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Category: Editing Rant
Editing Rant: Two-Page Paragraphs
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If your paragraph goes on for two pages of your document, it is too long.
Yes, editing a document with not one but THREE paragraphs exceeding a page of the manuscript and one of them is over two pages long.
Shoot for a third-of-a-page max.
Yes, authors used to do this in the past, but with e-books a solid page with no indents or paragraph returns hurts the eyes and turns off readers. If you want to publish, you write to mediums of your day: serials for newspapers, pulp fiction for pulp, and eye movement for e-books.
Use white-space for storytelling. It’s a powerful tool.
DO NOT HAVE TWO-PAGE PARAGRAPHS!!!!!
Side note: The other end of the spectrum of every.single.sentence.is.a.paragraph is equally as bad. (Ignore this article as an example, it is a RANT for crying out loud. Normal writing rules do not apply when someone is going off the hinges.)
Paragraphs are three to five sentences (in general) centered around an action or theme. This applies to both nonfiction and fiction.
As for white space is your friend, if you are unfamiliar with the thought, see “Writing Exercise: Paragraph Breaks (2/23/2016)“.
Go out. Write. Wield the Pen.
AND USE THE CARRIAGE RETURN!!!
(Off to figure out how many paragraphs this two-page monster actually should be.)
Editing Rant: Building not Repeating
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THIS! THIS IS WHAT I MEAN BY BUILDING!!!
Okay, let me start from the beginning. A common issue with authors getting their first (or fifty-first) edit is repeating information. Now, repeating information isn’t necessarily bad, but it shouldn’t be the same as what has appeared before.
Places to repeat information include (1) at the beginning of each book in a series or serial. (a) The series needs a recap, but it doesn’t need to be more complicated than the normal background information drops; it just so happens that this time you have an actual book with the background information, not just something in the character’s head that needs to be let out slowly. (b) For a serial (where the characters don’t change (much) between stories and the books can be read in any order – for example cozy mystery “series”), just need to quickly reintroduce the characters.
Do not do the serial introduction with a cut-and-paste of previous information (for the love of everything, please don’t do this!!!). Maybe introduce them through the eyes of a different character, or by having us get to know them through observing the new murder mystery.
(2) When there is a mystery or something unfurling like it, such as a political thriller, and a recap is needed periodically to keep the reader on the same page with the character.
(3) Just the general making sure the reader doesn’t forget an important aspect of what is happening.
When not to repeat EVER – you just said the information not two paragraphs ago. (SECONDARY RANT!!!)
I need to tell him to bathe before we leave, Martha thinks as she rushes upstairs.
John, being the teenager that he is, is still struggling to get out of bed. His younger brother is tying his shoes.
“Don’t forget to shower. Hop to it or we will be late.” Martha tells John before heading down the hall to change her clothes.
You think I am joking that this sort of thing happens all the time, but it does. Don’t repeat. Build.
Options
One) Have a different character say the information so the perspective is different.
I need to tell him to take a bath before we leave, Martha thinks as she rushes upstairs.
John, being the teenager that he is, is still struggling to get out of bed. His younger brother is tying his shoes.
“Hurry up, we are going to be late. And shower!” Martha tells John before heading down the hall to change her clothes.
“Yeah John, shower. You are stinky,” says Rafe. With the skill developed over a lifetime of being the younger brother, he dodges the pillow thrown at him.
(Two) Different information. Each time the repeat is done (three times to make something real), reveal different details An example is describing the character’s car each time they get in: (a) the red sports car; (b) he loved the remote heating seats in winter; (c) the white interior fortunately was leather so the mud would clean out. This works like background information, don’t reveal certain details unless they are needed. No need for a one-page character / item description when you can drop details in throughout the book.
(Three) Build. Each time something is repeated, reveal something more. Make it richer.
Back to the THIS! THIS!
So in Dungeon Crawler Carl, one of his catch phrases is “You will not break me.” But Matt Dinniman is amazing, he only has Carl say this once per book. It is a defining line, but it is said differently each time. (Another catch phrase is “Damnit Donut.” If you are reading this series, watch this line evolve.)
Book One is the standard: “You’re not going to break me,” I said. “You might hurt me, or kill me, but you’re not going to break me.”
The wonderful confidence, knowing death is likely, but he will mentally fight them with everything he has and hold it together. He won’t become what they want. A wonderfully innocent thought.
Book Two, the sentiment builds emotionally: You will not break me. You will not break me. (Fuck you all.)
Book Three, the words are written out with planning and intent, a mental commitment: They will not break me. Fuck them all. They will not break me. But I will break them. This is my promise to myself, to my friends, and to you, anyone who reads these words. I will break them all. – Crawler Carl, 25th Edition of The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook
This is what I mean by, “if you must repeat, build.” Matt Dinniman builds.
Editing Rant: Time Order within a Sentence
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Have I written about this before? It is hard to tell as I have to write about it ALL THE TIME when editing, the most recent edit proving the rule.
DO NOT BACKUP.
Within a sentence, keep time moving forward.
What do I mean?
“He stops, when I call his name, breathing hard.” is out of time order. The sentence should be “When I call his name, he stops, breathing hard.”
Don’t do: “He jumped across the room after opening the door.”
Do do: “After opening the door, he jumped across the room.”
Do you make your reader start moving forward, creating the visual action in the movie theatre of their mind then go, “you know what, I forgot this one detail, let’s add it now.” This causes discordance within the reader and they get thrown out of the story for a microsecond to work things out before reentering the story. Do this too many times and the reader is going to put down the story because of temporal exhaustion without even knowing why the story seemed off to them.
When you are editing, and you feel something is off in a sentence or paragraph, especially in a high action or stakes scene, see if everything is neatly in a time line.
NOTE: This is different from confusion in a fight.
“I jumped on the the guy trying to backstab my babe, and we tumbled over the wall. After two gut punches from him, and me returning the favor into the brick wall, I turned to discover my little shrinking violet had taken out the two who were on her while I was busy.”
In this case, the character DISCOVERS the information out of order, but within the character’s UNDERSTANDING (and sharing with the reader as the POV), everything falls into a time order.
“I hit the floor. Immediately after discovering the hardness of the chilled marble, the rabbit punch from behind hit my pain centers.”
Again, the character DISCOVERS the information and processes it out of the order of occurrence, but the POV understanding of the issue is still in a clear time order for the read.
Sharing information out of order, but within the order of the character’s understanding is a great way to raise suspense and pass on the confused feeling to the reader in a fight situation. But it isn’t REVERSING already defined activity.
Not a “I got shot twice after I punched the leader” situation.
Another sentence construction writing tool is saving the most important part of the sentence to the end. This is still not done by breaking time order.
Stuff like:
“The girl who gave me my first kiss, Jennifer, stood in the sunbeam across the way and her being there stopped me midstep. “
Even though the information is in time order, the order isn’t important to the action or understanding of the sentence. In this case, the information being imparted should aim to have the best piece be the last piece.
“I stopped mid-step. Jennifer stood in the sunbeam across the way; she was the girl who gave me my first kiss.”
This reverse order of information and time is actually similar to the fight. This is the order the POV is processing, understanding, the information – the lizard brain says stop, the observant brain says the visual is Jennifer in the sun, the emotional memory pulls up “It’s HER!”
The story keeps moving forward. There isn’t anything the reader needs to stop and process for time order. In this case the information released at the end answers the question, the suspense which kept the reader reading.
I hope this helps explains (1) DO NOT BACKUP the time order of action Rule of Thumb, while also pointing out two places where writers THINK the Rule of Thumb is broken, but it isn’t because time is still moving forward within the point of view. The “POV camera” didn’t freeze and have to rerun the scene.
“I served the main course, set the table, and cleaned up afterwards.”
hurts to read as an editor. DO BETTER!!!
WRITING EXERCISE: Create two sentences with the time order action broken, then correct it. Share them below in the comments.
Editing Rant: Working on Inspiration
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During Novel November, a participant asked the following question: Hi guys. I don’t know if other people have this, but whenever I start writing a story, after I get a few chapters started, I lose interest in it and move on to something else. It’s like the spark in that book wuffed out and now I’m looking for another thing to write about. And it’s really frustrating ’cause I have like 10 unfinished books in docs and the spark in them is gone. Any advice or comments on why this is happening and how to stop it?
The first person to respond, replied with this: Gosh, I know this feeling. I’ve never been good at writing long form stories, because I always just have small scenes I wanna write and then nothing that interests me beyond that. I think it works differently for everyone, so this might not be of much help to you, but the way I’ve found to work with it is a combination of having some short stories that don’t take much to finish so I can get the dopamine hit and feeling of accomplishment from that, and accepting having multiple stories in WIP at once. I have lots of files and even more miscellaneous plot bunnies around that I jump between as I get the motivation, slowly hacking away at them. Sticking to planning and writing scenes as they interest me helps a lot too! I’ll slowly write an outline for a longer story, and then fill out the scenes as I have the motivation as I keep outlining. Eventually, I’ll have filled the skeleton with organs of words. This might not fit your writing style, but I’d say to give it a shot! It’s nice to accept having multiple things going. There’s no rush, writing is for having fun<3
***
Basically what is happening is the original poster (OP) and the responder are both inspirational writers. They work only when the muse is dancing. The problem is muses like the fun things. The inspirational muses have energy for occasional activity. They are not a day job and not a hundred thousand words of structured story with three draft passes before editing begins. they are not social media work, and figuring out chronological errors. That requires a very different type of muse – one most writers call food-on-my-table and roof-over-my-head.
If you been around my blog long enough, you know the mantra – butt in chair, hands on keyboard (BICHOK). (Previous postings: B is for BIC (4/2/2020) and Writing Exercise: Let’s Do This (Part One) (1/22/2019). Please note that I am sharing these posts from the discussion as they are a generic question-and-answer TONS of writers want to know.
I responded to the OP as follows and am sharing it here as this is a problem which faces many writers. Good luck in transitioning from inspirational writer to a full-story author. I do want to add, being an inspirational writer is FINE; have FUN writing. Lots of people do hobbies for pure enjoyment. But if you are frustrated, wanting to change the pile of easy-to-write scenes into a full story, maybe this can help you unlock a means to complete a manuscript. (Not everything works for everyone. Your mileage may vary.)
The <responder> is right. One of the work-arounds to an Inspirational Writer is do a quick (very non-detailed) outline with the scenes you know you want.
1) Write the outline scenes in any order.
2) Figure out the scenes needed to connect them into a story and write those.
3) Now write the last scene/chapter of the book and the very first scene.
4) Update your outline with the scenes you got.
5) Pick out a framework to work your story with and see where what you got falls in it for beats.
6) If you are missing beats, write them.
7) Look over everything again, updating your outline again. Maybe at this time write the one-page summary for selling to publishers and to agents, write the back blurb, and create a three-sentence (or less) elevator pitch. (You will be updating these later, but they can help direct things to knowing what the actual focus of the story is.)
8) Anything else that interests you that needs saying? Write that.
9) Your first draft is done now because if it doesn’t interest you, it doesn’t need saying.
10) Second draft – go through and put in the Chekov’s guns that appear in the end of the story on the shelves at the beginning of the story. Add character depth and any scene transitions to connect the scenes. Work on dialog and add narrative description to the scenes (no white boxes).
11) Now wait a month but no more than three (maybe write or work on another book between).
12) Third draft – Do not do this until that wait a month is complete because you must have time to forget things. Read through what you got beginning to end (note that this may be the first time you are actually reading the book in order). Anything strikes you as missing – fix that. Update the outline to make sure you got a coherent story. Add any missing scenes you discover with this final update. (By the Way, at this point the outline goes into the Book Bible.)
Now it’s time to show this to your alpha readers as a completed manuscript. Trade beta reading with someone you trust. And continue forward with selling/editing/publishing. (Do not publish until edited/beta read!)
Yeah, it is not the traditional front-to-back writing everyone is told. It is a complete Frankenstein’s monster stitched together, but if you are an inspirational reader, this has worked for other writers.
Also note that writers all at some point or other HATE what they have written. One writer I follow, David B. Coe, says one time he stomped off and told his wife he hated what he was writing and it was complete garbage. She said “oh, you reached the 2/3 point already?” Come to discover (something his spouse already knew), he hated his stories at the 2/3 point where all the setup is done and everything is at loose ends and needed to be rethreaded to create the ending. This man has several long-term series and it is the same for every single book. Only way to get through for him (and it is his full-time job) is spend a week writing stuff that didn’t inspire him to get all the pieces back into play, and then he would be interested in the story again. Those two weeks of writing will undergo a lot of revision in drafts two and three, but they were written.
Always remember: You can’t edit what hasn’t been written.