Art of Revision Workshop by Carol Dawson part 3

Five months later...

As many of you know, my wife gave birth back on October 30th of 2009 to my twins, Kade and Gwynever. I describe that time as exciting and crazy, and I loved every minute of it. But the timing caused me to miss the last three hour session with Carol Dawson and her Art of Revision Workshop. I wrote to her ahead of time that this would probably happen and she graciously offered to meet with me one on one once the dust settled.

Fast forward to March. The twins sleep through the night, now. Their parents act less zombie-like. I emailed Carol and set up a time to meet with her for that last session.

She gave me some great final pointers, helped me realize one major change I needed to make, and told me to quit holding off on submissions. Now I have no more excuses for not sending in those query letters.

I would like to highly recommend for anyone who needs to improve their self editing abilities to attend Carol Dawson's workshop. She is an amazing woman, a lot of fun, and most important, she is very knowledgeable about editing. For those who are members of the Writer's League of Texas or who live anywhere close to Austin, I believe the WLT has another session with her coming up. Sign up. Go. You will be glad you did.

Quid Pro Quid

I am unsure how many authors, new and old, are asked to edit another person's work. These requests may annoy or stress us to the point where we feel like rejecting communication with the person or people asking. For others, the request may flatter, but we reject it anyway because, as is true for many writers, we do not have the time to devote to editing someone else's writing. We are too busy on our own project.

In between starting a new congregation of my faith in my hometown, marriage, diapers, and my own writing endeavors, I took on the challenge of editing a friend's full length novel. He did not ask, I volunteered. During the self-editing of Islands of Loar: Sundered I realized that I did not have a perspective removed enough from the work to do justice to the process.

Those of you who have taken the time to edit another person's work know what happened. On top of helping out a friend in a very meaningful way, I gained the perspective I needed to properly edit my own book. Though the work took a couple of months, I now feel refreshed and ready to delve back into self-editing.

I am not suggesting you take up a full time editing job, though I am considering doing so myself on top of writing. I am suggesting that you do it at least once for someone you can be honest with. That honesty part is important because if you hold back from constructive criticism, you hurt them instead of help.

If you have never done so before, perhaps the next time someone asks for help editing their work you will consider it. It may shift your perspective enough to get over that block or through the morass of your own writing.

In helping others you may just help yourself.

Happy editing!

Art of Revision Workshop by Carol Dawson part 2

Wow, what a great investment. I just returned from the second installment of the self-editing workshop taught by Carol Dawson. Our homework was to read the first few pages of 5 or more of our favorite books looking for the hook and to find what drew us as readers to keep reading the book in those first few passages. Then Ms. Dawson required us to rewrite our first 6 pages according to what we learned in the first workshop. We sent those to her and she edited them as a free-lance editor would to show us what to expect and to help us improve as writers.

This week she covered a lot about suspense giving us some great specific examples from our works. She also used her own writings and those of other famous authors. Mrs. Dawson also spoke a lot about structure. Below are a list of points from the notes I took during the class. Some of these are familiar to those who have been in the writing field for some length of time and others will seem like common sense. For those who are new to the whole scene (like me), they are essential to hear and understand.

1. Show don't tell.

2. Always provide name for every person you send to.

3. Always provide page numbers for every person you send to.

4. Make sure your metaphors are grounded in some form of objective reality, even if a fantasy reality.

5. Never introduce anything you aren't going to use.

6. Don't begin a story with too much abstract. It bogs the reader down. Don't begin with too much back-story, get into the story! Don't begin with too much philosophical musing. Do not use too much description anywhere!

7. “A single phrase does more for the reader than an entire paragraph.”

8. When in doubt, use dialog. We want to know about the effect of an object, not its description.

9. Don't use terms like “expensive” in a fantasy setting when we have no frame of reference for what that might mean to the people of that world.

10. Character is plot. The more subtle and deep your characters, the better your plot.

11. Suspense in all things therefore less is always more.

12. Never say anything twice. (I've heard this one several times in the past few months.)

13. Watch your modifiers (ly's especially – adverbs). Descriptions we think may make the impact stronger on the reader, actually has the opposite effect.

14. Put in what must be put in and leave out what does not need to be there.

15. Make sure one scene leads to another, even if totally different characters in totally different settings and circumstances.

16. Length of a chapter is not determined by page numbers, but content.

17. Learn the rhythm/cadence of your story. If you can't find it or don't know what it is, read your book aloud. If it still doesn't show, then you may need to rewrite some to give it one.

18. Keep in mind order of the story. Be consistent with point of view. Don't talk about things that a character can't know.

19. Form an overall structure whether linear, patchwork, media res/flashback, or whatever, but be consistent with whatever structure that you chose to use.

20. Organize your structure, don't just slap something down without a purpose or place.

21. If you have a character that says anything, make sure they say it in character.

22. If you have boring dialog, make sure the character doesn't say it.

Ms. Dawson ended by reading Elmore Leonard's “10 Rules of Writing” A MUST READ for any aspiring writer.

I'll be happy to expand on any of these.