On Writing -- Editing

Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series

Years ago -- at least eight -- I tried reading Connelly's police procedurals featuring a main character named Hieronymus Bosch. (Rhymes with anonymous.) Named after the Dutch painter who depicted earth and hell as equally dark and dreadful, Connelly's Hieronymus Bosch pretty much sees Los Angeles like that, a fantastical nightmare.

At that time, I was enthralled with the TV series Castle. Maybe you watched it, too. Rick Castle was a crime novelist who, along with an attractive, New York City police detective solved crimes. Actually, it was probably the very attractive (and funny) actor Nathan Fillion who kept me watching each week. I liked his uncensored mother and independent daughter, too.

Anyway Rick Castle occasionally played poker with real life crime novelists -- James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Stephen J. Cannell and others. I decided to check out those real life writers. James Patterson first. He seemed to be the most popular at my local library. His books went out like hot cakes. I didn't like his books. I read two to be sure. Then Michael Connelly. I read two of his too. Didn't like them either. I never got to Cannell.

I could just never connect with Harry Bosch.

And then. And then. More like now. I've connected with the Harry Bosch character by way of Amazon's series Bosch. Somehow Titus Welliver, the actor who plays Bosch, makes him more likable, more sympathetic. And the series is well enough written that I don't find myself editing the teleplays.

Connelly's books I edit, sans red pen.

This passage is from Connelly's The Overlook. Our little-bit-unlikable hero and his bloodied former lover who happens to be an FBI agent are chasing a bad guy who in the past few minutes has killed two people, tried to kill Bosch, and engaged in a gun battle with Bosch's partner leaving him wounded.

     Bosch turned and saw Rachel come through the door, a smear of blood on her face.
          "This way," he said. "He's been hit."
          They started down Third in a spread formation. After a few steps Bosch picked up
     the trail. Maxwell was obviously hurt badly and was losing a lot of blood. It would
     make him easy to track.
          But when they got to the corner of Third and Hill they lost the trail. There was no
     blood on the pavement. Bosch looked into the long Third Street tunnel and saw no one
     moving in the traffic on foot. He looked up and down Hill street and saw nothing until
     his attention was drawn to a commotion of people running out of the Grand Central
     Market.
          "This way," he said.
          They moved quickly toward the huge market. Bosch picked up the blood trail again
     just outside and started in. The market was a two-story-high conglomeration of food
     booths and retail and produce concessions. There was a strong smell of grease and coffee
     in the air that had to infect every floor of the building above the market. The place was
     crowded and noisy and that made it difficult for Bosch to follow the blood and track
     Maxwell.
          Then suddenly there were shouts from directly ahead and two quick shots were fired
     into the air. It caused an immediate human stampede. Dozens of screaming shoppers and
     workers flooded into the aisle where Bosch and Walling stood and started running toward
     them.  Bosch realized they were going to be run over and trampled. In one motion he
     moved to his right, grabbed Walling around the waist and pulled her behind one of the
     wide concrete support pillars.

Just copying this from the book makes me want to tear my hair out. All these words! But they don't give the reader the feeling of an adrenaline charged, life and death race. William Bernhardt, the best writing teacher I ever had, said, "Show, don't tell." And Hemingway touted the mot juste which means the exact, appropriate word. These rules keep the story so close to the reader, that the reader sees it. Hears it. Feels it.

This passage should be built on short, sharp sentences. And don't insult the reader. "Maxwell was obviously hurt badly and was losing a lot of blood. It would make him easy to track." Really? No shit, Sherlock.

At least Connelly uses adverbs properly. Unnecessarily, but properly. How would I write it?

          "He's been hit," he said.
          Bosch picked up the blood trail on Third Street. They lost it at Third and Hill.
     No one moved on foot through the traffic in the Third Street tunnel. Or on Hill
     Street. Maxwell was gone. They'd lost him.
          Then to the left, a knot of people ran out of the Grand Central Market.
          Bosch and Walling ran toward the hulking two-story building. They picked
     up the blood trail again. They followed the wet, red stains inside. The stench
     of old grease and strong coffee hit them like a wall. Noise filled the cavernous
     hall. Guns held at their sides, they followed the blood. Through the maze of food
     booths and produce stands and retail stalls, the trail flickered in and out. It
     threatened to disappear beneath the crowd's milling feet.
          Ahead, shouts and two shots stopped time. Then shoppers and workers
     stampeded, screaming, toward Harry and Rachel. He grabbed her and pulled her
     to safety behind a concrete pillar.

And you can probably figure out an even better way to write it. It needs to read fast, raise the reader's heart rate, leave them breathless.

After finishing the 13th Harry Bosch novel -- four of them in the past two weeks -- I'm taking a break. Patricia Cornwell's The Last Precinct, also a crime novel, but it's safe to say, I'll be checking more Connelly/Bosch books out of the library soon. And I'm looking forward to the 5th season of Bosch.

Edit. Edit! EDIT! -- On Writing

image from realmarketing.gr

"Is it blood? She is, after all, a murder mystery writer."

Blood? No. It's red ink. And, yes I am a murder mystery writer. More importantly for this blog post, I'm a murder mystery reader.

I'm not an Episcopalian. I'm not a Pastafarian who believes in the Great Spaghetti God. I'm an Editorian. An Editorian's tenets are simple. 1. Write. 2. Submit to an Editor. 3. Submit to another Editor, and another and another, as many as it takes. 3. Trust your reader. Cut unnecessary words.

Oh, yes. And number 4. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! (Thank you Henry David Thoreau.)

"But that's not what I'm here to tell you about. I'm here to talk about the draft." Well, no. Not the draft. Apologies to Arlo Guthrie.

Editing! That's what I want to talk about.

I'm reading Fatal, the newest John Lescroart novel. If you've read any of my previous reviews of his books, you'll know he's my favorite crime novel writer. Not because of his writing style, but because of his characters -- Defense Attorney Dismas Hardy and Homicide Investigator Abe Glitsky and their various and sundry friends and relatives.

Lescroart's stories are sufficiently salted with twists and turns to keep me reading and clues sprinkled here and there to keep me guessing.

His twelfth Dismas Hardy novel Betrayal was a change up. Much of the first part of the book took place in Iraq with no mention of Hardy or Glitsky. But I kept reading and finally they showed up.

This Lescroart book is ominously touted as a "stand alone" novel. I'm afraid that may mean that the Hardy/Glitsky crowd won't show up.

So I'm on page 74. This is the scene. Two women, Kate a housewife and her cop friend Beth, are having lunch in a downtown San Francisco restaurant. "But suddenly, from outside in the main hallway came the booming sound of an explosion, followed quickly by two others, and then a volley of pops, like strings of firecrackers." This could be improved. It should start off slow and confusing as the situation really would have been --  From somewhere came a booming sound. Then two more and a volley of pops like strings of firecrackers. In the amount of time it takes the reader to read the word 'suddenly' the suddenness is lost. Kate and Beth don't yet know what is happening or where it's coming from. An explosion is not what one would think of in the middle of a meal in a nice restaurant.

The next paragraph reads "Both women turned toward the restaurant's entrance where now they heard another enormous explosion, then more of the popping sounds, accompanied by the completely unexpected, terrifying, and unmistakable noise of people screaming." Both women? Really? I thought we were reading about the Ohio State Marching Band. Turning toward the restaurant's entrance they heard another explosion, then more popping sounds and people screaming.

Of course the screaming is unexpected, terrifying, and unmistakable. All unnecessary words that slow the action. Now they're starting to think explosion.

Next paragraph: "Then Beth was on her feet, reaching behind her back for her service weapon, which she realized too late that she never carried on their walks. Swearing, she turned, looked back at her table. 'Get up! Get up!' she yelled at Kate. 'Let's go!'" Short sentences! Short sentences! The reader should be getting short of breath at this point. Beth leapt to her feet and reached for her service weapon. It wasn't there. It was in its lock box at home. She looked back at Kate. 'Get up! Let's go!' 

There is no need for attribution for the dialog. Who else would she be yelling at. There's no need to even say she's yelling. That's what exclamation points say. 

Then page 75 is more of the same -- too many words, too many prepositional phrases, too much telling. All ending in the phrase "as thick smoke wafted its way into the room."

At this point I slammed my open-palm down on the dining table, making my own explosion. Wafted? Wafted?! What are we talking about here? The scent of jasmine wafting across the veranda? Give me a break! There is a terrorist attack going on and we're being fed thick smoke wafted?

I don't think so. Hemingway, Hemingway. Where for art thy mot juste?

Ah, well. I've still got to read further. Can't stop on page 75. Dismas and Abe may yet show up.

When the Writer Can't Write -- Nonfiction

image from Harvard Business Review

Yep. I've got post-surgery, drug-induced writer's block.

The surgery went well. Rehab is coming along. Ten days in and counting. I still have trouble putting thoughts together in any consistently coherent way. A writer can't write if they can't think.

I can't stand another moment in front of the TV. TV News? My thinking is so muddled, I can't even maintain appropriate depression. Daytime TV? All those talk shows? They're just so much noise. Those folks are less coherent than what's going on in my head. Nighttime TV? There is PBS, but I can't seem to keep up with anything. Except the cooking and travel shows. Even with them, I tend to dose off which, admittedly, is not terribly unusual for me. But this is ridiculous.

I have been reading. Finished A Memory of Light, the 14th and final volume of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I did just fine with it. Of course it's my third time through and I'm thoroughly familiar with the umpteen characters. And Memory is 885 pages of the "Last Battle." How could anyone get confused about what's going on there?

I still was not ready to write. So the thing to do was to start another series that I've read before -- so I don't have to figure out who's who or what's going on.

John LesCroart's Dismas Hardy series. Unlike Wheel of Time, each book is a complete crime fiction story. But you need to start with the first one, because the stories are in the same world with the same characters. The thing I like about them is that the well-developed characters live and change as the stories go along. I have a vested interest in them.

So last night I started Dead Irish. Also, it was my second try at sleeping in my bed after the surgery. I haven't been able to get comfortable sleeping lying down. I've been sleeping in a recliner. So...I took the book, cuddled down in my bed, next to my warm husband, and prepared to read myself to sleep.

He likes to read himself to sleep, too. Normally, I am courteous enough not to interfere.

I'm reading along quite happily when I come to this paragraph:

       "In a way, he thought it was too bad the plane hadn't crashed. There would have
        been some symmetry in that -- both of his parents had died in a plane crash when
        he'd been nineteen a sophomore at Cal Tech."

My mind kicked into editor mode.

"Listen to this," I said interrupting Scott's reading. He didn't care about the crime novel I was reading. But he's in his care-giver mode right now. He's a nice man. He'd've been courteous regardless of my medical situation.

Anyway I read him the paragraph as Mr. LesCroart wrote it. And proceeded to followup with the wording I thought the writer should have used. And why.

        "It was too bad the plane hadn't crashed. (No need for the attribution. It was third person close. Obviously, we were inside the main character's head.) There would have been symmetry in that -- his parents died in a plane crash when he was a nineteen-year-old Cal Tech sophomore. (Fewer words, same information. Stronger language.)"

"Hmmm," my husband said.

For several days now, I've been verbally rewriting the dialog on TV commercials. And in syndicated episodes of  Blue Bloods, one of Scott's favorite TV shows.

If a writer can't write, there is only one alternative. Edit!

I think my husband is going to be glad when I've completed rehab and started writing again. Maybe then he can watch his shows and read in peace.

Red Ink -- Passive Verbs

image from bloodstainsandinkdrops.wordpress.com

William Bernhardt started me on the path to writing as craft. (He also ruined my enjoyment of using the exclamation point -- only one per novel -- which also restricts my ability to comment on Facebook posts.)

Bill admonishes us to "show, don't tell" and eschew the passive verb. Ernest Hemingway advised against adverbs, championing the mot juste, meaning the right verb needs no adverb.

Passive verbs and adverbs weaken a sentence and distance the reader from the vision we create. Let me show you. This is the opening from John Lescroart's first Dismas Hardy crime thriller Dead Irish.

     From his aisle seat, Dismas Hardy had a clear view of the stewardess as her feet lifted from the floor. She immediately let go of the tray -- the one that held Hardy's Coke -- although strangely it didn't drop, but hung there in the air, floating, the liquid coming out of the glass like a stain spreading in a blotter.

To rewrite this using active verbs and removing adverbs, it would look like this:

     From his aisle seat, Dismas Hardy saw the stewardess's feet lift from the floor. She let go of the tray -- the one that held Hardy's Coke. The drink didn't drop but hung there in the air, floating, the liquid coming out of the glass like a stain spreading in a blotter.

Nothing is lost from the meaning. The word 'strangely' is unnecessary because the Coke that Lescroart shows us floating is strange enough. We don't need to be told that it is strange with an adverb. (I also replaced the imprecise pronoun. And being an old poet, I enjoy the alliterative d's which are by their nature sudden, strong sounds, even if we read without moving our lips.)

In the heat of writing, it's hard to keep all the good advice in mind. My flash fiction blog Danger from earlier this week contains the following:

   Rain and wind were being sucked into the storm. Once outside the false harbor of my car, I could feel the storm's pull. It was too close.

Open plea to editors and beta readers: Please help us writers to avoid passive verbs. You don't have to figure out what we should say instead, just point out the problem. It may take a while, but we'll figure it out.

One final example from John Lescroart's Dead Irish:

   Moses had raised his younger sister from the time he was sixteen and she was four. When he'd gone to Vietnam, which was where Moses and Hardy had met, she had just been starting high school and Moses was paying to have her board at Dominican up in Marin County.

There you go. Something to be chewed upon. Blech!

Think I'll park my editor's cap and read the rest of John Lescroart's very good book. Good enough that this is my second time through. Alas, we always read faster than our favorite writers can write.

EDITED!!!

image from rsanews.com

So -- (Don't you hate it when someone starts an explanation with that innocent little single-syllable, two-letter word? It's like "like." Remember when everyone said "like" and "ya know" every time they meant "uh" or "er" to announce that they were trying to think of a real word to say. A second of silence would have given them the same amount of time to think even though it wouldn't have done them any good anyway. And while we're at it, how about everybody doing "up-speak" so they all sound like ditsy Valley Girls? Even guys? Nurses! Financial advisers! The most excellent young man who bags your groceries.) But I digress. Sorry.

So, I was looking for an image to top this blog post and it occurred to me that being edited was, like, ya know, getting busted. And there among all those images were these guys from Myth Busters, the Discovery Channel's show. They enjoy their job way too much. Explosions, high speed car chases, trashing an area. What's not to enjoy? Sometimes I wonder who's gonna clean that mess up. Anyway, they make me smile and once I saw them I couldn't see any of the other options.

  

See this page? This is what my short story looked like when I got it back from my editor. I'm used to my work looking like an ax murder victim, but come on. All the colors of the rainbow, too? Who's gonna clean up this mess?

My editor learned this in class. May the saints preserve us from exercise instructors who go to workshops and editors who take classes.

She did provide a Legend to go with the colors.

She said good writing is a mix of these categories. The following examples are all from my new short story "Jane's Way."

     Narration (Green):

            action, choreography
                    Gretzky motioned Simon to follow him.

            attributions for dialogue

                    ," she said.

            and often used in lieu of attributions for dialogue. 

                   ?" He jabbed the gun at the dead man.

     Exposition (Orange):  tells backstory or explains something

                    She was there when Rita's dad died. Two years ago from cancer, too.

     Description (Purple):  just like it sounds. It describes something or someone.

                    Blue-grays filtered into the reds eddying around him.

     Dialogue (Yellow):  anything between quotes
                    "You, girl. Don't go in there!"

     Interiority -- I know, it ain't in my dictionary either, but she's the editor and that's what it was
     called in her class and she likes it -- (Pink): This is what's going on inside the Point of View
     character's head.
                    What was the fool going to do? Simon wanted to shout, to rage.

I had one page that only had green and yellow on it. "This is more like a script than prose," my editor said. "You only have dialogue and stage direction on this page."

But I'm really good at dialogue.

Ah, yes. I am good at dialogue, but she was right. Don't you hate it when you pay people to help you and then they do?!

There was plenty of red ink on that edited manuscript, as well. Being a serious writer means cleaning up your messes. So I did. 

"Jane's Way" now passes muster and will soon be submitted -- somewhere. Wish me luck.

Edit, Edit, Edit -- an essay

image from simon-read.com

Editing -- this is my soap box and I’m gonna climb on.

You’ve got a great plot with an exciting opening line. Your characters are well-developed and recognizable. They are real. They elicit either admiration or scorn. Your setting is so natural and essential that the story seems to have grown there from roots to crown.

The sun is shining, your cat is happy, and your book is finished.

Well, no it’s not. Now you need a really good editor, or several reasonably good editors. And a whole raft of beta readers. Why? Because none of us is infallible. There’s grammar to check, spelling, and words, words, and more words.

Word processing programs mark questionable spellings and grammar. Don’t just ignore those markings. Consider them. If you don’t agree, look it up or ask someone who knows. Be sure you have a sound reason for choosing not to “correct” them.

If you use any kind of esoteric language at all, chances are your spell check will respond with alarm. That’s okay. Look it up. Be sure you’re right and add it to your dictionary. Then the next time that word shows up, it won’t be marked. Unless it’s misspelled. Then you’ll be glad you added it to your dictionary.

Then there’s continuity -- names, places, times, and who-what. Maddie Jenkins, who has eight children and lives in Farmerville which is northwest of Monroe, should never suddenly become Millie Janson who is driving north to Monroe with her ninth, red-haired child. Facts should be consistent even if they’re fiction.

And heaven forbid Miss Maddie’s husband should die in the war in the third chapter then in the seventh chapter she’s found dining at a posh restaurant with him. Unless, of course, you’ve established that she only thought he’d died and they were joyfully reunited in the fifth chapter. Or there's something paranormal going on.

Little facts often make as much difference as big ones to the believability of a work of fiction. How do you load a muzzle-loading gun? Do the pupils of a poisonous North American snake's eyes differ from those of a nonpoisonous North American snake? Does a woman’s blouse close right over left or the other way round?

These particular facts will be of no importance to your story, but your story will be salted with facts that do make a difference. And somewhere in your vast readership will be someone and, more likely, lots of someones who know if your facts are right or wrong. It’s important to get them right.

It’s always nice to have editors and beta readers who think you’re wonderful. It’s even nice if they happen to love you. But “nice” ain’t what makes you a good writer. Your editors need to either have broad enough knowledge bases to cover your weaknesses or they should be secure enough to recognize when they don’t know a subject well enough to confirm your description’s accuracy. They should look it up or call someone with expertise in the field. Or they should tell you that you need to look it up or call someone. Be friends with a research librarian.

Most importantly, your editors and beta readers need to be tough. They should believe that you want them to find your errors. Find where the story goes awry. Find that missing Oxford comma and the noun cum verb. They should bleed all over your manuscript, so you can fix it.

If you grew up wearing homemade clothes instead of the fashionable brand names, you’ll know how important it is that your book not look homemade.

Errors, inconsistencies, and confusion are not hallmarks of top quality. Original, handmade, and attention to detail are. 

Your name is going to be on your book.You may never wear a suit by William Fioravanti or drive a Maserati Ghibli, but people who do and everyone else should know that a book with your branding is top quality.

Punctuation Wars

from hello.wordsolver.net

I’m battered and bruised. At least my ego is. A casualty of the punctuation wars.

Probably the most important thing to do before you publish a book is edit. (After you write it, of course.) And edit. And edit. Times ten. And then maybe one or three more times just for good measure.

It’s not just the major mistakes you gotta watch for -- like changing the spelling of your protagonist’s last name on page 34 and landing him in the wrong city on page 235 or having him sit down and then two paragraphs along having him sit down again without having gotten him up.

It's punctuation. I am a casualty of punctuation.

One evening my editor, one of my best beta readers, and I were at my dining table discussing my severe comma dysfunction.

One of them said it looked like I took armloads of commas and just splashed them across my manuscript. Laughter ensued.

“Are we supposed to hesitate at every comma?” someone asked, then reading a short passage, she hesitated at each comma. “It’s William Shatner speak!”

Hysteria all around.

Truly, wit is the lowest form of humor.

My writing teacher admonishes us to avoid exclamation points. At his most Hemingway-esque, he avers that if you use the right word or words to show intensity, you don’t need exclamation points.

What about colons and semicolons? Okay. Of course they have their places. All my English teachers have told me so.

Colons in the human anatomy have their place. When functioning properly, they are a most convenient method of waste elimination. Though, strictly speaking, they are not absolutely necessary.

Colons as punctuation, however, are never necessary or convenient. This is my own opinion. And they’re not even cute. But do I find them in my published novel, Murder on Ceres? You got it. Not just semicolons, but colons! Why didn’t I notice them on one of those many editing missions? Eliminate them?

I even have a colon in a quote. What could that possibly sound like in spoken English? The whole point of quotes!

 And quote marks! Should I use them just when someone speaks out loud? What if the character is thinking it?

“Commas and colons and quotes! Oh, my. Commas and colons and quotes! Oh, my.”