Day Two: Old Married Couples

By Carrie Lofty

*This is the second post from the trio that Carrie Lofty is doing on writing/editing.*

Aside from grammar goofs and verbosity, the next thing I notice when revising is pacing. Quality pacing is hard to keep consistent when happily meeting a daily word count. Upon a fresh read, I find it easier to identify dry sections and tedious descriptive paragraphs. My eyes start to glaze...

 For example, the first three chapters of the manuscript that become WHAT A SCOUNDREL WANTS (12/2; Kensington) started out with a bang. Then the hero and heroine share a pot of tea and go shopping for matching V-neck sweaters. Kidding. But they did start behaving like an old married couple. I needed to increase sexual tension and squash my tendency to resolve conflicts.

Those two problems--a lack of sexual tension and a lack of conflict--rank up there with gigantic stinking plot holes as my Big Revision Chores. But for all of that lacking going on, I don't add to the manuscript; it's a matter of hitting the delete key. Repeatedly. My lack of sexual tension and conflict comes when I've said too much, too soon. For example, here's a first draft description of the heroine, Meg, from Will Scarlet's point of view.

A long spiral of hair fell over her shoulder. Shining clean, textured like a loch when storms bluster its surface into choppy waves, those deep brown strands stretched toward him. His blood raced, and his mind followed to wild realms of stroking, clutching, inhaling.

Okay, so it's a little over the top. But what's worse--this was originally on page 88! By reducing, cutting, or moving the emotion I was in a hurry to get to, I delay gratification. (The finished product wound up on page 247.)

My delete key gets another serious workout regarding word choice. In the above quote, I obviously couldn't decide between "stroking," "clutching," or "inhaling," so I used all three. But revising means making choices. Consider this paragraph:

Meg traced the wound with practiced gentleness. Her fingertips gathered the particulars, but even her delicate, fluttering inquiry could not keep him from hurt. Extending from his collarbone to the thick muscle of his upper arm, the gash was longer than her hand and as deep as her thumb's last joint. Iron circles of ruined mail embedded his burning flesh.

Did I really need to use both "delicate" and "fluttering"? In fact, do I need quite so much about how gentle she is? Meg is not a gentle person, so her concern seems misplaced this early in the story. There's a bit of a POV issue regarding his perception of pain, and that third sentence is a mess. The same paragraph in the final draft reads:

She traced the wound, striving for gentleness. The gash was relatively shallow but longer than her palm, extending from his collarbone to the thick muscle of his upper arm. Splinters of ruined mail peppered hot flesh. He hissed despite her caution.

The sentences are quicker and cleaner, keeping pace with the action.

What if a paragraph is lovely but...useless? When I need to cut large chunks of writing, I stick them in a Bits & Pieces file I start for each new project. I salvage the strongest elements and preserve favorite turns of phrase, while quickly eliminating the clutter I might have been tempted to save. Even once the books are finished, I cannot bring myself to delete these files. One day they'll serve as a relic of my thought process, if someone gets curious.

Then it's on to sexual awareness. To my editor's chagrin, I'm heavily plot focused. Once the manuscript is trim and the plot is well in hand--no logic holes, no disappearing characters--I give myself permission to add detail. The most important details have to do with how the hero and heroine physically respond to one another. A tingle here. A glimpse of skin there. Anything to keep the reader engaged with how very aware they are of one another.

And speaking of editors, tomorrow we'll talk about what to do when artistic visions fails to line up perfectly.

Until then, I'm always looking for revision tips. How do you find the meat of the story and polish it to engaging and frankly awesome perfection?