The Second Draft by Jessica P. Morrell

The Much-Needed, but Sometimes Dreaded Second Draft

Jessica P. Morrell

“I don’t write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn’t work, or what simply is not alive.” — Susan Sontag

Jessica P. Morrell

This column is especially meant for those plucky souls who have recently survived November’s hellacious, glutton-for-punishment and yet exhilarating challenge—NaNoWriMo or National Writing Month. But then every writer faces a second draft. And a third….and we could keep counting here, but let’s focus on the second one of a book-length story or memoir. Because you’re in for a deep rewrite along with analyzing, musing, and asking a lot of questions of yourself. 

Your second draft focuses on larger issues, consistency problems if the plot hangs together and the architecture makes sense. A lot of second draft fixes solve structure problems; fix places that needs bolstering or sections that need to be eliminated or relocated. You’re also judging plausibility and motivations. You’ll be making your major revisions at this point, deciding whether you need to change the beginning, ending, or viewpoint. This means you’re searching for scenes that don’t accomplish much, big plot holes, unanswered questions, and wimpy stakes. You’ll make certain your key events occur in the right order. And remain open to change: would allowing for some unplanned, newly-inspired twist transform or deepen the story even if it’s different from your original plan?

Start with a plan. Your first trick is to achieve psychic and emotional distance. Stephen King’s advises letting the manuscript cool for a few months, but for most writers that cooling off period can turn into a deep freeze and you might opt to avoid the hard work needed. A few weeks helps just fine, especially if you’re on a deadline. No matter your timeframe, print it all out in a different typeface than the one you wrote it in. Many mistakes you won’t notice by reading it on a computer screen will become apparent because you’ll be habituated to ignore them.

Next schedule a solid bock to time for reading, note taking, and heavy analysis. It’s best to undertake this in a different place than where the story was written, thus adding even more editorial distance. It’s also helpful to work in a location where you can take long walks while you ponder whether your story is working or needs a major overhaul. I suggest an ocean view or lakeside cottage or mountain hideaway, but that’s just me.  Plan to use a lot of colored ink and highlight sections that need moving or trimming.

Create a story bible if you haven’t already done so. Your bible ensures consistency and connectedness— what this reading and rewrite should achieve.   You might want to list all the scenes in the story along with the change that takes place in each scene. Scenes require change and then fallout. You might want to title your scenes.  Note their time and location, the characters involved and their ranking, their main physical and psychological traits. If it’s a complex story with a sprawling cast, design a family tree or a web of connections.

How do your protagonist’s goals and motivations deepen throughout the story?  After Act 1 often the protagonist’s goals will change, become more personal. A search for a missing person uncovers a human trafficking scheme. And then someone in the protagonist’s family becomes endangered by these heartless criminals.  Perhaps at the end your characters want something far different from what they fought for in the opening. Perhaps he or she is seeing the world with new eyes. Stories where the characters’ priorities and worldview evolve are powerful. Stories where they don’t can seem predictable.

Pay attention to events or motives that are never explained or spelled out as if you’re whispering stage directions to the reader. Note if there are too many dangling subplots or simply too many subplots. Often this draft will be loose and sketchy, lacking in the narrative flow and glue that holds a piece together. Or, it might be written in summary, thus the intimate details and moments that bring the story to life will be missing. This means you’ll be replacing summary with scenes. Notice if the viewpoint is consistent, or if head-hopping is going on. Determine if your story contains surprises, intrigue, and forward momentum

.  

Make certain that you need the first chapter or scene. Many stories are strengthened by a beheading because they start far before the first crucial actions. Generally backstory isn’t needed in Act 1. If it’s a thriller you need to start with a crisis or disaster, not a tour of the CIA headquarters. It it’s a love story, collide the lovers as early as possible.

Checklist for the First Revision:

·         A good story begins with turbulence or a threat. Has your ‘ordinary world’ been introduced and does this intro include tension, something amiss before the trouble starts?

·         Do your main characters have a physical presence on the page? Have you added to their presence as the story proceeds?  Is the whole visual enough?

·         Have you identified your protagonist’s inner conflict?

·         How about your midpoint? Is it a game changer? Did the story take your readers in a direction they couldn’t have predicted? If so, does the inner logic hold up?

·         Can readers understand where scenes are taking place and the timeframe for the scene? Do you need transitions to bridge events? Is your timeline consistent?

·         Is the story question and main subplot clearly resolved?

• Are most scenes built from obstacles?
• Can a scene be cut without affecting the main story?
• Does each action cause more actions and reactions?
• Evaluate the order of your scenes—is this the right time to include this action or should it wait?
• Do you need to add twists and complications if it bogs down, especially in the middle?
• Is description dispersed in small increments throughout and  via a character’s viewpoint?
• Do you need to add flashbacks so the characters’ motivations and goals make sense?
• Do the flashbacks contain action or mostly summary?
• Do you need to strengthen or add subplots? Or cut some because the story is wandering too far afield?
• Have you created a plausible tie-in or between the main plot storyline and the main subplot?
• Are you noticing that a lot of the pages have the same emotions, tone and mood? If so, how can you mix it up?

If you find major problems, don’t panic. Instead create careful notes as if you were an editor addressing a client. Chances are at this point you might need to expand or cut backstory, deepen main characters, cut or combine secondary characters, expand or cut subplots, reorder the scenes to heighten the tension, beef up the middle so that it contains a potent twist, and refine the ending so it truly concludes the plot.  I repeat, don’t panic.

Thanks to Jessica for guesting again. Please check out Jessica's website for even more terrific writing advice and help. I can personally recommend her books as they're sitting on my shelf. Thanks, But This Isn't For Us can be purchased on Amazon.

Do you dread the second draft? Did one thing on her checklist really click with you?

Crutch Words by Jessica Page Morrell

Crutch Words

Jessica P. Morrell©

“Style means the right word. The rest matters little.” —Jules Renard

Besides contributing to magazines, newsletters and anthologies, I write books, teach writing workshops and work as a developmental editor. My editing clients are both published and unpublished writers.  Mostly I strive to improve structure, tension and character arcs in their manuscripts. I suss out plot holes and fix subplots and help express themes.  

Using the Track Changes function I ask questions and make comments and observations in the margin; delete unnecessary words; fix spelling errors and typos; replace dull words with brighter ones; and perk up dialogue. As I work on the manuscript I craft a memo that elucidates my overall impressions of the story, commenting on what’s working, what is not working, and specific techniques that can bolster the story. Then I provide the big picture of what needs shoring up such as character development or tweaking the ending along with suggestions for specific pages and scenes. 

One section of the 10-20 page memo is devoted to style issues. Lately I’ve included a list of each writer’s crutch words. These are the words and phrases that become lodged in our brains and appear too often in our stories. We all lean on words—I’ve got my share: perhaps, emotional, deeply, dazzle, simmer, and resonate— just to name a few.

 Crutch words are also part of our culture and easily spotted online and heard on  television, especially on talk shows and reality shows: Awesome, amazing, journey, so, in fact, honestly, personally, seriously, whatever, basically, totally.  But here’s the deal: If I can train myself to search out crutch words in my own and my clients’ writing, you can too. Lazy, repetitive and clichéd writing diminishes your credibility, but more important, in this huge and crowded publishing world, there is no room for irksome habits.

Offenders

Here are some of the crutch words I notice most often: just, suddenly, very, quite, various, stride, strode, quiet, quietly, got, get, getting, could, a couple, spoke, have, brainstorm, lay, hopefully, slowly, quickly, really, seemed, appeared, smirk, grin, even, that, weird, okay, every, all, eyes, only. 

Let’s take on a few of these offenders. Suddenly is typically used as a transition or forewarning: As the sounds grew closer, suddenly the hairs on her neck started prickling. Suddenly it all became clear. Suddenly is rarely necessary because an action that happens without warning doesn’t need an announcement. You want the reader to be surprised, to experience the action firsthand and so use a direct sentence as the reader leans in closer. As the moans grew louder the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Instead of trumpeting a new development, allow the character to react appropriately or slip in more context as the scene unfolds.

Always slash very and quite and really. Really.  They’re intensifiers or qualifiers that weaken the meaning of the word they precede and should be axed and replaced with specific language or vivid examples.  Instead of very small, minuscule. Instead of very hungry, famished.  Instead of quite angry, enraged. Instead of really happy, ecstatic. Use these duds only in dialogue and your writing will immediately improve.  

       

While in hunter mode, search out your wimpy modifiers and ax them. Notice how the meaning is not affected afterward.  Here’s a list  that you rarely need: hopefully, decidedly,  considerably, reportedly,  actively, mindfully, certainly, positively, both,  extremely, comparatively, in fact, per se,  herself, himself, inherently, truly, deeply, incredibly, definitely, fortunately, generally, in general, simply, particularly, absolutely, inevitably, actively, presently, alleged, careful, carefully, definite, relatively, namely, unfortunately, necessarily, overall, rather, relatively, so-called, somewhat, and totally.

Crutch words also come in the form of bland verbs—look, see, saw, hear, sit for example are used often, but they act like stage directions instead of describing action. For example is the person gazing, studying, staring, or gaping? Same with terms such as walk— be precise because three-year olds scamper and scoot; teens lope and saunter; old people mince and hobble. Pay attention to these limp-as-noodle types: get, took, take, put, got, run, ran, turned, leave, move, went, lie, lay, left, go, gone, have, had. Trade them in for more vibrant choices, but beware of using florid or bizarre verbs such as the car ping ponged to a stop. Or, the car hollered to a stop. Powerhouse verbs are important, but you can’t hire muscle for every sentence.

            As you search for wimps slash or replace colorless words:  nice, some, thing, good, bad, pretty, smile, since, stand, stood, keep.

Solutions

I’m happy to report that there are solutions to using crutch words, all of them elucidating. 1. Create your own “search list.”  Pay attention to the redundancies pointed out by your critique group or beta readers.  Then open the manuscript file and perform searches to weasel out those rascals. 2. Reading your work out loud will help you hear crutch words as does using voice recognition software such as Dragon. This can also help with productivity since most of us think and talk faster than we type. 3. If you respond well to visual cues check out websites such as wordle.net and tagxedo.com. They’re two of a dozen or so word cloud generators. These sites allow you to paste in large amounts of text and then it spews out images of your text. The words are placed randomly in the image, highlighting your most important and frequently used words.

Becoming aware of your repeat offenders is only the first step. Next, make a list of synonyms you can substitute and keep this list handy. There are many synonym sites online or you could use The Synonym Finder by Roget.  The trick is choosing the precise substitutes since not all synonyms are created equal. For most of us conversational writing is the aim because it’s fluid and easy to follow. But informal never means redundant, so pay attention word by word.  

Jessica Page Morrell understands both sides of the editorial desk–as an editor and author. She writes with depth, wit and clarity on topics related to writing and creativity along with other topics and is the author of Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us, A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing is Being Rejected; Bullies, Bastards & Bitches, How to Write the Bad Guys in Fiction; The Writer’s I Ching: Wisdom for the Creative Life; Voices from the Street;Between the Lines: Master The Subtle Elements Of Fiction Writing; and Writing Out the Storm. Her forthcoming books are No Ordinary Days: The Seasons, Cycles and Elements of the Writing Life and White Heat: Zero to Novel in 90 days. Her work also appears in anthologies and The Writer and Writer’s Digestmagazines. Morrell founded and coordinates three writing conferences Summer in Words, Making it in Changing Times, and Claim Your Story. She is a former food columnist and restaurant reviewer, has been creating columns about the writing life since 1998, and is a popular speaker at writers’ conferences throughout North America. Morrell lives in Portland, Oregon where she is surrounded by writers and watches the sky in all its moods and permutations.


Many thanks to Jessica for being here today. Her website has a multitude of resources. And to top off this informative day, reward yourself with a small gift. Every member of IWSG should have one of the original design tee-shirts created by Retro Jeremy Hawkins. You can own it yourself today.

Do you have crutch words? How do you deal with them? Has Jessica given you some ideas on improving your writing? Did you order your tee-shirt yet?