Stein on Writing (34 page)

The visual sweep introduces a work of history with resonance that stems from the skill of the writing. Perhaps that is too much for a beginner to hope for, though I have read the work of relative beginners whose work already embodies the magic of resonance.

Revision

Triage: A Better Way of Revising Fiction

T
he biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting. The writer, professional or not, looks forward to the
opportunity
of excising words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters that do not work and to improving those that do. Many a would-be writer thinks whatever he puts down on paper is by that act somehow indelible.

Hemingway said it succinctly: “First drafts are shit.” Judith Applebaum quotes Hemingway as saying to an interviewer, “I rewrote the ending of
A
Farewell to Arms
thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.” Asked what stumped him, Hemingway said, “Getting the words right.”

Of the most successful authors I have worked with, I can think of only one who fiercely resisted revising—for the first thirty minutes of each day that we worked together. Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.

A. B. Guthrie, Jr., tells the story of a beginner at writing who asked him to criticize his manuscript. The work showed so much promise, was so close to being publishable, that Guthrie prepared a long list of suggested improvements. Three months later, he happened to meet the writer and asked how the manuscript was coming. “Oh that,” the man said. “I haven’t had time for it. I’m almost finished with a new novel.” Guthrie reported that none of the man’s work has ever seen print.

It is natural to resist rewriting. Every writer wants to be done with it, to cry, “Finished!” If you set a limit on how much rewriting you will do, you are merely devising an artificial barrier between your work and success. I have never encountered a writer who achieved a fully perfected manuscript in a first draft. In fact, the majority of published writers I have known write first drafts that are riddled with craft errors and
embarrassingly bad writing compared to the version that finally sees print. They know that writing is truly rewriting.

Even some of the most experienced authors are not aware of a better way of revising than repeatedly starting at page one and going through to the end. That front-to-back process means the writer is rereading his book as he looks for places in need of revision, a word or two here, a paragraph there, a section that needs relocation, an unmotivated action, dialogue that isn’t quite in character, a section that sags. After this process, the writer, having gone through his entire book, is likely to grow “cold” on his manuscript, particularly if he soon has to read it all again. He will have disabled himself from viewing the manuscript again objectively.

I call my method of revision “triage” after the system for treating battlefield casualties to provide maximum benefit with limited facilities. Doctors and nurses sort incoming casualties quickly to give priority to those whose lives can be saved by prompt medical treatment as against those who are likely to die in any case and those who will get better even if not treated. In the conventional method of revision, going from first page to last, the writer is dealing with trivial corrections one moment, the next moment coming up against a major problem, then more small matters, in a random process. The problem with that kind of tunnel revision is that the fixing of important problems may necessitate changes earlier in the manuscript, which requires clumsy backtracking; if new material is written, it will be in first draft and have to be looked at again, which means revising the rewriting on yet another front-to-back go-through. That procedure is like treating casualties on a first-come, first-served basis without regard to priorities.

What follows is a guide to the triage method of revision, which gives priority to those matters that are the principal causes of rejection by editors.

The steps I am about to propose are not written in stone. Their order can be changed, as long as the principle is maintained: major matters are attended to first.

Even if you use a computer, I recommend that you have a hard copy of your manuscript to consult for the simple reason that seeing what you wrote on paper will give you a fresh impression of your work. If you follow the steps I am about to suggest, reprint the appropriate section after making any major changes so that you are working with clean copy when you finally go through the manuscript from beginning to end. It is easy to be distracted by your own editorial changes.

* * *

The first step is to make a judgment about your main characters. Do you find yourself thinking about them in situations that are not in your book? If so, good! That means your characters are alive in your mind and should come alive in the minds of your audience. If you can’t think of an important character in situations away from the story, that character may need more work. Character problems should be dealt with before beginning a general revision. I am about to ask you some questions about your protagonist that will help you decide whether or not that character needs work.

• What is it about your character that you like especially? Does that happen to be also a trait of yours? If it is, that may be a symptom of the autobiography trap, creating a character that is too like yourself, which hurts the distance that every author needs from his creations. One way to ameliorate the problem is to give the character a distinctive trait—positive or negative—that you are absolutely sure you don’t have.
  
• If you were about to take your only vacation of the year, how would you feel if your character were going along? You would probably be seeing your character at mealtime and in between, day in and day out for a week or two. Honestly now, would you look forward to that? You are asking your reader to spend a good number of hours with that character. You may need to add some sparkle to your character, some interesting eccentricity, perhaps a personality characteristic that will make his company more enjoyable.
  
• How well do you understand your character? One way to find out is to imagine that you have just won a lottery jackpot of two million dollars. Your character doesn’t know you’ve been playing Lotto, but he is likely to hear about it on the news. People have mixed feelings about the sudden success of friends. Would it be better for you to tell your character the news yourself? How is your character likely to take the news about your new wealth? Would any of his reactions be useful in making him more interesting?
  

This method of revision makes certain that you have humanized your characters by giving them the kind of thoughts—not always “nice” thoughts—that people have in life. The danger is portraying a person that nobody wants to spend time with.

I have a confession to make. When I finished the first draft of
The Magician,
a highly regarded editor I showed it to said the sixteen-year-old protagonist was such a nice, dull, uninteresting kid that he almost didn’t exist.

After all that work? My confidence shattered like a broken teacup. However, I pulled myself together and went back to work. I ended up giving Ed Japhet a more rounded personality at the outset by his denying his father a chance to see him perform at the high school dance. The reader’s sympathies are with the father. He wants to see his son perform. The son denies that to him. Not nice, but it helped to make the son credible. Later in the book, Ed refuses to cooperate with the district attorney when Ed’s assailant is being prosecuted; he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the justice system. He had views, convictions, and was no longer a dull sixteen-year-old. I owe the long-lasting success of
The Magician
in many languages to the revision of its central character. Do take a look at yours.

Does your main character change in the course of your novel? In the climactic scene of
The Magician,
Ed gives evidence of a change in himself, a change so shocking that one editor, reading the manuscript for the first time, actually screamed, causing others to rush to her office thinking there had been an accident. In a story the length of a novel, it is essential that the protagonist undergo change. If yours at present does not, it isn’t too late.

The next step in revision is to take a hard look at your villain or antagonist. Note that I use the singular—“villain” or “antagonist.” If you have more than one, you may be diffusing the impact of the character’s villainy by spreading it. Is your antagonist morally bad, not just badly behaved? Does your antagonist enjoy doing wrong to people? Is your character not just mischievous but malicious? What I’m getting at is the degree of villainy. Is your character just badly behaved or a truly evil person? The choice, of course, is yours. But readers find morally villainous characters more interesting.

Now let’s swing the other way. Does your villain have something that charms or entices people? The mustachioed antagonists of yesteryear only provoke laughs today. If the villain isn’t intriguing, interesting, lifelike, and believable, he may not be a worthy villain. No villain can attract victims unless he has charm, charisma, position, or wealth.

When I really like a villain of mine, I find that critics and readers like him, too. I liked one of my villains so much, he overshadowed the pro
tagonist, and I spent a long time rewriting the hero to bring him up to the stature of the villain!

If you’re having difficulty making your villain charming or interesting, try seeing him through the eyes of someone who loves him. Or at least cares a lot about him. The villain will be a more effective adversary if he has been humanized.

The trap I spoke of earlier applies to villains, too. It is an easy temptation for the writer, consciously or not, to use an enemy as a model for a villain in a story. The writer may lack sufficient distance from the character to write a villain who is both truly bad and at the same time interesting and perhaps even charismatic and charming. Novels are not a place to get even. Think of yourself as in the business of creating characters who are more interesting than the nasties you know in person.

The next step is to give some thought to your minor characters, who are often not minor if the credibility of a scene depends on believing their verisimilitude (lifelikeness). Just one special characteristic can make a difference. An easy way to help characterize minor players is to use one of the senses you may have neglected.

The next step is to be sure you have a credible conflict between your protagonist and the antagonist. Stories from time immemorial have consisted of people overcoming obstacles against high odds and strong adversaries. If you’ve followed a different course, your plot may not be strong enough to sustain the reader’s interest. If your plot needs strengthening at any point, the guidance in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 will help.

The next step is to evaluate the scenes. What is the most memorable scene in your book? Don’t go to your manuscript for clues. If you can’t remember the scene, it isn’t memorable! Then ask yourself what is the least memorable scene? You may have to browse through your manuscript until you find it. That’s okay, just don’t start reading word for word. That’s what makes you grow cold on your book.

What in the scene you selected as most memorable made it work so well? What does that suggest about the least memorable scene? This comparison in itself may spark an idea for revision. Don’t be disappointed if you can’t think of a radical revision of your least memorable scene. The usual remedy is to cut it! If cutting it removes some piece of information the reader needs, find some other way of conveying that information in an existing scene.

Once you’ve revised or done away with your least memorable scene, you now have a
new
least memorable scene! You need to subject it to the same tough scrutiny. Would the book be stronger without it?

In dealing with many authors over the years, I found it desirable to set a standard. If any scene falls below that standard, out it goes. The process stops when the remaining scenes all seem to contribute strongly to the work as a whole.

Is it painful to cut a whole scene? Yes indeed. Why, then, should you do it? Because like a surgeon you are interested in preserving the body of the work by cutting out a part that’s not working properly or that’s causing harm to the body as a whole. What if you are blind to its faults and can’t find a weak scene? Put the manuscript aside for a week, a month, or longer (the longer the better), then look again. The weakest scene will jump out at you, staring you straight in the eye until you decide whether to let it live or die.

Once you’ve dealt with scenes that weaken your manuscript, the next step is to test motivation. First, from memory, jot down what you believe to be the three most important actions in your novel. Is each action motivated in a way that you would accept if this story were told by somebody else? The credibility of your work depends on the three main actions being motivated to your satisfaction. If you find it difficult and need help, remember that motivation has to be either provoked by circumstance or planted ahead of time. Motivation can usually be established by planting it ahead of the scene in which the action takes place.

Chekhov said that if someone has a gun in the first act, the audience knows that the gun must go off in the third act. Among playwrights that’s known as the obligatory scene. If a gun is seen in the hands of someone who is not known to carry a gun and then almost immediately fired, it will seem as if the author’s heavy hand is at work. If the gun is planted much earlier, the use of it becomes almost inevitable. In fact much suspense can be derived from its
not
being used when the audience thinks it will be.

The news too often brings us cases of serial or mass killings that seem to have no reason behind them. Then follow-up stories deal with the investigation of the backgrounds of killer and killed because
we want reasons for actions,
not just to prosecute the killer but to understand human behavior, especially when it is not like ours.