.
.
.
oEPISTLES FROM A GOBLIN PRINCESSo
REVISIONS <Cue the Spooky Music> Continued
Posted 21st August 2011 at 09:54 PM by Teresa Edgerton
Tags editing, plot holes, revisions, writing
.
.
.
Plot Holes
You can’t fix plot holes by patching them; you do so by weaving loose threads back in. A plot hole occurs when there is something you haven’t thought out sufficiently, usually something much earlier in the story. Patching on new characters or situations to fix it rarely works, as the hole in the fabric of the story is still there under the patch, and discerning readers will detect it despite your best efforts at disguise. It’s better to take a hard look at your story, pinpoint the exact place where things went wrong, fix the problem at its source rather than the point where you first became aware of it, and rewrite everything that comes between. This may seem like a lot of work, but in the long run it usually involves less work because it fixes the problem for good. Otherwise, the loose threads continue to unravel, requiring more and more patches. As above, whenever possible look for a solution within the story. Very often it’s already there; you just haven’t seen it yet.
Tightening
Tightening, you may be surprised to learn, doesn’t always mean making things shorter. It means taking out all the boring and irrelevant bits and replacing them with material that engages, that adds interest to what you already have. Often this substitution does make the word count shorter, but sometimes it ends up being longer but seems to read much faster. A gripping novel of 120,000 words may whisk right by, while a shorter but less involving novel seems to inch along. Tightening means that everything in the story should serve a purpose, perhaps two or more purposes. For instance: advancing the plot, providing background, illuminating character.
Information that seems irrelevant in one chapter may become of vital interest to readers in another, when they understand its importance, or when you’ve brought them to the point where they are dying to know all about it. Under these circumstances, the solution is simply to move it rather than cut it. This is especially true where there are expository lumps or infodumps. Information that seems too much when readers are expected to swallow it all in one gulp, may be just the right amount when fed to them slowly, a bite at a time. However, don’t take this as an excuse to be self-indulgent.
Missed Opportunities
These consist of unexplored avenues, failing to make use of all the dramatic possibilities in a given scene (you’ve decided to focus on an ongoing argument between your characters instead of on their frantic efforts to bail out their sinking lifeboat), and places where you’ve unconsciously set up your story so that something much more interesting could have happened instead of what actually does.
As an example, we’ll return to LOTR., since we discussed it last week, and almost everyone knows it. In an alternate reality, it has fallen to you to produce this masterpiece. Now you're writing The Fellowship of the Ring and you need to get your characters from Bree to Rivendell. Obviously the journey can’t be accomplished in a few pages, and obviously you need to make it as exciting as possible. You decide to send your characters through a dangerous bog. Sam falls into quicksand and has to be hauled out; Frodo catches marsh fever. The Black Riders have already appeared in the story, you know that they are following the Hobbits, but instead of writing an amazing scene at Weathertop where the wraiths attack and Frodo is wounded ... you’ve chosen the bog. This was a missed opportunity. We’ll have to hope that on mature reflection you’ll bring on the Black Riders.
*****
It will probably take two or three drafts to wrestle your plot and characters into submission. But once you’ve done it, then the time has come to go through and start polishing, looking for passages that don’t quite work, sentences that are a little awkward. Pruning a word here. Adding a little description there. Asking yourself: Could I have chosen a better word? Is this line of dialogue written as that character would naturally phrase it?
Enjoy this part of the process. It’s the part where you can bring your story closer to what you envisioned in the first place. Yes, it can include some small fiddly bits that you have to do over and over until you are satisfied, but the greater satisfaction you’ll feel every time you get some small part exactly right will be more than worth it.
.
.
Part II
Plot Holes
You can’t fix plot holes by patching them; you do so by weaving loose threads back in. A plot hole occurs when there is something you haven’t thought out sufficiently, usually something much earlier in the story. Patching on new characters or situations to fix it rarely works, as the hole in the fabric of the story is still there under the patch, and discerning readers will detect it despite your best efforts at disguise. It’s better to take a hard look at your story, pinpoint the exact place where things went wrong, fix the problem at its source rather than the point where you first became aware of it, and rewrite everything that comes between. This may seem like a lot of work, but in the long run it usually involves less work because it fixes the problem for good. Otherwise, the loose threads continue to unravel, requiring more and more patches. As above, whenever possible look for a solution within the story. Very often it’s already there; you just haven’t seen it yet.
Tightening
Tightening, you may be surprised to learn, doesn’t always mean making things shorter. It means taking out all the boring and irrelevant bits and replacing them with material that engages, that adds interest to what you already have. Often this substitution does make the word count shorter, but sometimes it ends up being longer but seems to read much faster. A gripping novel of 120,000 words may whisk right by, while a shorter but less involving novel seems to inch along. Tightening means that everything in the story should serve a purpose, perhaps two or more purposes. For instance: advancing the plot, providing background, illuminating character.
Information that seems irrelevant in one chapter may become of vital interest to readers in another, when they understand its importance, or when you’ve brought them to the point where they are dying to know all about it. Under these circumstances, the solution is simply to move it rather than cut it. This is especially true where there are expository lumps or infodumps. Information that seems too much when readers are expected to swallow it all in one gulp, may be just the right amount when fed to them slowly, a bite at a time. However, don’t take this as an excuse to be self-indulgent.
Missed Opportunities
These consist of unexplored avenues, failing to make use of all the dramatic possibilities in a given scene (you’ve decided to focus on an ongoing argument between your characters instead of on their frantic efforts to bail out their sinking lifeboat), and places where you’ve unconsciously set up your story so that something much more interesting could have happened instead of what actually does.
As an example, we’ll return to LOTR., since we discussed it last week, and almost everyone knows it. In an alternate reality, it has fallen to you to produce this masterpiece. Now you're writing The Fellowship of the Ring and you need to get your characters from Bree to Rivendell. Obviously the journey can’t be accomplished in a few pages, and obviously you need to make it as exciting as possible. You decide to send your characters through a dangerous bog. Sam falls into quicksand and has to be hauled out; Frodo catches marsh fever. The Black Riders have already appeared in the story, you know that they are following the Hobbits, but instead of writing an amazing scene at Weathertop where the wraiths attack and Frodo is wounded ... you’ve chosen the bog. This was a missed opportunity. We’ll have to hope that on mature reflection you’ll bring on the Black Riders.
*****
It will probably take two or three drafts to wrestle your plot and characters into submission. But once you’ve done it, then the time has come to go through and start polishing, looking for passages that don’t quite work, sentences that are a little awkward. Pruning a word here. Adding a little description there. Asking yourself: Could I have chosen a better word? Is this line of dialogue written as that character would naturally phrase it?
Enjoy this part of the process. It’s the part where you can bring your story closer to what you envisioned in the first place. Yes, it can include some small fiddly bits that you have to do over and over until you are satisfied, but the greater satisfaction you’ll feel every time you get some small part exactly right will be more than worth it.
Total Comments 9
Comments
-
Another helpful piece!
Re the plot holes -- something I've found helpful when dealing with plot problems (which I hope prevents holes forming in the first place, but which certainly means I can pick up the dropped stitch more easily) is to make notes of alternatives and the advantages and disadvantages of each. I blithely introduced a kind of murder whodunnit into WIP2 without first working out who had actually done the (nearly) deed. After a good deal of panicking, I set about listing all the possible would-be murderers and their possible motives and looked to see which one seemed most plausible and gave the best result. As a bonus, and without my conscious realisation, it also fitted into the overall theme perfectly. I then had to go back and introduce the character into earlier scenes long before the attempted murder takes place.
As for editing dialogue and POV, something I read on another Chrons thread which is worth further dissemination, is to do one character at a time so you get into his voice/mind, rather than having to stop and think yourself into someone else on a regular basis.Posted 23rd August 2011 at 06:04 PM by The Judge
-
I've had this happen with things I never planned at the beginning (or at least I thought I didn't) that slipped right in and made everything fit together, as though it had been part of the plan all along. It's as though my subconscious mind plans everything out carefully in advance, while I'm still stumbling around, and then pulls out the final piece of the puzzle with a flourish when I least expect it. (It's ... playful that way. Or sadistic.) I call it my secret collaborator.Quote:Originally Posted by The Judge
As a bonus, and without my conscious realisation, it also fitted into the overall theme perfectly.
I always feel like I'm totally in the heads of my characters (all of them at once — possibly I have a split personality) by the time that I finish the first draft. My problem is that even if I know perfectly well that something isn't really what a particular character would say or do, it can take me a long time to let go of it if I think it's rather nifty in itself. Eventually, when whatever it is loses some of its novelty for me, I steel myself to do the deed.Quote:As for editing dialogue and POV, something I read on another Chrons thread which is worth further dissemination, is to do one character at a time so you get into his voice/mind, rather than having to stop and think yourself into someone else on a regular basis.Posted 23rd August 2011 at 09:31 PM by Teresa Edgerton 
-
Now, word prunning I really love. Its like working on a massive crossword.Posted 25th August 2011 at 09:24 AM by J-WO - That's an ... interesting analogy. Could you expand on that?Quote:Originally Posted by J-WO . Its like working on a massive crossword.Posted 25th August 2011 at 09:33 PM by Teresa Edgerton
-
I love the way you've made everything seem so coherent.
I've been flailing rather because each time I put the WiP down, I learn something new about writing (or I read something where there's this great idea that I absolutely have to adapt for my own purposes) and I can see how it will make everything better so I go back and re-write.
I hope next time it will be easier to revise because I will know more to start with and won't have to go through twenty four separate revision stages.
I'm having real difficulty with the term 'plot hole' -- it's not that I don't know they exist, just I'm having problems visualising one. I don't suppose you have a handy (possibly LoTR-based) example?Posted 26th August 2011 at 07:31 AM by Hex - A plot hole is an inexplicable omission, a flaw in the plot that makes no sense within the logic of the world and the story, or an inconsistency within the plot or in the actions of a character.
So, as an example from LOTR: Suppose that the Ringwraiths were never seen again after they were washed away at the Ford of Bruinen. As in the existing story, we know that they have only to go back to Mordor and get mounts that will endure them, and they'll be back in business. They are Sauron's most powerful servants, so it makes sense that they would turn up again, yet in this imaginary LOTR we never see any of them again and there's no explanation for their absence. That's a plot hole.
A patch would be if someone said to the writer, "Why no Ringwraiths?" and instead of thinking of the simplest way to handle the problem the writer came up with a not very plausible explanation: Sauron immediately sent them all north to fight with the Dwarves at the Lonely Mountain. "Why is that so important?" A long explanation about that. "Yes, but still ...." More explanations, more patches.
But Tolkien weaves the thread back into the story when characters sense the Nazgûl flying overhead on their various errands, and when the Witch King turns up at the gates of Minas Tirith, so the question never arises.Posted 26th August 2011 at 09:26 AM by Teresa Edgerton - Thank you, that is helpful.
I'm not sure why the suggestion that something doesn't quite work immediately leads me to explain it away but it does, and I like your suggestion to think before you react (or, allow your subconscious to stew). Clearly I'm not at the stage of resenting my agent's/ publisher's suggestions -- but I can dream I will be one day
Posted 26th August 2011 at 06:24 PM by Hex -
Don't think I've come across the term "patch" used this way before, but I like it.Quote:Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton A plot hole is an inexplicable omission, a flaw in the plot that makes no sense within the logic of the world and the story, or an inconsistency within the plot or in the actions of a character.
[...]
A patch would be if someone said to the writer, "Why no Ringwraiths?" and instead of thinking of the simplest way to handle the problem the writer came up with a not very plausible explanation
What I sometimes do, I think, is over-anticipate readers' questions, and patch what I fear they will perceive as plot weaknesses, even where they're not (i.e. where the explanation is plausible, but not obvious). Ideally, there would be ways of integrating the patch information more cleverly, but with a complex plot and limited POV characters, it sometimes seems impossible.
Since some of these explanations probably feel like genuine patches, they perhaps lead readers to suspect the existence of plot-holes where they might not otherwise have done. Still, I guess no one ever said this was easy ...Posted 27th August 2011 at 10:09 AM by HareBrain - Thanks. It's an analogy I came up with several years ago, so I'm probably the only one who uses it — which would explain why you've never come across it.Quote:Originally Posted by HareBrain Don't think I've come across the term "patch" used this way before, but I like it.
That's why I say you should always look first for something that is already part of the plot. Sometimes it's a matter of the missed opportunities I was talking about: something that you put into the story for some other reason and failed to consider all the possibilities and consequences. One of those possibilities may explain what needs explaining without inventing something solely for that purpose.Quote:Since some of these explanations probably feel like genuine patches, they perhaps lead readers to suspect the existence of plot-holes where they might not otherwise have done. Still, I guess no one ever said this was easy ...
I've explained this as looking for the revolver on the mantlepiece, but here is how Jane Austen playfully made use of the same idea at the end of Northanger Abbey, by suddenly producing a titled young gentleman for Miss Tilney to marry:
The moral, I guess, is that if you can't find the revolver, at least look for the laundry list.Quote:Concerning the one in question, therefore, I have only to add—aware that the rules of composition forbid the introduction of a character not connected with my fable—that this was the very gentleman whose negligent servant left behind him that collection of washing-bills, resulting from a long visit at Northanger, by which my heroine was involved in one of her most alarming adventures.Posted 27th August 2011 at 10:21 PM by Teresa Edgerton
Updated 27th August 2011 at 10:37 PM by Teresa Edgerton
