Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Bogged down in minutae

This is topic Bogged down in minutae in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Wordmerchant (Member # 7778) on :

I have now made several rather dismal attempts at starting my story.

I find myself editing my prose in the same way I edit my poetry. When editing poetry, it is not unusual for me to analyze every sound combination, line length, punctuation mark and its impact, and everything connected to pace and continuity. 30+ hours of editing for a 14-20 line poem is not unusual to me.

When I do this to my prose, I either render it lifeless by excising a lot of detail, or scraping the entire effort as pathetic.

Any good exercises to help me work with the 'broader brush' I seem to need?

Posted by Cheyne (Member # 7710) on :

Quote:
I have now made several rather dismal attempts at starting my story.

You say that you attempt to "start" stories but get bogged down in line editing. I have in the past spent too much time on this sort of editing. It led to a lot of unsatisfactory and unfinished stories.
This is not an exercise, but what I have learned to do is get the story finished before I start to edit. Of course I look back from time to time, to make sure that what was written earlier still makes sense with what comes later, but the small stuff waits until I have a finished version to edit.
An awesome start helps to shape your piece but if it never gets finished why would anyone read it.

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

Yeah, I agree with Cheyne. You just have to discipline your inner editor. Failing that, you have to gag and stuff him or her into the closet. There's a time to let the editor out, and that's when the story is finished. Before then, how can you edit? You don't even know what the story is, necessarily. One should never edit simply for its own sake--rather, editing should bring your story into high relief.

Posted by Igwiz (Member # 6867) on :

I agree completely with annepin. You can't start "really" editing your story until you're done. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't type a line and say, "Ugh, that stunk!" and reword it to make it mean what you actually want it to mean.

But things like plot, structure, narrative voice, and dialogue are pretty tough to analyze until you have the full piece sitting there in front of you.

Start a piece, finish a piece, and then give it a day to stew. Then look at it and see if it "works." That, then, is a good place to start to edit in earnest.

Good luck.

Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :

For first drafts, only first drafts, I permit myself to write the worst, the most stinking horrible piece of fiction ever conceived. It doesn't matter how lame the prose reads. Somebody else (me, in second and later drafts) will fix it. All "I" have to do is get the story down in words.

I have -- not a time minimum, those never work for me -- a minimum number of words I must add to the story each day. Every day. No excuses.

BUT...I also make that minimum number of words easy to reach. If I can easily add 1000 words a day, then my minimum is 500. If times are tough, I'm sick as a dog, have company visiting -- whatever -- I lower the minimum. As low as 100 words a day. Once, when I had a bad ear infection and was horribly sick, it was 50 words a day. Whatever it takes to keep moving through that first draft. That way, by making the "goal" easy to reach, I set myself up to succeed every day. I feel good about myself and my writing. I get stories written.

My first drafts can be the most rotten writing in the world, but that's okay. That's what editing is for: to turn garbage into gold.

Give yourself "permission" to be bad.

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

Remember, conflict and tension are the essece of fiction. If you find yourself trimming details it's probably a good thing. Readers do not want to know how clever you are or how creative you are. They want tension.

If you want to include a detail, make sure A) it is part of the tension and B) you describe it in the fewest possible words.

Posted by MasterTrek (Member # 7272) on :

I agree with the above statements. Just write and see what come to you first. I write one or two chapters if I'm working on a novel, or four or five pages for a short story, then go back and check my work. Make sure everything is consistent, then move on and keep writing. This is where having a friend, relative, or significant other can come in handy. They can read what you've already written and find grammatical errors, parts that don't make sense, all sorts of things. Then you go back and fix just the parts they point out. That's what I do anyways.

Posted by J (Member # 2197) on :

Write, then edit. Never try both at the same time. Even notoriously neurotic self-editors like Hemingway and James Joyce separated the task. Hemingway, for example, wrote all morning. He then took a lunch break, most days got himself half-drunk, and then returned in the afternoon to edit.

Posted by Wolfe_boy (Member # 5456) on :

Here's your problem, frankly...

I find myself editing my prose in the same way I edit my poetry.

Prose and poetry aren't the same things, and they focus on explicitly different things. Poetry is every bit as much about they physical style of your writing (the meter of a line, the flow of the words, getting the punctuation to conform to the music of a phrase in your head) as it is about content. The two are used synonymously to create an effect. With prose, your writing style should ideally get out of the way of your story. It should serve the story and assist your reader to comprehend what you are saying, but a punctuation mark and its impact has little to no relation to the grist of the story you are telling, once the aforementioned punctuation mark performs its task of defining how a particular line is spoken and then disappears. Indeed, the technical aspects of writing should be invisible to a reader - overwrought diction and intrusive punctuation, regardless of its stylistic intent, will break the readers immersion in your written world and remind them that they're sitting on a crowded bus, trying to read a book o nthe ride home.

Jayson Merryfield

Posted by Wordmerchant (Member # 7778) on :

Thanks for the replies. Now comes the task of parking my editor in the garage for a while.

Giving myself permission to do so is the hardest part.

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

It gets easier. It even gets fun. Let yourself go!

Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :

I have a mantra for the hard parts. I space down two lines while I say over and over "second draft problem." I write a short precis of what probably should be in the empty space as a footnote, and keep going.

Posted by Jo1day (Member # 7800) on :

Here's an idea I got from a writing book, which helps to practice "letting go" of perfection: set a timer for ten minutes, and in that ten minutes write down everything that comes into your head, regardless of how stupid it sounds or how off-topic it is. No going back, no spell check, no editing. You're supposed to mark where you felt like stopping during that ten minutes, and the best stuff is actually supposed to come afterward.

Music is another way I turn my internal editor off. Trying to visualize what I'm writing also helps

Posted by MrsBrown (Member # 5195) on :

Off-the-wall idea: try writing in manuscript treatment style (like a wordy outline without all the headers and subheaders, just jotting down what will happen when), figuring you'll come back later and fill it in with actual prose. It might give you some practice concentrating on the ideas instead of the words.

Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :

Timed challenges help.

Liberty Hall runs a weekly flash challenge, 90 of the fastest minutes of your life, once a week every weekend. The flash starts with a trigger (usually a word, phrase, picture, song lyrics, you get the idea) and you have 90 minutes to write whatever piece of drivel you can come up with in that 90 minutes. Trust me, many are really steaming, stinking piles of dung. At least the ones I write.

Each week somewhere between 5 & 20 other crazy writers participate. On Monday, the reckoning begins. All stories are posted (in multiple groups when > 6 or 7 people have participated) and you crit all the stories in your assigned group or all but your own. Voting closes by Wednesday (I think...i'll admit to having been lax the last few months and not participated) - you vote for things like best flash, best dialogue, best characterization, best setting, etc. A winner is chosen. That winner gets to pick the flash trigger for the next week. And on it goes.

While it's crazy and leads to quite a bit of head pounding on the monitor, it also is a really good way to park that internal editor somewhere else because there's no room for him/her in a 90 min writing exercise.

Arikki has some great ideas about giving yourself permission, too. I need to remember these things, as I'm a bit stuck on a story right now too and I think these are some of the reasons why (and having too much to do and not enough time, naturally.)

Good luck to you. To look at it in a positive light - those editing techniques will come in VERY handy on later drafts. LOL

Posted by Cheyne (Member # 7710) on :

KayTi: What is Liberty Hall? I was interested in the exercises you mentioned. Google only shows concert listings etc. Is there a website? Is it open?

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

Cheyne, try libertyhallwriters.org. You'll have to send a request to participate in the full forum, including the Flash Challenges. You should have no problem getting through their rigorous screening process--unless you're a computer wanting to spew out porno spam everywhere.

Posted by Cheyne (Member # 7710) on :

Annepin:
am I that obvious?

Oh yeah! thank-you.

[This message has been edited by Cheyne (edited February 26, 2008).]