Editing (Part 3) - Underwriting/Overwriting

 I've had a really busy week with sports so I didn't have any time to write. Any free moment I had, I felt physically and mentally drained and couldn't contemplate doing more editing. With school starting in one week I hope to get a lot done within the second little while before my life becomes too hectic again.

#

I came across these two videos talking about authors who underwrite and overwrite, and I decided that I wanted to share how I deal with it. Authors fall into two categories, writing too much and having to cut back in the editing phase, or writing bare bones and needing to add word count in their edits.

Over the years I have become less obsessed with word counts, but it is still always at the back of my mind whenever I am writing. I can never predict how many words it will take for a scene or description. Therefore I worry that I will underwrite. My usual method is to shut my brain off and only worry about those things later when I have it written.

I do tend to underwrite because when I am excited and in the zone of writing I am so focused on getting all my ideas on the page that I don't give enough description or action. Instead it is mostly dialogue and the emotions of my main character. Then, after I go back, I add in what I am lacking and I remove most of my main characters emotions because I try to imply what she is feeling through dialogue and action.

This is also because I hate to delete stuff I've written. It takes time for me to construct a vivid description or a funny one liner so I wait until I know what I need before I add it. I am a firm believer that I won't do the work unless I need to. 

It is interesting to look at how authors have dealt with this as well. For example, Victoria Aveyard overwrote her book considerably and was forced to do many revisions before her novel was ready for publication. There are pantsers (aka people who do not outline) who tend to overwrite because they have many unnecessary scenes, or underwrite because they neglect description and foreshadowing. Without an outline to guide them it is harder to predict what is necessary to the story and what is superfluous.

But as a writer, it's as though I want someone to tell me that I'm writing too much or too little, but this sort of thing is also part of a writer's style. Some authors do have a lengthier writing style while some are direct and concise. There is nothing wrong about either method as long as the story is entertaining and well paced.

Editing (Part 2) - Show, Don't Tell

I've found over the past few years that I prefer to type than to write by hand. That's because typing is faster for me and it's also easier to make bigger edits because you can delete large passages or add new ones without making a huge mess. Therefore while writing my novel, I did it all in a Word document. But if you were to look at my desk it is covered in sticky notes with ideas I had for sentences, pieces of dialogue, description, character traits, basically anything I came up with on a whim. I really should organize them.

There comes a point for me after all my major edits where I keep tweaking a sentence or a paragraph because I'm trying to improve it. I swap words out for stronger ones or rearranging the sentence structure to have more strength. But instead of improving my work, I end up making it different (not any better, not any worse).

After growing progressively more frustrated with this, I have now implemented a new strategy. Once I am generally satisfied with a chapter I print it out with a different font and put it into a binder. This is good for two reasons.

Number one, since it feels more concrete I won't feel like I have to change every word. While I can work with abstract, I like having everything laid out in front of me so that my mind can truly comprehend the issues. I can flip between chapters to check previous information. It’s easier to see how long the chapters are.

Number two, by putting it in a different font it will allow me to look at it with a new perspective. When writing my draft I used Garamond because I find it one of the most attractive fonts. When I printed it out I switched to Courier New. This font is special because all the letters take the same amount of space, both vertically and horizontally. So while in another font the "i" might take up less horizontal space, in this font it doesn't. Apparently it will make spotting errors easier.

I am a third of the way through my novel, having edited this way. But I know that the last half won’t be as pretty as there are full scenes I am intending to write in to help character arcs and to strengthen the climax. 

#

No matter where you go to search for advice, you are bound to run into this nugget. Writers are told that instead of explaining something it should be shown through dialogue or action. But like most advice given, there are always times where it doesn't work. Just because someone suggested it doesn’t make it a hard and fast rule. Writing is a creative process so having more tools at your disposal, whether you use them or not, is always helpful. You need to figure out what is best for the given story.

When I first started writing seriously I believed this to be important. But the more that I read and wrote, the less inclined I felt to agree with this one. Sometimes it is easier to say “she was angry” rather than explaining her jaw clenching and her face going red. It saves words and it gets to the point. It becomes tiresome to constantly have these elaborate descriptions when all you want to do is shake the book and tell the author to get on with it. The novelist, Joshua Henkin, wrote an article on how showing vs telling is a lie.

One of the turning points for me in regards to this was when I started to read Jane Austen books. If you’ve read them then you know what I mean when I say that she tells us the majority of the story. There will be full conversations that will be told where no dialogue is used. It was disconcerting at first because I wanted to see the nuances of the conversation, but it was also interesting because it allowed the main character to taint the interaction with her own impressions and thoughts. She commented solely on what she thought was important. Which made the novels longer to read because each sentence was that much more vital to the overall story. 

From this I’ve deduced that if a conversation is somewhat important for the story, but only the gist needs to be told to the reader (in other words, the reader doesn’t need to see a thorough recreation of the character's reactions), by telling the entire interaction instead of writing it out word for word will make the pacing of the book a lot faster and the plot more interesting. All the arguments we can guess at or conversations with very little intrigue will be removed.

Another advantage is the tone it gives the story. Instead of it feeling like a play by play like in a movie, it almost has an old narrator vibe to it. What I mean is it’s like you are being read this book by a storyteller instead of being in the main character's head. Depending on the story this could add an different layer to the book. They could show their bias against another character or demonstrate how much they trust a friend.

Personally, I don’t like it if there is too much telling. I like seeing characters interact and finding out in the moment what is going on. It takes away the suspense and thrill if the reader is told what is happening. So, like everything else in writing, it needs to be used in moderation. 

I "tell" the most when I want time to pass where nothing important is happening. Instead of jumping forward, the character might be doing a few things that are important to note so I quickly mention them before moving on. 

For every piece of writing advice, there are always times when they should be ignored. While they are useful the majority of the time, at the end of the day the writer will choose how often to use it because that's what makes each writer's work so unique. 

Literary Translations

While on a walk at the beach I made my decision: I will thoroughly edit the first part of my story and polish up all the details before trying to get it published. Though I wanted to finish the entire story before trying to get published, at this point I am halfway through my draft and I feel overwhelmed by how much story there is left to write. Instead I want to concentrate on perfecting a smaller portion of writing In some ways it feels like this will make the process harder because I don't know if an agent will be comfortable taking me on especially if they have to trust that I will follow through with two more books (it will be a trilogy).

But one of the bonuses is that the first book will be around ninety thousand words, which is right around the word count for debut authors in fantasy. The following books would probably skew a little longer, but not by much.

This decision makes me really confident in my writing. My first goal will be to go through the draft and ensure that there aren't any plot holes or unwritten scenes. It will only be on subsequent read throughs that I will tackle the smaller stuff like making the prose smooth and working on believability in my dialogue.

On an interesting side not, I like that I'm expecting this to be a trilogy, since I usually dislike them. There have been some amazing standout trilogies like the Mistborn trilogy and the Infernal Devices that I love beyond belief but for the most part I don't enjoy them as much as series. Now that I'm writing it though, I do feel more inclined to read them.
 

#

There are many beloved books that have been translated from other languages to English. But has it lost some of its meaning through the translation? There are limitations to every language in terms of expression, so perhaps when going between these translations, there are certain things that weren’t applied. It also depends entirely on the translator and the grasp they have of both languages. They need to fully understand the original language, and not only copy the story in the new language, but also the tone and the voice of the previous author.

Many classics have had to be translated. There is the Illiad from Greek, the Journey to the Centre of theEarth from French, or the One Hundred Years of Solitude from Spanish. Depending on who was responsible for translating them could severely influence the reader.

When I was deciding which translation of the Illiad I wanted to read, I stumbled across people debating whether it was better to read the clearer version that is more similar to our style of writing, or the one that is harder to understand, yet is truer to the original work. I ended up choosing Robert Fagles because he seemed to be a mixture of both. But I don’t know if there were clever things that Homer did with his writing that I won’t be able to experience because I will never learn Greek to find out for myself.

Poems can’t be translated. The Illiad is an epic poem so there are definitely elements that are lost. Poets manipulate forms and word variety to delve deeper into their subject. Oftentimes the meaning of their words are only the surface to what they really want the reader to understand. This is done with literary devices or form. Nothing is done in a poem without a certain intention my the writer. 

In my opinion, you can never translate a poem without having to tear it apart and reconstruct it from the ground up. At which point we can never truly say that it was the original poet’s anymore since it is so radically different.

Another interesting case is Beowulf, an epic poem that is cited as the oldest English poem to date. No one knows who created this story, or exactly when it was created because it was told orally for countless years. It was later written down by Christian monks who added a lot of biblical allusions in the hopes of encouraging the Anglo-Saxons to follow Christianity. Therefore, when you read the story, there will be reference to Hell and Heaven even though there was none of that in its original form.

But the reason I want to bring this up, is can we judge a book if it is not written in our language? At that point we can only judge the overall story because that is all the author has created. The writing style itself is at the discretion of the translator. Reading a book that was originally written in another language is the same as looking through an opaque window because we can see the general intention of the original author, but all the little details are controlled by the translator.

It is also necessary to have these translations because without those, stories would not be able to reach the world wide proportions that they do. We can’t learn a new language every time we want to read a book from a different part of the world. There are people that do this, but only because they already know the story in its translated language and they love it so much they want to read the original. 

Basically my conclusion is that when we read translated works we have to keep in mind that it has lost some of the care and detail that the author included. Especially with older material, there are going to be changes. Now, an interesting idea would be whether there has ever been an instance where the translator made a book better by having nicer prose or smoother dialogue.

Here are some links if you would like to keep reading on this subject:

Difficulties of Literary Translation - Translating between a Rock and a Hard Place

Literary Translation: Recent Theoretical Developments

Translation: The Problem with Equivalence (Video)

Editing (Part 1) - The Basics

This is only the basics in editing. This can be used for any type of writing such as short stories or essays as it is a very superficial overview to make sure that the writing is up to par. I haven't started to seriously edit my book yet so I will discover more information on that at that time. However, for now these are the standards that I keep when writing.

My automatic writing is rough. It will have a lot of slang, or repeating of words that are easy to catch and fix, but there are other ways to improve my writing as well. This is a list that I have devised over the years after having read many articles and watching many interviews on the subject. I don't know where most of this came from so I sadly can't link anything as it is pretty common and general advice. 

Don't overuse adjectives and adverbs
Instead of saying "walks slowly" say "creeps". There is always a better word that is more precise and conveys the message better.

Avoid writing prose in the passive voice
Instead of saying "is standing" say "stood". It sounds more authoritative. 

Don't use weak qualifiers
Instead of "very happy" say "happy" or "content". Or better yet, follow that show don't tell rule and say "his lips spread wide and his eyes twinkled" or something like that. Weak qualifiers show uncertainty in writing. I tend to write the word "just" quite a bit when I write so I let it happen and when I go back to edit I remove them all. 

Avoid unnecessary words
Don't say something in five words when it can be said it two. 

State things in the positive
Doesn't it not get confusing when I don't not use double negative? Instead of "not happy" say "angry" or "sad". There is no reason to beat around the bush. Say what you mean and get on with it. 

Simple rather than fancy
Readers don't want to have to use a dictionary when reading a book. While a thesaurus can be useful when trying to find that word that is on the tip of your tongue, using it to try to sound more educated will only confuse the reader.

Concrete rather than abstract
Instead of saying "wooden house" say "cabin". It is precise and conjures up a better image in the reader's mind. 

Rearrange the sentence for strength
For this one I often read the sentence aloud and then if it doesn't sound right I mess with the order of words until it does. 

Variety
Unless it is being used to effect, it is best to have varying lengths of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. If every sentence is the same length it can become tedious because it is the same rhythm the entire time. If you really want you can throw in an exclamation mark too!

Use all five senses
There is more than just sight. Unless your character is deaf then they need to hear the birds singing in the morning. Unless they don't have hands they should be able to feel the texture of things.


Show don't tell
The simplest, yet also the hardest technique, is to allow the reader to come to their own conclusions about things. Instead of "Martha loves flowers" have Martha picking flowers and enjoying their smell, colour, etc. so the reader can discover it themselves.


Unfortunately while I know to do all this, it is difficult for me to execute it all. I seem confident as I list them but I still haven't fully understood how to use them. But hopefully I will have gotten the hang of it by the time I finish my book.

Is there any more advice that I missed? Please comment below with any suggestions.