Brutal Draft Revisions

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

In many ways, my children have been a blessing to me.  There are all the big reasons they are…and a smaller one: they’re nothing at all like me. They’re extroverted and involved and fascinated by Big Activities that I avoid.

I wrote poems and stories in my room when I was in middle and high school.  They ride horses and scuba dive and rock climb and enjoy parties…and one is now a cheerleader. This means that I’m exposed to all kinds of situations and people that I would ordinarily never experience.

With the cheerleading—wow. It’s quite the culture change for me. In school, I was the one who hung out with the nerdy literary crowd…literary magazine, newspaper.  So it was with some level of discomfort  that I sat with the other cheerleading moms for the first basketball game that my daughter was cheering at last Thursday.  They were certainly not hanging out with the literary nerds in high school.  And none of them had apparently brought a spiral notebook to write in before the game started.

These moms have known me for years, though—we’ve always been acquainted with each other and run in the same circles because they all volunteer at the school, like me. We small talked for a bit, but then one mom put me in a death spiral of panic. “Your daughter is so tiny. Did you have to alter her cheer uniform?” she asked.

I stared at her. “Of course—the extra-small swamped her. It would have fallen off.”

“Did you keep the extra cloth?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I’m a non-sewing mom.  I took the uniform to an alterations lady.”

She gave me a worried look. “You might not know…but the school has to reuse those uniforms for next year.”  The other moms gazed solemnly at me.

Oh gosh, I was already in trouble and we’d just started with cheerleading.  I told her I guess I’d pay to replace the uniform…and the very next time I could get hold of my daughter, I turned up the bottom of the cheer top to see that the alterations lady, bless her soul, had merely cinched the material and sewn it together.  Phew.  The extra material was still there for next basketball season’s, almost certainly larger, cheerleader.

I may have to tip my alterations lady the next time I see her.  I’m so relieved she operates the same way I do—because I always keep the cut cloth from my stories, even if I’m positive I’ll never use it.

Altering a story:

I added a subplot to the first draft on Friday—and then promptly hated the subplot.  It didn’t seem right for the characters involved.

I made a search (by one of the characters’ names, since that was primarily how the subplot was used) and pulled out all the text. I figured, if I hated it, my editor (who’d asked for a subplot involving the character) would hate it, too.

I put it in a Word file labeled “cut scenes—Savannah.”  Just in case.

I wrote out another subplot involving Savannah on a separate Word doc.  This time I wanted to plan a more interesting arc for the poor character (who hadn’t been in the last book in the series and editor wanted a proper checking-in on her).

This arc also involved Savannah’s sister and their changing relationship.  It intersected with the mystery well, too, and gave an opportunity for Savannah to learn an important clue while she was grappling with her own problems.

Then I wove the subplot into the first draft.  This isn’t rocket science—or at least it’s not the way I do it.  I’m looking for a point in the narrative where there’s a good spot for an addition—obviously, this wouldn’t be in the middle of an important scene or a bit of dialogue.  It’s usually at the end of a scene or the beginning of another one.  Now, the place where Savannah discovers a clue is important, a longer scene, and is more important to the plot—it may get its own spot in the middle of two other, important, scenes in the book.

Then I read through to make sure the addition is cohesive and doesn’t repudiate something else I’ve written.  I remember one time I did this on another book and was shocked to see that I’d written the character as being out of town in a much-previous draft.  Yeah, we have to take stuff like that out.  Having the character be out of town visiting an ailing relative and then having the character discover a clue in town isn’t cool.

For this book, my editor wants several subplots for several characters she feels readers especially respond to.  I go through this process a few times.

What’s your process for removing and adding scenes and subplots?  Do you keep the text you delete from your draft (even if you feel that you’ll never use it?)

  Image by mconnors , MorgueFile

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