#16 – I Can See Clearly Now: Revising and Editing
October 19, 2024
Most writers dislike revising and editing. If you haven’t reached this stage in the writing process, you may be dreading it. If you have, you
Legend has it that all you have to do
to get a wish
is to rub a brass lamp.
If only writing were that easy.
Writing will never be “easy,”
but the purpose of this website is to help
make it easier.
Hello and welcome to my website.
I am Lois Easton and I’ve written the materials on this site to give you a variety of ways to think about writing, some (perhaps) different from what you have encountered on other sites. I hope you can adapt (and then adopt) what I’ve written to your own writing needs.
Before you start to explore this website, use the list below to think about your challenges as a writer.
What parts of the writing process (for fiction and nonfiction) are hardest? Easiest? Or, somewhere in between?
I AM IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING BLOGS THAT MIGHT HELP YOU ADDRESS SOME OF YOUR WRITING CHALLENGES
Most writers dislike revising and editing. If you haven’t reached this stage in the writing process, you may be dreading it. If you have, you
The song “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheel is stuck in my mind, an agreeable kind of earworm. The part that crawls around in my head is the refrain: Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right/Here I am stuck in the middle with you. The part I pay attention to when I’m writing is I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right/I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair/And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs. That’s how I feel when I’m stuck somewhere in the middle of my writing and can’t figure out how to get unstuck. This blog is about the universal author experience of getting stuck and unstuck.
Blog 12 “Courting Characters” and Blog 13 “Creating Characters” were all about characterization. Well, not quite all. Although they dwelt on determining which characters you wanted to populate your fiction and how to reveal them, they didn’t go far enough. They didn’t address the sine qua non of characterization: dialogue. The phrase sine qua non is a perfect, if somewhat snooty, way to describe the effects of dialogue. It is essential for “nailing a character,” as author Rita Mae Brown puts it. It is as necessary as chocolate chips in chocolate chip cookies.
Now that you have courted characters (Blog #12) for your story, novel, screenplay, or other fiction and can identify a possible protagonist, an antagonist, a co-protagonist or – antagonist, a love interest, a foil, or even some tertiary characters, you’re ready to create them. I know! That sounds backwards. But once you have in mind some characters (and the conflict and possible plot that links them) you’re ready to go deeper, particularly to create characters as fully as you can before beginning to write. After that, they’ll take over. . .but that’s another blog.
At the end of the last blog (#11 Giving Chase to Plot), I invited you to “Choose one [word] from Column A and one from Column B [and] imagine a plot based on the two words. Imagine a few episodes you’d want to develop your plot.” I wrote, “Each combination suggests a plot to me – at this point, not very exciting – but, still, a plot.” Not really. I prevaricated, stretched the truth a bit. I found only one combination that suggested a viable plot to me.
What does giving chase have to do with writing? In this and the next three blogs, I explore how writing is an ongoing process of chasing what works in fiction and non-fiction. It’s not prolonged and unrelenting, just steady. We persist, sometimes in the subway of our minds (see my first blog), until we understand what works. When I checked the derivation of the word chase, I learned at vocabulary.com that To chase is to follow or go after someone or something you want. This activity is called a chase. Dogs chase cats, cats chase mice, and mice are in big trouble. The word chase tried to run away from the Old French word chacier for “to hunt or strive for,” but we caught it.”
ABOUT THE FIVE GENII WAY
MORE ABOUT THIS WEBSITE
Why should I trust this website and its writer? Find out more about Lois Easton and her career as a writer.
Learn about Lois's 8th book, a novel called Through the Five Genii Gate, about a woman who finds a meaningful life in China, but ...
Email the author if you have questions or overall comments about the material on this website.