eating bread and using forks and knifes and sits at a table--yadayada.

In the meantime, an Indian hater, Ike Daggert, is really up in arms about these two Indians adjacent to his land. He claims if he ever sees either of them he'll kill them. Well, Matsou's brother comes to tell him that the tribe is about to attack. If he isn't going to attend this like a good son of a chief, then he should get the hell out of the way. Matsou, of course, goes to warn the Cartwrights, and then, like a good neighbor--but a foolish one--goes to warn Daggert. At the same time he comes to the house, Daggert hears him, comes out to shoot him. But also, Matsou's brother has come, entered through an open window, kills Daggert's wife, and starts the place on fire. Seeing this, too late, Daggert shoots and kills Lagos.

Daggert's wife is buried, everyone is gathered at the funeral, including Matsou and his wife, Hatoya. Daggert is out-raged about this, and seeing Hatoya praying further incites him. He shoots Hatoya, after breaking away from a scuffle. Matsou is devastated, and goes a little crazy.

Next scene: Daggert barely makes it to the Cartwright home, falls and it is revealed he's been cut up in a way to make him suffer before he dies. This is Matsou's doing, of course. After the man dies, Ben tries to go to Matsou to talk to him. Matsou hits him, ties him up spread-eagle with rawhide. Another slow torture. As Ben is suffering Matsou is trying to enjoy it, but seems he can't do so--can't even look at Ben. And Ben refuses to cry out throughout this ordeal. Matsou knows he is a failure as an Indian as well as a white man.

Just when it seems Ben is at his last moments, he begins to pray--something his wife has done in the past. He tells Ben to stop, but he won't. At this breaking point, Matsou cuts Ben loose. (I wanted to see him offer him water, but he didn't--another problem with the show). They make peace. Matsou becomes chief of his people. A somewhat happy ending.

I wrote out the basic plot here--aside from some of the basic mistakes of the piece, the suffering of each character was there--it was a good lesson in writing the basic plot crises: Matsou losing his wife who he loved so dearly he didn't care that he was banished from his tribe, and then became a farmer to keep her happy--this was his ultimate devastation. It wasn't lost on me that Daggert lost his wife, but you didn't care about him because he was so hateful. The volatile act happened--Daggert shooting Matsou's wife saying, "An Eye for and eye!"--was the the crisis point in the story.

I knew while watching all the drama on this show that something bad was going to happen, and it made me edgy--especially with the Indian hater making it clear he would kill any Indian that came on his property. I couldn't have guessed that his beautiful wife, who was with child, would be shot in cold blood. The writer had found the worst thing that he could do to his character, Matsou, and did it. Showed him going through a bit of madness over his wife's senseless murder. Matsou suffered until he could suffer no more injustice and slight to his character. His wife's death drove him over the edge. Good job by the writer, I say!

My dilemma in my own writing:

While working on a WIP, I consider what would be the worse thing that could happen to my main character(s). This is your job as a writer. You need to have people care about these characters, and then you do something that jars them emotionally. I've mentioned that I am currently working on Dhampire Legacy, something already written a million years ago by me, dug out and I'm breathing new life into it. I was following the main plot--as written--where I have my detective's daughter abducted by vampires. Whether or not I would follow what happened next as written, I was in two minds about. I wanted Detective Vladislav to save his daughter from being bitten and then turned. In the original I'd had him come too late, and she does become a vampire, however he, being a dhampire has sway over her similar to the vampire who bit her. Looking over the chapters on this, I wasn't sure that's what I wanted at all. But now, after watching this episode of Bonanza I'm hitting my head saying, Wull, duh!

I see that the easy way out is not the way to go. The scene that is written will stand, but be rewritten as needed. I'm finding that there wasn't too much wrong with it plot-wise, it just became too long-winded, and needs help in certain areas, but the basic plot was good.

Although my beginning didn't start until the third chapter, this was one of the bigger problems. A few other minor things I changed too. Bringing in a character who sheds light on things so that my detective will begin to question his own dismissal of who/what he is (he is of Gypsy birth--which I will probably hit on in more detail in a future post). So, of course, I've been cutting here and re-positioning a chapter there. My other main characters Phil and Herb play off each other like a ping-pong match, and I love the interplay of their personalities in this. Where as Jan is so serious, as a contrast, and I hope to give him a boot in the pants at some point. And his world is falling down around his ears as we speak with the hint of vampires in the disappearances and murders that now are beginning to pile up. His wife is dead (prior to the book's opening), and Lucy, his daughter is all he's got. And I don't need to add he is overly protective of her--but that would only make sense. Being a teenager, even as innocent of the world as she is, she won't be able to obey her detective father, and will get herself into trouble, big-time. This is what I wanted to happen to bring Jan to his knees, drop-kicking him like a ball, then build him back up, making him accept his birthright.

Have any of you had trouble figuring out what to do to make your MC suffer? I watch a lot of older shows that were written really well for TV. This one had problems, but like I said, the main idea was not lost on me. It helped me come to a decision, opened my eyes a bit, and I'm going ahead with the WIP as written, for the most part. Well, I'd better get to it!

Hope you've had a great weekend. See you next week some time!

Milestones

A very quick post today.

Yesterday my husband and I celebrated our 25th anniversary. My husband surprised me with a rose in a cluster of baby's breath. I say surprised me because since we work together, and our driving buses gives us so little time to do much of anything else, his having stopped inside the grocery store to order it took a little time. And then when he did, because it was so early, there wasn't anyone in the florist's shop who knew how to tie a bow--well, he decided that maybe since I didn't know about it, it wouldn't hurt to let it slide.

But life had a bigger plan.

He stopped at the store again--needing to use their bathroom, and one of the always-smiling women who work there said to him "Hey, your flower is ready!" And a woman from the department came up to him after he came out of the bathroom with the bouquet. She said he could pay for it at her department. She told him it was already paid for by one of the cashiers, and all he owed was the tax. We've gone to this store since it opened, and the people know us on sight. So that was a huge surprise!

We had lunch in one of our more favorite places, had a glass of wine and it was very nice.

We later looked at our wedding pictures, and the reception ones (Funny, there were people in it we couldn't remember!).

The other milestone? I got my first check from Amazon the day before. It wasn't huge, but it was enough to make me happy. Also, I didn't expect this until next month. This was a nice surprise.

I'm still working on the WIP. I have a few more weeks before we are off for winter break, and I'm so looking forward to the time off, but not the money hardship that it brings. But maybe this time, with the little extra money we've gotten here and there, it will help some.