Thoughts on Writing #23: Embrace Revision

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Lester Curtis
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Post by Lester Curtis »

Trying to make a rule such as "lose 10%" just feels like English Grammar - something English teachers like to diagram but essentially must be learned holistically.
I couldn't have put it better, Tao -- thank you.

I flunked seventh grade English because our teacher spent about 75% of the year on diagramming sentences, and I simply refused to do it. And I could write better sentences than just about anyone in the class, and damn well knew it. Later, I found out that sentence-diagramming frequently fails, and that it's easily possible to write a sentence that diagrams perfectly but makes no sense. (Hint: the diagramming process attempts to apply rules -- probably from Latin -- that aren't always valid.)

A rule -- to knock out ten percent? Doesn't work for me, nor would it work for other people who revise as they go. My current project is very spare of modifiers already, to the point that I'm tempted to add some (but I haven't -- yet).

I have edited previous works by knocking out huge chunks of boring info-dump, (not to go into what I've had to do with flash stories to drop the word count) but that's not the same as doing a first draft and then trying to choose every tenth word to delete.

Weak modifiers? What if one of your principle characters likes to sprinkle his/her/its speech with them? You risk flattening the character to streamline the text.

It just isn't that simple -- or that easy, at least for me. It might work for someone else, though, maybe even you. Embrace revision, certainly, but do it in a way that improves the story, regardless of how that affects the word count.
I was raised by humans. What's your excuse?
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Lester Curtis
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Info-dump revisited

Post by Lester Curtis »

Thanks, Tao (he said sardonically), you just reminded me . . . I just put a whole new first chapter into my project, and damn near all of it is info-dump. Sneaky bastard was hiding under a pile of breezy dialog. Thankfully it's only about a page and a half . . . anybody care to look at it before I flay it and run its hide up the flagpole and feed its guts to the cat?

(Heavy sigh) Am I not practicing what I preach? Well, as much as I'd like to, sometimes I just can't. This alien needs to be described, so the reader won't spend the rest of the story wondering what it looks like -- and the description should happen earlier, rather than later. At least it's not a narrative . . .

Maybe I could do a version of The Blind Men and the Elephant . . . NAH!

Sometimes you just have to break your own rules or you'll never get anything done . . . or, say, "I don't have rules . . . I have guidelines!"
I was raised by humans. What's your excuse?
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Lester Curtis
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Post by Lester Curtis »

For what it's worth, Tao, I could simply rename my first chapter "Prologue" and not change another thing -- but I won't.

I've taken to naming these chapters according to the age of my main character, and the first one is "Minus Two Months." So, it already is a prologue.

Now, if I wanted to -- and I have thought of it :wink: -- I could go back further and describe his conception, but I'm trying not to put outright pornography in this story (another guideline) . . . not on the first page, anyway. Besides, these explorations of regression have to have some kind of a limit.

And . . .
Put Footnotes with all the info tucked away where the rabid fans can gaze at it later!

*This post has been inspired by the Dune Encyclopedia, which includes a recipe for Fremen Bread.*
NO! I hate when people do that! It interrupts the flow. As I stated elsewhere, I write my stories to be self-contained -- the reader reads each word in succession, and all of their questions get answered eventually (at least, all the questions I want answered, haha).
I was raised by humans. What's your excuse?
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