Diane Chamberlain's Blog - Posts Tagged "manuscript"
Lady Alice is Quite a Lady Alice
When I work on a manuscript, I take shortcuts. For example, one of my characters in my work-in-progress is named Rebecca, so I have my Word software set so that when I type "reb", it actually types Rebecca. The same with my character Dorothea. I type "doro" and Word types Dorothea.
(On a side note: my ex-husband once set up his poor secretary, Joan's, Word program so that every time she typed the word "the", it would show up as "Ouch, Joanie! Not so hard!")
Anyhow, I have a character in my current work-in-progress whom I love. She's this tiny African American woman named Lady Alice. I have my Word software set up so that every time I type the word "lady" it types "Lady Alice." This is causing me problems. I never realized how often I type the word "lady" in other documents and email. "The lady at the drugstore" becomes "The Lady Alice at the drugstore." "First Lady Michelle Obama" becomes "FIrst Lady Alice Michelle Obama." You get the idea.
Needless to say, I'm proofreading everything!
(On a side note: my ex-husband once set up his poor secretary, Joan's, Word program so that every time she typed the word "the", it would show up as "Ouch, Joanie! Not so hard!")
Anyhow, I have a character in my current work-in-progress whom I love. She's this tiny African American woman named Lady Alice. I have my Word software set up so that every time I type the word "lady" it types "Lady Alice." This is causing me problems. I never realized how often I type the word "lady" in other documents and email. "The lady at the drugstore" becomes "The Lady Alice at the drugstore." "First Lady Michelle Obama" becomes "FIrst Lady Alice Michelle Obama." You get the idea.
Needless to say, I'm proofreading everything!
The Backtrack List
Since my novels usually involve twists and turns, readers often ask me if I think all those plot points in advance. The answer is: I wish. What usually happens is that, despite my carefully plotted outlines, new ideas come to me once I really get into the writing. Sometimes it feels as though the characters are shaking the boat. Sometimes it's Diane, the writer, doing the shaking. The outcome is the same: I get to chapter five or twenty-seven or forty-two and something happens in the story that I wasn't expecting. That twist to the story, more often than not, requires me to make changes to previous chapters. Thus, the creation of my backtrack list.
With every draft of the book (I usually write between four and six drafts), I maintain such a list. It will have many small things on it. For example, the list to the left, which I'm now maintaining as I write a late draft of my work-in-progress, has a few items such as "plant chicken" and "Becca." I decided late in the game to give some of my characters a chicken coop, which means I need to go back and show the chickens from time to time. And Becca? My character, Maya, started calling her sister, Rebecca, "Becca" around chapter twenty of this draft (don't ask me why! I'm only the author), and I liked it, so I will have to go back and make sure Maya calls her Becca in the chapters I've already written. There are many other, larger, examples on this list that I won't share with you, because they'll give away too much of the story.
I love my backtrack list. It helps me keep order in an otherwise disorderly process. It allows me to move forward, knowing I can give my characters and myself free reign, because I can always amend what I've already set in place. Think about that when you encounter twists and turns in the next novel you read. You can bet the author had his or her own version of a backtrack list.
With every draft of the book (I usually write between four and six drafts), I maintain such a list. It will have many small things on it. For example, the list to the left, which I'm now maintaining as I write a late draft of my work-in-progress, has a few items such as "plant chicken" and "Becca." I decided late in the game to give some of my characters a chicken coop, which means I need to go back and show the chickens from time to time. And Becca? My character, Maya, started calling her sister, Rebecca, "Becca" around chapter twenty of this draft (don't ask me why! I'm only the author), and I liked it, so I will have to go back and make sure Maya calls her Becca in the chapters I've already written. There are many other, larger, examples on this list that I won't share with you, because they'll give away too much of the story.
I love my backtrack list. It helps me keep order in an otherwise disorderly process. It allows me to move forward, knowing I can give my characters and myself free reign, because I can always amend what I've already set in place. Think about that when you encounter twists and turns in the next novel you read. You can bet the author had his or her own version of a backtrack list.
Dup [doop]
The Midwife’s Confession is due a week from tomorrow, so if I blog this week at all, it will not be with anything profound! Right now I’m writing drafts three and four at the same time. Hard to explain, but that’s what I’m doing. (Keeper and Jet are helping me organize the mess of paper on the floor of my office).
To simplify, I’ve gone over the entire second draft in manuscript form and made changes by hand. Now I’m putting those changes, chapter by chapter, into the document on the computer. After 50 pages or so, I take a break from the computer, print out the part of draft three I’ve just created, work on that by hand, put those changes into the document, thus creating draft four. Get it? No? I can’t imagine why not.
Meanwhile, John is reading draft four as I turn it out, jotting down what works for him and what doesn’t. Once I’m done with draft four, I’ll take a look at his comments and create draft five. Then I’ll do the read-aloud. All this means no sleep for Diane this week!
So what does this have to do with the title of the blog post? Well, as I go through the manuscript, I constantly find words I think I’ve overused. I jot dup above the word. Dup stands for duplicate. Then when I input the changes into the document on the computer and I come to one of those words, I do a “find” to see how many times I’ve used the word and also, to make sure that different characters don’t use the same unique word. For example, if one character always says she’s “psyched,” I want to make sure another character doesn’t say the same thing. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from my brother Rob’s blog. He’s blogging here about his own writing:
First I check for the words I tend to overuse. They are usually the bits of physical punctuation that fit between lines of dialog, like frown, shrug, and sigh. (My sister Diane Chamberlain says that the characters in her novels tend to wince too much, which suggests that while being in one of my works is boring, being in hers is actually painful.)
That just cracks me up!
Anyhow, I’m going to get back to drafts three and four right now. I’ll check back in later this week. Have a good one!
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/...
To simplify, I’ve gone over the entire second draft in manuscript form and made changes by hand. Now I’m putting those changes, chapter by chapter, into the document on the computer. After 50 pages or so, I take a break from the computer, print out the part of draft three I’ve just created, work on that by hand, put those changes into the document, thus creating draft four. Get it? No? I can’t imagine why not.
Meanwhile, John is reading draft four as I turn it out, jotting down what works for him and what doesn’t. Once I’m done with draft four, I’ll take a look at his comments and create draft five. Then I’ll do the read-aloud. All this means no sleep for Diane this week!
So what does this have to do with the title of the blog post? Well, as I go through the manuscript, I constantly find words I think I’ve overused. I jot dup above the word. Dup stands for duplicate. Then when I input the changes into the document on the computer and I come to one of those words, I do a “find” to see how many times I’ve used the word and also, to make sure that different characters don’t use the same unique word. For example, if one character always says she’s “psyched,” I want to make sure another character doesn’t say the same thing. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from my brother Rob’s blog. He’s blogging here about his own writing:
First I check for the words I tend to overuse. They are usually the bits of physical punctuation that fit between lines of dialog, like frown, shrug, and sigh. (My sister Diane Chamberlain says that the characters in her novels tend to wince too much, which suggests that while being in one of my works is boring, being in hers is actually painful.)
That just cracks me up!
Anyhow, I’m going to get back to drafts three and four right now. I’ll check back in later this week. Have a good one!
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog/...
