Vampy Black Project: Organization

One thing I love about Scrivener 2 is the ability to cut up a chapter into subsections, group those together, and move them around. We ran into an issue at the end of Darthaniel's Vampy Black Project, which I am working on him with, where the end of the book did not feel like it flowed as well as we would have liked. There was nothing wrong with the text, it just seemed like the tension and drama could be increased and we just couldn't place our finger on it.

Last night I tried mixing things up. I split chapters up and combined them in a logical fashion where the action in each built upon each other. We had a structure where we had start-to-stop chapters, where a situation would begin and resolve all in the same chapter. They were great for blocking out what happened, but when they were placed together, they didn't flow together naturally, and I got the feeling I spent too much time away from one character while we read the next.

I don't like it when you get the feeling you need to skim to get back to the character you really care about, and that is what I felt was happening. Even though, yes, everything was great in the individual chapters, in the order they were, I just did not get that sense of urgency and equal importance.

So I cut the few ending chapters we were working on apart into logical chunks, and reshuffled them.

It worked very well. The same text was broken apart at logical breakpoints and pauses in the action, and then worked back together so the end of the book starts working very well as an interlaced, real-time story. Each chapter still has a single point-of-view, but the chapters flip characters rapidly as the end of the book draws towards a crescendo, and you get this sense of tension that I felt was lacking how the work was organized before.

You just don't get that organizational ability in other programs and traditional word processors, which is why I just love Scrivener so much for writing and these final editing phases. I can block out a rough draft anywhere, and preferably on a distraction free device, but when it comes time to layer, check, and craft structure - Scrivener is the place to go. Although I have written books in Scrivener from draft to release, and it does that well too.

So the next time you feel something isn't working right it may not be the story at fault, it could just be organization, flow, and presentation. If you cut things up, reshuffle paragraphs, and change the flow you just may see something you hadn't before. You may discover that the problematic feeling you had was just how things were ordered instead of the words themselves.

Project Vampy Black: Back On Track

I am currently working on Darthaniel Black's Vampy Black project and getting that edited and ready for release. It is a fun book and I am currently working through the end chapters on clean-up. This is currently 42,000 words so it is a sizable editing job, so I expect another week or two of work before I am ready to put my editing signature on this and hand it back to Darthaniel for release.

I am done two of my back-project books and they are doing very well, and it is time to push this though and finish work on it. Nothing feels as satisfying as actually taking something that has been sitting there for a while, finishing it, and delivering. It is always easier to start something than it is to finish.

So get ready for some fun, sexy, fang-y, and action adventure-y urban fantasy from one of my favorite dialog writers, and also a friend who helps me run my projects. More on this soon.

CLS Romance Project: +10% to Fix the Purple Monkeys

I always end up adding an extra 10% to my word count on each editing pass I do, and this is true with my CLS Romance Project, where I am up to about 31,000 words. I credit this workshop for a lot of my editing work, and I am constantly adding things which I found was short-changed the first time through:

Wednesday Workshop: Purple Monkeys and Padded Rooms

I just love that workshop, and yes I wrote it, but it forces me to slow down and rethink rushing through a scene. To me, those details of what things look like bring in so much to my work, and all sorts of interesting observations start appearing in my writing as characters begin reacting to where they are and what other characters look like.

It is instantly great stuff, and it not only gives the reader an idea of what things look like, it gives the reader an insight into the character observing the scene and how they think about the world. a great description goes both ways, it colors the world for the reader, and it also colors the character observing that world to the reader.

When we write a first draft, we invariably rush to get the scene done. When we come back, we need to pay attention to grammar and correctness, but also sound and tone. And finally, we need to pay attention to painting that picture in a reader's mind. That is what I love doing, coming back to a scene and then seeing all the fun little places that I can paint-by-numbers some great detail and visuals back into the work.

You can go too far, and spend a lot of time describing things which do not need description, but you need to pay your dues at other times. If you can go through several chapters and still have no idea of what a character is wearing or looks like, you have a serious problem. I love great dialog, but one things I notice about a lot of books with great dialog is a distinct lack of description, as if somehow a character's words alone will tell a reader what that character looks like or what they are wearing.

You need to slow down, and nail this stuff. Readers need to be filled in on the basics, and you need to set the scene. Characters needs to be described at least once, and even the most minor of details can be very telling.

But yes, I find it is very helpful to use the purple monkey and padded room rule when you edit, because it forces you to think about things which may have just sailed right by you through several editing passes. These missed descriptions are great opportunities to use to not only paint your world a little for your readers, but to make your characters come to life in ways which reflect the world you just described.

SCL Project: That Thing? Found It.

Yes, I knew it would come to me. Last post I was taking it a bit slow to find that missing element. Today, it came to me, the plot element that ties together the point-of-view change, why this new character is needed, and how this will work in the end of the book. It was one of those moments where you have to sit there, you know you want this next turn to come, but you want to make it abundantly clear why this is happening.

You may not tell your readers that now, but by the end, they will get it.

It matters because you want to have the 'secret understanding' as you go forward and write what you write. Because if you keep the plot twist in mind before it happens, you can write for it a lot better. It may be less like a formal 'plot twist' but it is more of a 'why this is happening' sort of thing. If readers figure it out ahead of time, great, if not, they will have a fun surprise waiting.

It is also one of those 'sea change' moments that happen in books. I like it when a story turns and you are in a whole new world, it gives us a break and sets things on a different course. This is important with the new character and the PoV change, and having this 'shadow reason' of why this character needs to be involved will help me write everything that comes after the switch. This is my 'hidden roadmap' and I expect to be having a lot of fun writing for it in the chapters that are coming up.

I am up to 14,000 words, so I have made some good progress over this slowdown, but now that I have my motivation and the plot twist planned out, I expect my speed will pick up and I will be writing at an increased rate. I can feel it, and I will be thrilled if things pick up and I have those super-productive days again.

These lulls happen, and you have to power through them. The worst that happens is you stall and quit, and that is always a risk. To avoid that, you open up the story each day, and make small edits and changes - visiting with your story each day is crucial to avoid stalling and abandonment. You need to keep the words and characters in your mind, and you need to be checking in with them every day until you finish and go into editing.

You do make a commitment when you start a project, and part of commitment is giving your story the time it needs, and a little bit of each day to care for it and help it grow. Like plants, children, or anything else that needs care, a story runs into tough parts and stumbles from time to time, and this is where patience and especially sticking with it pays off in the long run.

Vampy Black: Back for Rewrites

I sent Darthaniel's book back to him for some rewrites out of the scope of my editing. There are some transitions he wants to work out, and he is also taking a look at the ending and some of the feedback I gave him. I am working on some other projects until this comes back, so I will have updates on this soon.

Vampy Black: Leftovers

What do you do with leftovers?

I'm not talking about the ones you have in your fridge, these are leftover words you have from a chapter you just edited and made tight.

You know, tight.

It is that feeling you get when a chapter just sings, it has a great beginning, finish, and ending, and it does not need another word added to it. Only now, you have these extra paragraphs leftover from your clean up job, and they have no place to go. And yes, luck would have it "this information will be important later" so tossing them in the bin is not an option either.

So they could be composted, and form the seeds for another new chapter - which would be a lot of work.

Or they could be folded in later, you know, saved as an ingredient for another chapter and sprinkled in here and there, hoping nobody will notice you fluffed out a meal with bits of an older one. They won't, of course, but that is a lot of work, and the fact is someone may notice, or it may be more work to pass through and fact-drop in the things that need to be said.

Not to mention there is a whole other bit of dialog that the second book in this series depends on hiding in here.

I want to switch characters though, I have to - we were with this character long enough and the focus needs to shift back to our primary. Only my problem is the next chapter kicks off the roller coaster to the end of the book, and putting this information (or as another chapter)  in later would derail that ride.

So I am back to making this chapter less tight, or changing the order of the information so it comes earlier and does not ruin the tick-tick-tick of suspense I brought forth. So I need some time to think about this, to get that dialog in, and present the information so it doesn't derail things (any more so than this character has already derailed things for our heroine).

Lots of thinking to do today....

Vampy Black: Impasse Broken

Wow.

Sometimes the things you think are going to be the hardest turn out the easiest.

So I am still working on Darthaniel's Vampy Black book, and I have used that code-name so much he should take it into serious consideration to call the book that but I know he won't, and the impasse we were stuck at just melted away. I am free again, and the end of the book is in sight.

Nice.

It turns out the answer was a lot easier than I expected it to be. The "go through the door" or "open the box" moment that I worried needed to be a whole chapter slid quite nicely into the end of the current chapter, and it also was a fun opportunity to see two of the characters work together for the first time. Well, they kinda worked together, and they still are getting used to the idea of working together, so there was some natural friction.

Well, maybe a lot of friction. But things worked out. Kinda.

But I feared a long chapter would need to be written just for the moment, and it worked a lot better by having two characters work on the thing together, and shift the focus to their interactions instead of the box/door thing. The interaction turned out to be ten times more interesting anyways, and it just goes to show you that it is too easy to get bogged down in detail or specifics when interaction and character interplay is what people are here to see.

It was an interesting experience, and it was a win all around. I dare say the mystery was more interesting because of the interactions between these characters instead of one character opening it all alone. The questions and concerns threw about added to the tension, and we even got  to listen in to a little backstory that made the whole experience more than how it started out.

A couple take aways:

• Simple solutions are always better
• Simple solutions take time
• If you dread a complex solution facing you, there is likely a simple one hidden in plain sight
• Interaction beats solitary action

That's it for now, and full-steam ahead until I finish this up - then it's on to text-to-speech and the final Kindle proofing.

Vampy Black: An Impasse

Sometimes you hit these when editing, and I think we wrote ourselves in a corner with this one.

We have a part of the story where a certain something has to happen, a box needs to be opened or a room needs to be entered sort of thing, and this pivotal moment was tacked on to the end of an already long chapter. So I recommended moving it off for later.

And that's where we are, with a pivotal moment that now needs to be written and fleshed out a little more thoroughly. My gut feeling for this was right, we can't have a 5,000 word long chapter detailing a huge mystery, and then put a major plot element on the end of that without spending some quality time with it. I dislike McGuffins, and I don't want the 'thing in the box' to be casually tossed aside since it is key and also a huge part of what it is like to live in this world.

It is the 'light saber' moment in Star Wars, when you realize things are not so normal here. To tack that on to another chapter makes the moment feel less special, and this needs to be special.

So some writing is needed now, and we are just going through that phase. I am waiting for Darthaniel to deliver a draft of the new chapter and I will edit it and get back to the project.

Again, this is an interesting moment while editing, where we both realized that more was needed in order to give the story a greater sense of satisfaction and impact, and then some more work was needed as a result. It is a natural thing, and also one that deserves a little time and consideration on how it is approached. There is also a creative difference here on the plot importance of such an item, one which I may speak to later, but it will be interesting to see how that works out.

For now, I wait, and I will pick this back up when the new chapter arrives.

Vampy Black: Mysteries, Pay Offs, and Build Up

I am almost done editing the 5,000 word long central chapter of Darthaniel's Vampy Black project, and this one is a key investigation scene that is key to the book. It was a heck of a chapter to edit, and we both love how it came out. We chose to emphasize our heroine's investigative abilities and put the focus on her as a participant and instigator, instead of someone who took in clues and internalized them, and the chapter is gripping and very entertaining.

In the end, the chapter broke up into a 1,200 word leading introduction to the scene that builds tension, and a 4,500 word chapter where the mysteries are laid out. That is still long, but I didn't want to break that up since the entire scene is the focus of the book and important to setting up the book's conflicts. I am still on the last thousand words and wrapping the chapter up, so there is still a bit of work to do later.

I haven't written mysteries in a while, and this rekindled my love of the genre. While we search for clues, there are a couple layers going on here with other characters, so this is not a one-dimensional "find Waldo" type of chapter. It works on a couple levels, and the character interplay is fascinating and intermixed with the investigation - and it also influences a big part of what happens. We have a struggle between two characters that is fascinating to watch, and I love how the two of these people play off each other with their conflicts and shared concerns.

Layers are fun to write. Letting readers see a character's incredible skills putting pieces together is also one of my loves. The readers of course should have every opportunity to put things together themselves, so there is a lot of setup required to do this correctly. You need to lay our pieces and mix them with the scene. You need to present information before it is needed. You need to write it all as naturally as possible without tipping people off, or hitting them with blindsided clues they knew nothing about.

You can't rob readers of the satisfaction of letting them figure it out before the character does, that is a big part of the fun of the mystery genre. If you blindside them with a clue nobody knew anything about, it takes the game away from the reader.

So good mysteries and clue collecting takes time. Clue collecting is also inherently boring to the reader unless you have some tension involved, and in this case we have a deep-seated tension running between our main characters. Things could go terribly wrong here with tragic consequences on both sides. There has to be something else going on, a ticking clock, a moral dilemma, or some sort of conflict.

The chapter of course looks nothing like what it was when we started, and I love it when a chapter gets turned on its head and the whole thing comes out better. I also love writers like Darthaniel who have the stomach and insight to help transform a chapter like this, and who also have great ideas to contribute when the reshuffling and rewriting is still going on. He is incredible with taking and giving feedback, and someone I love working with.

In away some of this is 'extreme editing' with the amount of reworking and improvement going on. This is one of those I will talk about long from now, a complete rebuild of a chapter into one I consider an incredible piece of work between an editoress and a engaged writer focused on improving the end product. I just love this sort of work, and I hope readers have that gut reaction to it that I love making happen.

More on this project soon, and work continues.

Vampy Black: Cutting Down Monsters

I am still editing Darthaniel's Vampy Black project novel, and I am hitting a huge 5,000 word monster chapter today. I am cutting this one up into at least two or three chapters, as I dislike long-long chapters as both a reader and an editor.

I will blame MTV and shortened attention spans for this one, but there are some good points to this practice.

In a literary book, I don't mind long chapters if they are gripping and immersive, I will gladly lose myself in something deep. In an action or thriller book, I mind long chapters because you want to keep things fresh and paced snappily. There feels like too much information here, and I will either start cutting or dividing, and in this case, both.

Chapters provide a rest, a natural break where you invite the reader to put the book down and pick back up later. I want chapters in books with a quick, snappy pace to be shorter, and feel like they get to the point and deliver the next slice of action in a timely and concise manner.

Now in a book like a Stephen King novel, I don't mind longer chapters because you are wading through a sea of greatness. There's a trust there with established writers that allows them to write chapters however long they want, because we know it's going to be good, and we trust them to deliver on the long hauls.

With newer writers, and especially e-reader books, I feel the need to keep things punchy and short. We don't want to overload readers unless what we are writing is truly and unquestionably great, but the burden of chapter length runs against us as new writers. One of the big faults of writers is we tend to think everything we say, no matter how trivial and informative, is worth our reader's time.

This is the curse of hubris.

Of course everything we write is special! We are letting them look into our magical world, and every fact, no matter how trivial, should be treated as a treat and an honor that we shared it with dear reader! Even if the fact has nothing to do with the current situation, they should feel entertained and privileged that we chose to share out wit and majesty as a writer with them!

In reality, this is like laying out a wonderful dinner on the dining room table, and then covering every square inch around the food with chocolates and candy in case someone wants to have a sweet after dinner. Or during it. Or before it. What was once a beautiful spread of food and delicious presentation becomes a travesty of culinary disasters, and the entire spread looks garish and the candy and treats take away from the food's presence. It's too much food, unfocused, and now none of it goes together.

Clear the table, put the candy away for Halloween, and just put dinner out. That's all your guests want. This is what they will remember the night by. Just the food, not the flourish, and certainly not all the extra treats you laid out for them because you fear you would be a lousy hostess if you hadn't.

It's fear again, isn't it? The fear our readers will not like us. It's the same fear that drives our addictions to adverbs and alcohol. We need to put treats and random factoids out because we fear readers 'won't get it' or feel what's there is sparse. Guess what, if it was sparse before, it will be sparse with any amount of empty calories added to it.

Also, we feel the need to load up the table with the great stuff. Why not have a roast, and a turkey? Let's put a ham on there as well! Longer chapters are better, right? Let's make every side dish we can imagine, and put one on every square inch of empty tablecloth.

Same problem. We fear our gusts won't enjoy what we serve, so we give up and serve everything. Everything we make is special and we expect everyone to enjoy everything we create, right?

Instead of a focused meal where everything goes together, we give up and take our guests to a buffet. There's a time and a place for that, but not when we are trying to deliver a dinner we want people to remember. So again, it's fear.

Our guests wanted turkey and stuffing, with yams and potatoes. They expect corn and cranberry sauce. The hamburgers sitting on the table are great, but they don't belong, and they distract from the meal. So take them away. Let's just deliver what the people came to see. There's plenty of room within what we are cooking up to deliver our signature style, presentation, and express ourselves within what we do.

Don't let that fear that people won't like you control your writing. You are a great writer, with plenty to say. People will like anything you make. But don't overload their plates. Promise to deliver what you are going to deliver, and serve them just that.

Save the other ideas for another meal, and another book.

Vampy Black: Editing Continues

I am back at editing Darthaniel's urban fantasy vampire thriller book today, and I just finished a great chapter. It isn't action or fighting or anything else like that, just a 'going home' scene that turned out to be critical for character development in many more ways than I expected.

Normally, I would say 'cut out the nonessentials' and get rid of it for more vampy-sexy investigation, but we got to share some incredible character building time with two of the central characters here that I cannot leave on the editing room floor.

Like a good pastry dough, a story gets better the more you fold in layers and the more you work it. I went through this chapter and did my usual clean-up, but I found a lot of places I could hide secrets, show character through environment, and give some meaningful interaction between two characters that gives you a feeling of why you should care.

Secrets? Yes, I hide secrets in things the read has to pull out by being attentive and careful. Knowing what I know about the book and the series, there are things characters do that they don't immediately explain that should key you off to character motivations or even foreshadow major plot elements.

But more importantly, why should you care? This chapter gives you a slight breather and answers that question. It also kicks off a very hot romance that stays within the boundaries Darthaniel has set, but it managed to turn a flame on in me to 'ship' these two characters in a major way. So there is  another layer, another subtext, and the tension ratchets up a couple more notches.

I like romance, and for those who know me, they know I can push limits and characters right where I want them to go.

The fun thing is we did a read-through today and Darthaniel approved most every change so far. He is a great writer to work with and he understands the collaborative nature of how I work with writers. His dialog is wonderful, and it is a joy to work action and narrative around. He has this sharp, movie-like tone that I love working with, most all of the dialog is unchanged, and a lot of the work I do is in support and detail surrounding dialog.

My methodology is to keep the essential action, dialog, and flow to the story and keep those sacred. Where I work is in narration, detail, showing/telling, and the fundamentals of story and flow. I get to put some artsy flourishes that aren't too purpley every so often as well, so a bit of my style inevitably creeps in.

We are at about 40,000 words for this book, and I am moving on to chapter six. My editing passes typically add 10-20% to a book's length, so this could push 45-50,000 words soon and be a full-length novel. It is wonderful to have a writer that trusts you that much to make significant edits and approve them, and I am honored to work with him so much.

Look for this soon, I know Darthaniel is working on the cover, and it is great to be working with another writer as an editoress again. More news soon, stay tuned.

On Editing: Pull It All Apart

When you are editing a particularly difficult section, try this workflow:

Break your chapters down into scenes or scene segments of about 400-500 words. If you are a long-time Scrivener user, you will be way ahead of me.

Now, put every sentence on its own line.

Now edit.

I find it much easier when I pull everything apart. Like a bundle of tangled yarn, doing this allows me to see problems clearly, spot repeats, identify plain crazy-talk, and see problems very clearly. I can spot narrative that should be dialog, info-dumps, long boring sections of uninterested writing, and places that rush through without savoring the words.

Line by line, put things back together as you fix things. Start reassembling and untangling that yarn, rebuilding your scene a piece at a time. Read back through your untangled scene, and see how much more tight things are, how clean your dialog becomes, and how much less confused everything is now.

I even find the process to be less intimidating before I even begin. I'm not staring at a 'wall of text' either familiar or unfamiliar, I am now looking at a line-by-line worksheet of ideas to be considered for inclusion into this scene. When the next one comes up, think about the following:

• Has the narrator already said this? Has a character in dialog?
• Is this telling? How can this be made to show?
• Does this even need to be said?
• Is there a way for the reader to figure this out instead of me saying it directly?
• Am I disarming tension, or increasing it? (this is critical)
• Can I word this another way so the reader has to turn the page to find out the answer?

Now, admittedly, there are some scenes where you don't need to pull everything apart, but in our confused minds we sometimes write like we are tangling our own balls of yarn. It's all jumbled in our mind at the time, so it comes out all jumbled in words.

It happens. Relax.

It's our job in editing to fix this lack of clarity with later clarity and a sane, rested mind later. When we write, we are typically aren't in an editing mind, nor should we be. We are riding that wave of creativity, and we need to let our passions flow. After the ride, we need to enjoy the rush, let the adrenaline subside, and then take a moment to rest and recover.

We will look back at the GoPro footage of our surfboard ride later, when we take it into AfterEffects later to edit it and take the best parts and string them together in an exciting movie of what we did. Remember, 90% of your 'footage' or your 'book' will be those boring parts of sitting on the surfboard waiting for the magic to happen. Similarly, a lot of what you write in a book will be that 'waiting for things to happen' text that needs to be trimmed, cut, or made to be something special.

So adopt a process of editing that accounts for your 'in the moment' confusion, and pull things apart later during editing to see what you are really saying.

You'll find yourself making better edits, and understanding each part of the creative process for maximum effectiveness in each.

When you're riding the wave, let loose and ride.

When you are editing the recording, pull things apart analytically and deliver the best experience for your audience.

On Editing: They Are All Just Ideas

One ideal that has helped me a great deal while editing is to treat the entire bulk of the source material as just ideas.

That first draft? Written in wet and sloppy clay, not stone.

Everything is subject to change. You have to. It is far too easy to treat your first draft as 'dammit done' and leave it there. You can't. You need to say 'this is the idea in the roughest form' and take it from there.

I have found ideas out of place, great things scattered throughout the trash, dialog that repeats ideas later or vice versa, narrative that should have been dialog, and just a mess of other things that when sorted through and polished up, tell a great story.

We protect our first words much too fiercely. Those are often the most wrong. So we end up being defensive about our mistakes and stick with them.

I will pull every sentence in a section apart and place it on its own, and consider it in the entire scene. What does this say? Does it add to or subtract from the scene? Do we even need to know? It is telling instead of showing? Does it build up a scene or carelessly let off steam? Is this line strong, or weak?

There is a clear difference when I get done a scene's edits. Before, it is almost a random collection of ideas. After, it is focused and tight. It clicks. It sings. There is a clear build to the narrative and dialog. The descriptions flow. The scene setups feel atmospheric. You get a feel for being there. The dialog builds character and tension. Things are good.

Treating all text as ideas also helps my workflow speed. I can speed through edits if I don't have to fight over every word or idea. I can rearrange much easier. I can restate things clearly and make them focus on the action, and with the mood I want. I am not sitting there with blinders on with my focus on one sentences, as I am looking at them all (within a 400-500 word scene).

This is one of those 'humbling experiences' about working with an editor, and now that I am editing I can see how difficult this can be for the writer.

But if we can't see other points of view or admit we aren't perfect, we will stay where we are. We will never get better. We will never learn. We will forever ship first drafts, and we will continue to write them.

We need to open ourselves up. We need to read others. We need to study. We need to improve. We need to learn and revise.

We need to edit our errant perceptions and realize the weakness of first words.

Info-Dump Foldification

I am still working on Project Vampy Black, and I just completed dealing with a particularly long info-dump with a process I like to call foldification. Thanks again to Darthaniel for letting me share my experiences editing his cool urban fantasy book, and it is coming out soon.

How this works is you cut the entire info-dump out, and slowly weave the information back through dialog and action, only keeping the parts you really need. This way, you take a long and boring section of raw information the reader is forced to slog through, and you cut it up and mix it in with the interesting parts.

You need to be careful of the obvious name-drop stuff that looks like you are inserting factoids into your text unnaturally, such has the line, "Jane, your sister the doctor is calling!" If it sounds like no one would say it, or it just exists as "talking to the audience" - cut it out. If it fact drops with no real use in the narrative - cut it out.

Bonus points if you can "show" with the information instead. If your character has a favorite piece of swimwear and you go into a four paragraph diatribe explaining the vacation she went on with it and what happened, cut that out and save it for reference. You can be a little vague, and get to it later when it's important, and just say, "and I packed my favorite swimsuit, the one I wore to St. Kitts last year," and be done with it.

If the guy she met on vacation shows up later, handle it later. Pre-loading your readers with as much information as possible does three things:

• bores them
• shows them your uncertainty as a writer
• shows them you are writing this off-the-cuff and you need to record things here for future reference

None of those are good, and the third one is a deal-breaker. I see this so much, and I am a little guilty myself of doing this in my older works. In an ideal world, you would write with a plan and extensive notes. You would pull from these notes to write your story, and use them as a cupboard and shelf of ingredients to make your stew. Only pull out and use what you need! Never put all your spices in, only a pinch of the ones you want!

Cooking skills help a great deal here, as that organized mind helps you deal with the complexities of writing and putting a great story together.

Nowadays, I plan extensively. I take notes. I write histories and backstories to characters which I keep in secret, and only pull out the parts that I need. I am never going to reveal everything, only the parts that become important and impact the scene I am working on.

So, info-dumps and foldification? My advice would be, save all of that information for later. Only fold back in the one or two facts you need, and save the rest for when you need it. You'll find your character narratives start to clean themselves up tremendously, and your characters instantly become deeper and more interesting.

What you choose to show readers should be the tip of the iceberg. Most of the rest of what makes a character interesting should be hidden in your notes underneath. Most importantly, you need to do the homework and create these notes ahead of time so you can pull from them.

Otherwise, you will be stuck doing a lot of post-process repair work such as foldification. This takes a lot of time, because you are in a mode where you are re-wiring and making sure you don't break anything else. What you are doing with the repair job may be also very obvious, and if you did it the right way first you wouldn't be going through this patching process. You may be very good at foldification and no one will notice, but it still isn't an ideal place to put yourself.

Better to do things the slightly slower way, write those backstories, create those histories, and fully lay out "what came before" in your notes so you can pull from it later. It takes a little more time to get a project started, but you will find once you are in the thick of writing, your job is much easier because you have so much support information to pull from.

That old adage never changes, "A little preparation makes the whole task simple and straightforward."

Editing: Less Wonderful, Please

I am working a second day on project Vampy Black, and I am putting together ideas for a Workshop for some of the things I have found, with Darthaniel's permission, of course.

I am finding myself doing a lot of "deep focus" edits in some places. Darthaniel's writing is wonderful, but as with everything in this modern age, there is just so much of wonderful we can take. So I am editing out everything wonderful and just leaving the incredible.

Nowadays, we can write. Oh wow, can we write. We have speed typing, text-to-speech, and we can generate text at such a pace we could out write an entire generation in an afternoon. We have tools that can spell check entire volumes of work in seconds, grammar check, and make sure every bulk word written as if it were bought wholesale in a Costco is absolutely perfect.

But again, this is our problem. I can buy a twelve pack of muffins that have something like four servings to each muffin, but I can't eat them all. The mere fact of eating them all produces a negative experience that I feel like I am either stuffed or wasting food. I can always parse them out by freezing them and eating them for a month, but that has another negative experience in that I get tired of them.

There's so many muffins I don't feel they are wonderful anymore, even though if I just had one, it would be all the wonderful I wanted.

I saw an article in my favorite writing magazine, The Writer yesterday where a writer discussed her experiences with a short story she submitted to a publication that was 1,600 words when she submitted it, and a senior and experienced editor helped her edit it down to 800 words. This story turned out to be one of her signature works, and she discussed the editing process with the magazine.

We are trained at an early age that overconsumption is a good thing. Scrooge McDuck dives into his roomful of gold coins and we envy him. Donald Duck with his three sons and comfortable wage probably has a happier life. We look at a fantasy novel with 1,200 pages and think it is 50% better than one with 800 pages. We write 6,000 words in a day and we are happy and feel we are closer to being done.

In reality, only half of those words are truly incredible and should stay.

It is one of the most humbling things to accept as a writer. Only half of your words are incredible, and the rest need to go so your book can be incredible too. It is impossible to be selective and only write 100% incredible words, so we must cut the fat and toss out half of our work with every book.

And this fact never changes, even if you could write 100% incredible words, you would be throwing out half of those and keeping the amazing ones.

If your word count does not substantially shrink when you edit, you are not editing, and you are not doing the reader a good service by just checking what's there for correctness. You need to be asking, "Should these words even be here at all?"

An example, in Darthaniel's book we have a wonderful section where two characters meet, get in a car, and get ready to go out to a restaurant. The dialog between them is great, and it sets the scene perfectly. After that, we then have another 800 words spent getting to the restaurant in backstory and future story setup during the drive. They are great words, and it's not his fault because I often do the same thing with long transitions.

I want them in that restaurant where the next major plot point happens. Right now. Right after that 'meeting each other' dialog. It has to have that 'sharp cut' to the next scene in my mind. So we are reworking this part and getting that transition tight. Words will be cut. Important information will be moved off until the point which it is needed. The story will end up shorter.

But better.

When you see it as a reader, the flow will be: characters meet with some very sharp dialog, and they go out together and the plot point hits. Good stuff. You won't have to wait for it. It will be paced as it should be and not feel rushed, but mentally the beat of the story will happen at the pace you expect.

It will be less wonderful, and more incredible.

Proect Vampy Black: Editing Phase Begins

Project Vampy Black?

Darthaniel is going to seriously call me out for calling it that. Whatever, I am editing it and this is my blog.

I am about 5,000 words into editing Darthaniel's urban fantasy book, and it will be a good one. I am in love with this book, and it takes a fresh perspective to the whole urban fantasy genre. I am also loving doing something different for a while, and I am fresh off editing my last book and I am still in hardcore editing mode so it feels good.

It's not my work either so I am not in self-abusive editoress mode either.

OMG that feels good.

I don't want to spoil the book, but I wanted to give impressions. Darthaniel has this lighter-hearted storytelling style I like it is very immediate and very fresh. I am trying hard to keep that feeling as I go through and make changes and clean things up. He also does things quite differently than I, so I have to adjust to his style and keep that intact. It takes a bit longer than editing my own work, because I want to be careful and preserve 95% of what's there.

The story, dialog, and what happens are gold, I don't touch those. The details, little things, technical stuff, and little places to add things are where I live and make the magic happen. Everything is run by Darthaniel, of course, and this is more of a collaboration editing thing, but I shall call it editing. If I notice something, I will make some suggestions, and he will let me know what he thinks. We work great together so it is a wonderful process and back-and-forth.

As for the book? It is fun, and it is full of character. I've already said that I feel Darthaniel writes some damn good dialog, and we have characters here that shine with some choice words that feel real and sing to my ears. Movie-like would be my way to describe it.

And his situations are fun and full of tension. I am helping amplify that with some of my Workshop lessons, and the chapters are coming out incredibly well in their final draft forms. They are sharp, smart, and full of layered tension so thick you could sink your teeth into them and still not bite all the way through.

The book is urban fantasy and it features vampires, so it is quite a change from my normal world. I do like vampires, and I have read plenty of the spicy romance stories featuring them, so I feel I can add to the feeling and experience in this genre. It is also quite a change from the normal style of 'girl on the cover with a gun' urban fantasy I see so much of, so I feel this one will do well and strike a chord with readers.

He hasn't made the cover yet so if he goes with a 'girl on the cover with a gun' thing I am going to throw a fit.

I am pushing through this one, and it is a big job, so I expect to be at this editing job for a couple weeks in addition to my normal work. And no, Vampy Black is not the name of the book, it is just how I want to refer to my work editing it until the name is decided upon.

So tomorrow is another day, and I am back at the editing thing with Vampy Black. More on this soon, and I am sure Darthaniel will have some things to say about it as well. He is a super fun guy to work with, and we did some work on his romance novels a while back, so this is not the first time we bumped heads and worked on projects together.

Check this out, and keep track of updates here!

A Slow and Careful Consideration

There's so much you can get dinged for in English, and with every pass I take over something I find more. It's a sifting process, and the collision between 'knowing the rules' and 'total creativity' is the place where grammatical accidents happen.

We want to have total freedom and create without limitation.

We need to follow the rules.

I feel I do a pretty good job but I have my hang-ups, like stringing together disparate ideas with commas, and my successful struggle getting over verb-tense issues. I go over my older work and I wonder what I was thinking, but I can see the desperate struggle to get the words out while not being attentive of the rules. As with any art, you get a lot better as you go on - if you keep going on.

We get better, all of us do, as long as we devote a little time each week to learning and re-learning the basics. This is something I even do, I pick up older English books every week, flip to a random page, and just read. They can be basic or advanced theory, but it is a part of my training regimen every week to keep brushing up. I liken it to exercise and calisthenics, running practice sprints, weight-lifting and the other training athletes perform.

This helps, it really does. I have a library of basic grammar to advanced fiction theory in real books and sitting on my shelf reminding me I am using shelf space to store these so they expect to be used. I leave them lying around, on my breakfast table, by my bed, in stacks near my computer - everywhere. My little writing books are a part of my life, and that's where I want them to be.

I'm not perfect though, and sometimes silly stuff slips through. I try to do penance for my sins, picking something I messed up on and writing a workshop on the subject. This has helped as well over the years. Also, please, never be afraid of 'doing the work' - knowing you have an issue and going back through everything line by line looking for that one issue. That blood lost now is called the learning process, and the repetition of fixing the error over and over again toughens you up and teaches you the rule like nothing else.

So I adopted a process of a 'slow and careful consideration' when I do my editing passes. I know I have to do several on a project, because an editing pass is also another opportunity to learn and apply knowledge, and the more you do the better it gets.

It stays with you though, so never think editing time is wasted. Every hour spent editing makes the next book all the much better. You will likely spend the same time editing the next book finding new issues, so don't expect editing to get better as it goes along. You are learning, conquering old things, and tackling new things with each book and with each pass.

It gets better as you go, but you do feel better as you keep up your training regimen, and use every book as a new opportunity to learn.