Manuscript Triage

I was asked to write an article for National Novel Editing Month.  It came out today, so since I’m out dealing with hubby’s leg (surgery at 6 tomorrow), I thought I’d offer it up.  So without further ado…

You’ve done it.  You’ve climbed a mountain that thousands—dare I say, millions—have attempted in their lifetimes.  You’ve become one of the few, the proud, and the brave who persevere and can proudly say “The End.”

Congratulations.

Pat yourself on the back.  Have a beer.  Some chocolate.  A thick, juicy cheeseburger (don’t ask me why this is always my celebratory draft completion dinner).  Get a good night’s sleep because your next adventure begins tomorrow.

The sounds of Reveille blast through the speakers and startle you out of bed at dawn.

Pick yourself up, soldier!  We’ve got a crisis here!  This first draft made it across enemy lines, and it’s injured.  Your job is to determine how badly it’s hurt and what kind of editorial care it needs.  Got it?

Ma’am, yes ma’am!

Silly as this may sound, this is exactly how I operate when I reach the end of a first draft.  I celebrate a job complete (notice that I don’t say “well done”), then I prepare to dive in and evaluate.  Usually this necessitates a break from my WIP of anywhere from 3-10 days during which I read, write other stuff, and generally gain some perspective on my WIP.  Then I sit down with a paper copy and my trusty pen (red, green, or blue, as any of them will show up well), and I read it straight through.  The copy editor in me makes corrections of typos, spelling, punctuation, grammar and the like, but that’s just autopilot.  What I’m really looking for is flow, voice, character arcs, any hanging threads, inconsistencies, glaring mistakes, and all the other aspects of craft that I’ve spent all this time and effort internalizing.  Since I transitioned from Pantser to Plotter, this is usually the first time I’ve done this on a new WIP, so this inaugural read-through is my first opportunity to see how well I pulled everything together.

Sometimes when I’m finished, I’m happy with what I read.  There are mistakes (there always are), but for the most part, they’re only flesh wounds.  I’ll fix whatever small stuff came up, then pass it on to my critique partner.  If you don’t have a good critique partner, find one.  They are invaluable.  Try your luck at Crit Partner Match (end shameless plug).  My crit partner, affectionately referred to as Pot (to my Kettle) is my fiercest critic.  If my manuscript makes it past her, then I know I’m in the home stretch.  Once I get it back from that initial critique, I address whatever issues get raised, then pass it on to my second round beta readers, who generally are reading this blind, without having seen any of it before.  They give me more authentic reader responses.  And then it’s back through for any necessary corrections, clarification, etc.  This is where I am with my novella Forsaken By Shadow (hopefully released by the end of March on Kindle!  Keep your eyes peeled!).  I really love it when this happens because it’s not a painful bout of editing.

Sadly, not all manuscripts make it off the battle front of the first draft in such good shape.  And this is where you will need to employ manuscript triage.  You already know that some books are grievously wounded when they limp off the battle field.   Often this is indicated by repetitive and persistent writer’s block during composition.  I think of this as the book’s way of telling you you’re going the wrong way.  Ignore it to your peril.  There may be massive gaps in the story—areas where you left a bracketed note to yourself [figure x out] because you didn’t want to stop the flow long enough to decide right then.  I do that a lot.  Maybe as you’re reading you find that one of your characters is doing something, well, out of character.  You might even find that you just flat don’t like the story anymore.

This is a very bad sign.

Some positive souls are likely to tell you that you’re being too hard on yourself, that it’s really not as bad as you think it is.  And maybe it’s not.  Maybe you need an outside opinion to set you straight.  If that’s the case, by all means, seek out that opinion.  See the Not Too Injured portion of the program above.  I’m not talking to you.

But if you know in your gut that this book has serious flaws, I want you to roll up your sleeves, pull out your tools, and prepare to get bloody.  We’re going to do some exploratory surgery.  Maybe even some dissection, depending on how bad things are.  But we’re going to find the problem and develop a solution.  We’re going to find a way to make you fall back in love with this book.

First things first, I want you to take a deep breath.  As you exhale, let go of the idea that you’re going to be able to fix this with a bit of spit and polish and that it’ll be ready for submission or publication in a matter of hours, days, or weeks.  It may even take more than the month of NaNoEdMo.  And that’s totally okay.  No, no, stop hyperventilating.  I mean it.  It’s going to be okay.  Take another deep breath.  This time, as you exhale, let go of the idea that you’re going to be able to rework the particular words you have on the page.  Sometimes starting from scratch on a section or scene or act is better.  You’ve got to be prepared to kill your little darlings.  One more breath.  Now stop thinking of your book as your precious, bouncing baby and start thinking of it as the victim of a car crash, injured and bleeding on your operating table.

Now quick, tell me in one line, what your book is about. Just a quick single line summary.  Think of it as the name and date of birth you’re asking a trauma victim.  This sentence usually follows this pattern:

It’s a story about a [description of hero/ine] who wants [what is the goal?] because [why] but can’t because [conflict].

As an example, the novel I’m working on right now (the one that actually inspired this post), is about a reluctant wolf-shifter who must embrace the wolf nature he abhors in order to save his human mate from the pack who wants her dead.  Not quite the same pattern but all the elements are there.

This is a fundamental summary of your story, and if you don’t know it, you need to stop and figure it out.  Agents, editors, and publishers don’t go for the “Oh, it’s too much to describe in a few lines.”  If your brain is stuck in that mode, it means you’ve gotten away from the heart of the story and you need to find it again.  If you’ve got that heart, whether it’s beating or not, we’re gonna move on.

Let’s hit a few other diagnostic questions (in no particular order).

Does your hero/ine (or both if you’re writing romance) change over the course of the story?

If the answer is no, you’ve got another major problem.  You’re missing a character arc.  I was absolutely guilty of this in the book that inspired this post.  The way readers experience a story is through you showing the journey of the hero/ine from the beginning, through how s/he deals with crisis, how s/he overcomes his/her inner demons to rise up and do what has to be done at the end of the book.  That’s a satisfying read and one that will be remembered, hopefully when your next title hits Amazon.  Yes, a story with a lot of flash and bang and action :cough: Transformers 2 :cough: will be entertaining, but won’t be memorable.  Keep in mind that who the hero/ine is at the beginning of the book is not capable of doing what needs to be done at the end.  S/he must grow into the person s/he needs to be.  (Man English really needs a gender neutral pronoun…)

Does your hero/ine have a goal that the reader gives a hoot about?

People want all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons.  Right now my personal goal is to get through the afternoon without falling asleep at my desk.  Admirable from a productivity standpoint but not particularly interesting.  Be sure you’ve picked a goal for your hero/ine that matters and that you’ve given us enough in the setup that we’ve emotionally connected with him or her so that we really, truly care and want him/her to get what s/he wants.  Give us the stakes.  What happens if s/he doesn’t get what s/he wants?

Does your story start out strong then fizzle out in the middle?

Yes, I’m afraid to tell you that you have succumbed to the Dreaded Valley of the Shadow of the Middle.  But  yea though you walk through the Valley of the Shadow of the Middle, ye shall fear no evil for there is a way out!  I’m going to talk about the map in a little bit.  Bear with me.

Does your story start with a bang and end with a whimper?

It’s really hard to craft a good ending.  It’s even harder to craft a good ending if you don’t know where you’re going when you’re getting there.  I’m not here to preach the benefits of plotting over pantsing, just saying that there’s a strong possibility that once you get to the end, you can probably discover a more direct and effective (i.e. stronger and more believable) way to get there.

Do your characters take unexplained and irrelevant trips on the S.S. Tangent?

I was so, SO much a victim of this when I first started writing.  I was a pure, organic, pantser, and there were a great many random side trips my characters made because I didn’t know where I was going.  And inevitably some of these tangential scenes were some of my favorites and the hardest to kill.  They were my fun little darlings.  But really, be honest here, they’re cancerous to your story and they have to go.  If it doesn’t contribute to the primary storyline or subplot and move the story forward, it needs to be cut out.

Do you have scenes in which no forward motion of the plot occurs, in which there is nothing but exposition, thoughtologue, or observation?

If this is the case, your scene isn’t working hard enough.  Each scene should have at least three purposes.  They don’t have to be brilliant purposes, but you need three reasons for a scene to stay.  It can be to reveal something about a character.  To impart information.  To advance the conflict.  Whatever.  If you can’t think of those three reasons then either cut the scene or combine it with another to make it work harder.  In that vein, I have a worksheet (available for free download here) you can  use to do triage on individual scenes.

The problem’s bigger than that, Doc!

If you can’t put your finger on the problem after running these diagnostics, then you’re getting into the serious territory of possibly requiring a full rewrite.

Pick yourself up off the floor, soldier.  This isn’t all bad.  It just means we have to go deeper to get down to the skeleton of the story.  Or as my favorite writing guru likes to call it, the structure of the story.  This is that roadmap through the Dreaded Valley of the Shadow of the Middle that I mentioned earlier.  All fiction—or I should say, all sellable fiction—adheres to a structure.  It must have certain points in order to stand solidly on its own.  This is the point at which you analyze your manuscript to determine whether it fits that structure or if it’s missing some of the key supports.  The details of each part are outside the scope of this article, but you can find them in all their gloriously clear explanation at Storyfix.com, either in the archives for the short version, or you can buy the e-book (which is worth every penny of the $14.95 it costs—and no, I’m not an affiliate, I just think it’s that awesome).  This concept of story structure is what absolutely changed my writing life, and I swear you’ll think so too.

In any event, once you’ve familiarized yourself with the Set Up, First Plot Point, Pinch Point 1, Midpoint, Pinch Point 2, Second Plot Point, and Resolution, you should have a much easier time looking at this wreck of a body on the table here and seeing where it’s broken.  Maybe it’s fixable.  Maybe you can put a splint on the broken limbs and find your way to a salvaged book.  Maybe you can’t.  The point is, you did your best and you learned from it.

Incidentally, the book that inspired this post was declared DOA at 10:43 AM, Wednesday morning.  It was beyond salvage.  But the remains will not go to waste.  It had an organ donor card and its characters are going on to lead a long, happy life (after some conflict) in another book.

Now how about a beer?  It’s been a long day.

Recommended Reading:

Goal, Motivation & Conflict: The Building Blocks of Good Fiction by Debra Dixon

Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain

Story Structure Demystified by Larry Brooks