As implied when I first mentioned this next installment, there’s been a lot of discussion–discourse–cropping up regarding word counts in traditionally published books. It’s daunting to trim a book down; I’ve been there several times. Infamously, I’ve sloughed off as much as 40,000 to 50,000 off fantasy books so that they would be within a range that’s considered acceptable for most agents.
Most advice, however, on tightening stories and making them more efficient is around removing filter words and dialogue tags. It’s never been enough, in my experience. Mostly because that’s a line edit, not a true revision.
In this latest installment of Writing is Hard, I’m going to outline some steps to pull off a revision that not only will make your story more focused, but also remove a whole bunch of words because you’ll be focusing on your story at a more holistic level than the words on the page.
Here’s another excessively vulnerable post. Originally, it was supposed to be how querying ruined my relationship with storytelling and craft, leading to burnout, and to some extent, it will be. This post, however, will mostly be about giving and receiving feedback, the ever-evolving relationship with beta reading, feedback, and what kindness looks like between writers reading like readers and writers reading like writers.
Dear reader who may know me personally: If you think this is about you specifically, it is not. There is not much I can do to assure you of such, but I promise this comes as a result of several smaller burdens piling all at the same time from several sources over several years.
Beta Reading
To start with context, beta reading is a phase of creating a book in which the draft is done, has been through a revision or two (or none), gentle line edits, and is sent to people who have never seen the work. The request can come with specific questions to be answered or can be asking for overall impressions.
What it is not is line edits. God, I just had to say that.
The wall I hit came with the vagueness of feedback I’ve received at the macro level of a story. Does the story work as a story? Yes, the structure might be interesting, but if you don’t know why anything is happening, it might not work.
Taking off your writer hat when you’re beta reading is hard. Because we all come with our tools and perspectives. Yet, the more you can pretend you’re beta reading a book as if it’s a book for pleasure, the more both you and the author will get out of it. Don’t necessarily look for problems (unless something has been specifically requested, of course). Let the story happen before you. It’s amazing what you can discover.
Niceness vs. Kindness in the Context of Feedback
What kindness is also setting your ego aside as a storyteller and a crafter. Yes, someone might have sought you out for specific feedback because of your expertise. However, it is not your story. There are things that might bother you at a sentence level, and you have to trust that those things are choices made by the author. Typos can be corrected in post.
Unless you feel an element obfuscates the point, the plot, or whatever element the writers had tried to convey. If that’s the case: tell them.
I promise you, you’re not being a jerk. The writer will need to hear it from an agent/editor/publisher who has fiscal stakes in the project if they pursue traditional publishing. If you think you’re doing a kindness by being vague and only leaving compliments, you’re just being nice. It doesn’t help anyone.
And if you’re worried that someone might lash out at you for the feedback you leave and questions you raise, you might want to reconsider beta reading for that person. Get used to saying, “No, this isn’t for me.” It’s a complete sentence.
But if the other writer is a professional, then the most unfortunate part can be best described as “you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” Just because you would do something differently, doesn’t mean that the writer will. This goes for everything. But the more specific you can be, the more you contextualize, the kinder you will be.
Being nice is useless.
What I Needed in Feedback
In terms of the quality of feedback, avoid making generalizations and get used to asking questions. One of the specific things I have struggled with personally is receiving “There is too much world-building” several times without being given much direction. This can mean so many things, and not knowing how to get specific on either my part or the feedback-giver’s part is what led to a bit of a snap recently where I needed to separate from my project for a little bit.
Here are some questions you can ask to get at specifics in the world-building example:
Is the world-building poorly implemented?
Does it seem like the puzzle pieces don’t fit together?
Are things not defined clearly?
Getting to the core of why something isn’t working for you empowers a writer to tackle their own revisions and the vision they have for that story. Because as mentioned above, it’s their story, their work, not yours. Maybe something isn’t working for you because it’s unclear. Or you can be honest with yourself that an element just doesn’t jive with your personal tastes. Which is fine, I promise, but it does no one any favors. For a public manifestation of this, read any movie review by “expert” critics who do not consume that specific type of movie.
The more questions you can ask the better. Often, they’re not yours to answer. It’s also okay to leave adjectives like “confusing” or “unclear.” Really make it so that it is on the writer to provide the necessary clarity. If you want to exchange ideas, that’s something that needs to be mutually agreed to. Because again: it’s not your story.
My Steps Moving Forward for Recovery
To refill my well and also direct my emotions elsewhere, I’m literally only going to be consuming content I enjoy.
Which sounds strange, but I have never taken a step back to consider who I, Jo, wants to be in the non-writing fabric of publishing. I suggest you do this as well. And I realized that I want to boost other writers in the context of only writers I’ve actually read. The reviews that go up on this blog are genuinely 4- or 5-star reads that I can recommend. And I want to keep it that way and keep my further reading that way. No obligations, only mood reads.
The other bit for projects is to keep the versions in my process closer to my heart. Spit-balling more ideas throughout, but not sharing the finished content until a bit further along. Revision Season was a boon to my process, and I deeply regret not actually following it in this latest revision of the querying project. I’m only going to seek out beta feedback when I’ve gone through that.
And the last is actually taking breaks. I’m starting off with two weeks away from any writing, a month off from the querying project, checking in with myself to see if it needs an extension. Just as honest with yourself as you would a writer who requested feedback. And if there are deadlines and contracts, the sooner you bring it up, the better for everyone.
TL;DR
Two years of vague feedback set me seriously behind in terms of edits. Part of it is my fault, part of it is a structure that discourages kindness in favor of not hurting anyone’s feelings. Do make sure to leave compliments on the work when you present your feedback. Seriously, don’t be a monster. But don’t skirt around specific changes because you think the recipients’ feelings might be hurt. Be honest, be specific. If feedback hurts the writer’s feelings, I have some very unfortunate news for them about gatekeeper-tier rejections.
Three novels in four years, and it’s time to step back and work on word craft. I’ve found that beating my fingers against a keyboard and my head against a wall has taught me several valuable lessons about story arcs, characters, and world-building, but the actual infrastructure on a sentence level, I feel that I have been struggle to grow in that particular garden. Here is what I’ll be covering today:
What I’m doing during a month of a break from novel writing and full-time employment
Ah, querying. When you distill your tens of thousands (some people have written hundreds of thousands? wow!) of words of a novel into 250-300 words in the hopes that an agent will pick it up. But how long do people wait? How do you know if your query is working? Well, I wanted to share my experience and hopefully help ease people’s expectations around the querying journey by answering:
Is my query working?
How long have I been waiting on different responses?
Anxiety is a vicious thing. Something is wrong, but the fear’s cause is unknown. Sometimes, it’s jealousy-fueled nervousness. Sometimes, it’s crippling self-doubt. Most times, it’s nothing. With my prior lack of proper coping mechanisms, my reaction to the onset of nerves was to just work. And work. And work. Until I’d be crying, wondering why I’m not anywhere I want to be, motivation replaced by complete exhaustion.
Thieves Project is the work in which, I think, I saw myself for the first time in my own writing. And parts of the plot simply didn’t work in the way I wanted them to, so I took it upon myself to do a rewrite. Because I’m always at a lack of resources, this is a post for pre-revisions me. Here is the action plan I took which brought a book down from 112,000 words to 89,000 words.
It didn’t feel right to talk about this before I finished my graduate school work. So, here I am in this candid moment to tell you about balancing graduate school and writing. I don’t feel the most qualified, as I don’t have an agent, don’t have anything published, and have trunked a project. But I did write 2+ books in 15 months, so that’s…something.
Part 2 of a 4-part series about my writing process and learnings. The first part was about going on a hiatus. This second part is about my discovery that I am not a “pantser” whatsoever.
Originally, this was going to be about how I always hit a point in my writing where I want to delete my book. Turns out, it was just a symptom of burning out. So, I’m talking about the necessity to take a break sometimes and common thought processes that can interrupt it.
Jo Writes Fantasy 