Vampy Black: Editing for Characters

"Is she an incompetent, clueless, or is she just overworked and careless?"

This was the subject of a heated discussion between Darthaniel and myself regarding an important secondary character in his Vampy Black project book that I am editing. I read the chapter and I initially came away with revulsion at this character's actions, and I frankly disliked her a great deal. Now, that is a good thing if we are supposed to hate this character, but there was a question in my mind if that is what Darthaniel wanted.

Sharing impressions is a very tough thing when you give feedback. I am normally pretty blunt and upfront about my feelings, and I understand that can cause friction. We did work through this, eventually, but it is always a tough thing to share your "coming away feelings" about something and separate that from the technical analysis. It's not that I want you to change anything, this is how I feel, and I need to know if that is what you expected readers to feel.

If not, then we have a problem with what was communicated with that chapter, and the impressions and "take away" is all wrong.

So I shared my feelings that this character could be so clueless and flippant about a seemingly important job for our putting-it-all-out-there main character. It made her seem petty, and also putting the main character at risk for her own vanity.

But that is how he wanted her. So yes, this character is putting our main character at risk, but the key point is - it is not being done purposefully. This character is troubled, stressed, inexperienced, and overworked, and that needed to come across without the reader leaving with a massively negative impression of her.

Mission accepted.

So that's how I started, I went back through and made sure the trouble spots were a bit more clear and shown to the reader. Enough was shown already, like her being flippant with a request the main character needed, but there wasn't enough other stuff to show that this character's personal life is truly a wreck and she can't deal with everything coming at her. It's one thing for someone not to pick up the phone at a critical moment, it's another if there are fifty things going on and she doesn't pick up the phone.

In the first case, the reader comes off with the impression that character is lazy and careless. There isn't much going on, so why didn't she pick up the phone? She must be a careless bitch, right?

In the second there is a ton of stuff happening, so we understand a little better why she didn't. We can relate to that, and we actually get a bit of sympathy for this character because her life is a lot like our busy ones nowadays. We are shown the hell this character puts herself or lives in, and we know how that is.

Like Johnny Depp, I need to immerse myself in the character to do meaningful work for them. I need to get inside that character's head, rather than just going by what I see. I need to become them for a while in order to edit the chapter, because I need to share that point-of-view. Even in third-person writing with a detached perspective, I need to be able to be inside the character for a while to get across that character's inner workings. This is the only way I can edit for a character and be true to who they are as a person, and then try to communicate that to the audience.

So I will grill the author, and in this case Darthaniel. I think we had a two-hour discussion on this character where I pulled out everything I need to know about this secondary character, and I began to understand what he had in mind for her. It was a bit difficult to get across my feelings that I did not like this character in the draft form, but we managed and we worked it out. Once I understood what he wanted, I was ready.

We did the read through last night and he loved the revised draft of this chapter. It captures his idea of the character perfectly, and it also addressed my concerns that readers may come away with a negative impression of her. It makes her a bit sympathetic, but it also raises the stakes for our main heroine because this supporting character is now on shaky ground and could make a serious mistake. The tension is raised, we don't come away with a negative impression, and we actually feel for this secondary character and understand her a little better.

Most importantly, nothing from the writer's original vision was changed.

I didn't want to change the character, only clear up a chance for a bad impression the writer may not have intended. I didn't want to change the story, only strengthen it. The author's intent is gold, and I helped pull that out and show the reader this character's troubles. This was a huge win for everybody, and we are both very happy with how this chapter came out.

This was an interesting experience, and one I though worth sharing with you all today. It involves the dynamics of working with people, differing visions and expectations of a chapter, and even different perceptions of the same words that we had to reconcile. What made this easy was identifying author intent, and sticking to that as a golden rule.