Guest Stuart Horwitz: Using the Theory of the Iceberg

You have likely heard about Ernest Hemingway’s Theory of the Iceberg. In brief, Hemingway thought you as a writer should take out seven-eighths of what you know about a subject; the top one-eighth is the tip of the iceberg, what the reader reads. The catch is, the reader knows if you don’t know the other seven-eighths. Then they feel that your writing is not solid or substantive enough to enjoy, but rather just an ice floe on the loose.

Hemingway’s Theory of the Iceberg is also called the Theory of Omission. He even went so far as to believe that the quality of a piece could be judged by the quality of the material the author eliminated. That may mess with your target word count in a particular genre, but it’s more likely to mess with your faith. Can something really be gone and still be here at the same time?

I’ve seen it. I recently took a 3,000-word essay down to 1,700 words, while also adding some new material (always an option for a polished draft). I read it the other day, and I didn’t actively miss any of the good stuff that hit the cutting-room floor. What was there was everything I wanted to say.

To get there, you have to trust the process of revision, the same one that guides you to raise the best parts up a level. Those other parts, that weren’t the best parts—you don’t need them. Or rather, you don’t need them anymore. It might be difficult to part with those pieces that started a fire somewhere inside of you, and led to other discoveries that were closer and closer to the heart of the matter.

We can probably agree, though, that to do more than one draft of something is based on the understanding that we are not going to just use everything we thought of in the first place. Given this, when you embrace the Theory of the Iceberg it changes the way you view revision. You don’t have to agonize so much about whether something is in or out; now it’s more a question of whether it should be above or below the waterline.

This approach to revision takes a certain discipline. You might find yourself continually putting something back into the text, only to experience an ensuing uneasy feeling… and then remove it again. This restraint is the iceberg at work. What you are leaving is the clarity of the subject, its essence. This is no less than the difference between flow and sludge for a reader, curiosity and impatience, sparkle and doubt.

Iceberg-based decisions can cover everything from what words you use to how you understand your theme. On the most basic level, some words push other words further up towards the usable surface. You might start with some common ones that form your foundation, and then new ones arrive to rest on top of them and subsume the visible place in your text. On the other end of the spectrum, an iceberg-based approach can influence how you tackle an entire work by, say, writing the middle body of the chapters first, and then drafting an Introduction and Conclusion after what you are truly writing about becomes apparent.

Writers can engage in iceberg-influenced preparation activities. These might include drafting a 2-3 page character study of which you only use a paragraph’s worth of words, or semi-extensive research—not to stuff what you now know into a piece—but to be able to breathe life into certain passages with the perfect detail. The maxim here seems to be, “Use it, don’t include it.”

Finally, working with the iceberg requires patience. You have to really want to create a work of art as opposed to just be done. You have to want to create something solid, complete, evocative, and powerful. I know you do, I’m just elaborating on one conception of how to get there. For my part, I can’t help but smile at any decision whereby one tone of voice, scenic twist, or structural decision is submerged in favor of one I like better—but that I would never have gotten to without what came before it.

Oh that’s very icebergy, I think…

As founder and principal of Book Architecture, Stuart has spent nearly twenty years helping writers become authors, signing with top literary agencies, sealing deals with coveted publishing houses, or forging a successful path through indie publishing. He has written three highly acclaimed books which together comprise the Book Architecture trilogy: Blueprint Your Bestseller, Book Architecture, and Finish Your Book in Three Drafts. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife and two daughters.

*Iceberg image from Wikimedia Commons: By AWeith - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Guest Post: Stuart Horwitz on The Process of Editing

THE PROCESS OF EDITING:

FOUR VERSIONS OF A PARAGRAPH

When Susan Gourley invited me to contribute to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, I started thinking about the idea of security, and wondering whether it is a good quality for a writer to develop. Security can sometimes have you writing what you’ve already written. Security doesn’t want to try a different genre or write something that people won’t agree with, while remaining insecure is what helps a writer invent, elaborate, and produce.

But that’s no way to live. Instead, even if we can’t achieve security in our content or our current level of success, I think we can find security in a process. To that end, I will present here four versions of a paragraph from my most recent book: Finish Your Book in Three Drafts. I’ll focus on how the concept of my paragraph changed, provided I was open to new inspiration and help from others. From the title of my book, you might think there would be only three versions of this paragraph—all will be explained.

Here is the first draft. At the time it was placed just under the subhead, “A Word on Wordsmithing”:

You probably haven’t been able to help yourself from fiddling with perfectly good sentences to make them even better by this point — even though you were supposed to be focusing on the one thing your book is about… A lot of time when I work with clients, they ask me: When are we going to talk about the actual writing, you know? By that, they mean the word choice, maybe improving the vocabulary, or the syntax (i.e., the flow.) Part of me hopes the answer is: never. The idea that everything we’ve been doing thus far isn’t writing, and that we are going to get to the writing, strikes me as a set-up for pretension.

I typed (like, actually) the first draft of my most recent book for two reasons: because I had just inherited my Great Uncle’s 1963 Hermes 3000 Typewriter in mint condition, and to force myself to have to retype the second draft into the computer. Not every time-saving device encourages creativity.

When you’re retyping, push comes to shove a lot quicker. Some useless phrases like “by this point” were dropped (consult your Strunk & White for other likely candidates), but more than that, retyping caused the ideas to evolve. When I wrote my second draft, I didn’t want to write this twice: “By that, they mean the word choice, maybe improving the vocabulary, or the syntax (i.e., the flow.)” The second time, I wanted to write: “By that, they mean maybe improving the vocabulary, or importing some metaphors, or redesigning the syntax.” One of my second draft mantras is: “Make it better.” That’s all we’re doing in the second draft; no need for insecurity. We’re just making it better.

Another second draft mantra is, “Believe it, or Change it.” Keeping that in mind, I changed the end:

You probably haven’t been able to help yourself from fiddling with perfectly good sentences to make them even better – even though you were supposed to be focusing on the ‘one thing your book is about’… Sometimes when I work with clients, they ask me: When are we going to talk about the actual writing, you know? By that, they mean maybe improving the vocabulary, or importing some metaphors, or redesigning the syntax. Part of me hopes the answer is: never. The idea that everything we’ve been doing thus far isn’t writing, and that we’re going to get to the writing, strikes me as a set-up for pretension, or at the very least an overly complicated surface.

Ending on the word “pretension” seemed harsh, and I jotted this note to myself in the margin of the original typescript: compassion. Meaning, try to find some empathy here, don’t be so heartless. Some of us have to try, you see.

Your second draft is the one that I recommend you send out to beta readers, those early readers who see your work before it is ready for the literary marketplace. Talk about insecurity! Nonetheless, such feedback is immensely valuable. I followed my own advice, and was happy that I did because so much new inspiration flowed my way. For example, one of my beta readers, Windy Lynn Harris, recommended that I give each draft a name. The first draft then became “the messy draft,” the second draft became “the method draft,” and the third draft became “the polished draft.”

Those kinds of ideas don’t come along very often, and the ripples extended far. Windy’s suggestion enabled me to situate the paragraph we have been reviewing within the context of the book I was writing, which should happen to every paragraph, ideally. To accommodate this, it actually grew to two paragraphs:

In the method draft you probably weren’t able to help yourself from fiddling with perfectly good sentences to make them even better – even though you were supposed to be focusing on the ‘one thing your book is about’… In the polished draft, the individual words likely became even more important. Using the right word, the one that you can pull off, is important. I just learned the word compassion like last week, what it means.

But a word on wordsmithing: Sometimes when I work with clients, they ask me: When are we going to talk about the actual writing, you know? By that, they mean improving the vocabulary, or importing some metaphors, or redesigning the syntax. Part of me hopes the answer is: never. The idea that everything we’ve been doing thus far isn’t writing, and that we’re going to get to the writing, strikes me as a set-up for pretension, or at the very least an overly complicated surface.

Another reason it grew to two paragraphs, besides increasing the context, was the fact that I was still chasing the concept. Now the word “compassion,” from the margins of the typescript, made it into the actual text and augmented the idea. This feeling that you are still moving toward what you want to say is a crucial condition for finishing strong — and why the subtitle of my new book is: “How to write a book, revise a book, and complete a book while you still love it.”

Then these paragraphs (and the rest of the book in which they were contained) went to copy editing. Deep breath, everybody. I work with three copy editors, and I respect each of them wholeheartedly. That said, copy editors bring out the insecurity in even the most confident writers because having your work copy edited is often its own tug of war: between correctness and voice, between convention and style.

For Finish Your Book in Three Drafts I worked with Louann Pope (you can ask her here how much of an irritant I was to work with). Between the two of us we came up with this as the final version:

In the messy draft, you likely experimented with a few different tones of voice until you figured out who your audience members were, and what tone of voice would reach them. In the method draft, you probably weren’t able to help yourself from fiddling with perfectly good sentences to make them even better—even though you were supposed to be focusing on the “one thing your book is about.” In the polished draft, you considered the individual words even more carefully. Using the right word, the one that you can pull off, is important. I just learned the word compassion like last week, for example, what it means.

But a word on wordsmithing: Sometimes when I work with clients, they ask me: “When are we going to talk about the actual writing, you know?” By that, they mean improving the vocabulary, or importing some metaphors, or redesigning the syntax. Part of me hopes the answer is: never. The idea that everything we’ve been doing thus far isn’t writing, and that we’re going to get to the writing, strikes me as a setup for pretension, or at the very least an overly complicated surface.

By now, the passage above had become the first paragraph of the Conclusion, and you can’t start the Conclusion of a book about three drafts with comments about the second and third draft only. Each draft allows you to take a further step back and that perspective allows you to see what needs to be done. Some of the sentences became more active, clarifying phrases were inserted and unnecessary ellipses were taken out.

And some lines, I wouldn’t let Louann touch. I know this reads as a fragment: “Part of me hopes the answer is: never.” I also know I left that sentence the same exact way every draft. That’s the music of going inside my mind. I don’t want to change it to: “Part of me hopes that the answer is never.” I was just counseling a writer about how your writing is always your writing. And you may feel insecure about it, but if you feel better about one version than you do of any other expression of the same idea, then you are done. “The end.”

Stuart Horwitz is the found of Book Architecture, a firm of independent editors based in Providence, RI. Finish Your Book in Three Drafts is the third and final book in the Book Architecture trilogy. His first book, Blueprint Your Bestseller: Organize and Revise Any Manuscript with the Book Architecture Method was named one of the best books about writing by The Writer magazine. His second book, Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline Without Using a Formula was released as part of a five-year, 100-venue book tour of North America which will run through 2017.

Thanks so much to Stuart for being here today. Check out his website and see if he's appearing on his tour near you. He's a gifted speaker who will convince you to work even harder on your dreams. Did he inspire you today, IWSGers? Did you see how the editing process improved the writing sample?