Fairest<\/em>, which is set in Ayortha, and I couldn\u2019t write a novel in a land where people hardly ever speak, so I contradicted the earlier book. One reader called me on this, and I\u2019m sure others noticed. If only I\u2019d thought ahead!<\/p>\nSo it\u2019s great that Melissa Mead\u2019s book 1 isn\u2019t published yet.<\/p>\n
If you take or have taken a Philosophy course, you\u2019ll probably read or have read Zeno\u2019s Paradox, which goes something like this: You want to cross the room, but first you have to cross half the room and then half the remaining space and half again, and so on. If you keep halving the distance you can never reach the end. You can\u2019t completely cross the room! Which of course you can, and there lies the paradox.<\/p>\n
Writing can feel like living Zeno\u2019s Paradox, with The End forever hanging tantalizingly out there, because we keep halving the distance\u2013in the wrong direction! We keep going backwards to fix and fix again.<\/p>\n
I love to revise, as I\u2019m sure writers on the blog know. I much prefer to tinker with my WIP than to forge ahead into new territory. But in general I try not to give in to my proclivities. What helps me keep keeping on is my competing desire to get to the end and find out what happens along the way.
\nI\u2019m with Christy V Powell about writing a note or notes to my future self about revisions I\u2019ll have to make, which can satisfy my itch to fix. I put the notes at the top of my manuscript, so they’re the first things I see when I start revising.<\/p>\n
Going back may be counterproductive. As we continue in Book 2 or in our singleton WIP, we may discover that the revision we made earlier wasn\u2019t necessary or even that the scene we revised needs to be cut. Of course, this isn\u2019t the worst thing in the world. I\u2019ve said here that I toss hundreds of pages in the course of writing every one of my books. But it\u2019s nice if I can avoid deleting even a few of them by reining myself in.<\/p>\n
However, I always go back a page or two and do a little revision before I start a day\u2019s writing. This orients me and helps the juices flow.<\/p>\n
But if the urge to revise is too strong to resist, we can at least contain it. We can put a daily limit, say twenty minutes, on tinkering with old territory. We can set a timer. When the buzzer goes off, we have to stop.<\/p>\n
We can write signs and put them in key places, signs like The End justifies the mistakes left behind<\/em>. Or just Onward!<\/em> Or Endward Ho!<\/em> I have used reminder signs for other purposes, why not this?<\/p>\nThe popular wisdom in the writing books I\u2019ve read advises marching forward no matter what. If the species of your MC changes mid-book, march on. If the villain changes from one character to another, march on. We\u2019ll know best what to fix when we get to the end.<\/p>\n
I mostly agree with this, and the books that have gone the most smoothly for me have been written in forward motion. But several times\u2013The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Fairest, Stolen Magic<\/em>–I have snarled up my plot so hopelessly that I\u2019ve had to go back. Usually, my story itself bogs down. I feel like I\u2019m slogging through quicksand. Or I fall asleep whenever I try to write. Then I have no choice: I have to go back. Sometimes, as in the cases of Two Princesses<\/em> and Stolen Magic<\/em>, the book that resulted was little like the story I started. In Fairest<\/em>, I kept getting the POV wrong.<\/p>\nIf your story is contorted in tangles, too, I suggest taking a little time to figure out where the difficulty lies. We can identify the moment\u2013maybe fifty pages back\u2013when the story went south. Or we can suss out the problem, which may be, for example, POV or timidity about making an MC suffer. We think about what we need to do to fix it. How big will the fix be? Will the story continue on the path we had in mind? Or will it veer into uncharted territory. If it will go the way we always intended, we can confine ourselves to a note, but if major elements will change, we probably do have to go back and follow the fork in the road.<\/p>\n
One of the best (also one of the worst!) parts of writing is that, pre-publication, we can revise and re-revise and then do it again. And one of the worst feelings in real life and in writing is regret. These five prompts are about regret:<\/p>\n
\u2219 Try a memoir piece. Write a few pages about something you regret. Imagine what might have happened if you\u2019d acted differently. You needn\u2019t show this to anyone. However, it may pay dividends in helping you plumb the emotional depths of your characters. If you like, you can fictionalize this memory and make it come out differently\u2013or the same.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Another memoir piece. Write about something that was done to you. Imagine what would have changed if this thing hadn\u2019t happened. Imagine receiving an apology and the effects of the apology.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Back to fiction. In the second act of the musical Into the Woods<\/em>, the sad consequences of cutting down the beanstalk by Jack are brought to life. Rewrite the story from the moment when the beans begin to sprout. If Jack doesn\u2019t climb the beanstalk or kill the giant, how does his story go?<\/p>\n\u2219 In your story, the evil queen in \u201cSnow White\u201d doesn\u2019t dance to her death in red hot slippers. She lives to regret her overwhelming jealousy\u2013and she escapes from prison. Write her story of redemption\u2013or further evildoing. Or, pick another fairy tale villain for your story. Or pick one of your own fictional villains.<\/p>\n
\u2219 Speculative historical fiction works with this kind of pivotal moment. Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about what might have resulted if Henry VIII\u2019s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had given him a son who lived grew into adulthood. Change a historical moment and write a story about the consequences.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To give plenty of advance notice to those of you who are SCBWI members or plan to join (you have to be at least eighteen): I\u2019ll be teaching a two-and-a-half-hour workshop on writing fantasy at the national conference on Saturday, February 3rd, in New York City. I\u2019d love it if you\u2019d come! A shout out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":903,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions\/903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}