I'm about to embark on a major rewrite for a story I'm working on. The story is the longest I've ever written at this point and I have the ending in my head, but I have to go back and revise the beginning so the ending will unfold naturally from the story itself. I've printed out the pages and filled them with suggestions, crossed out parts that don't belong now that the basic story has changed but...
I really like some of what I've written and now I need to kill it. Yes, the horrible "kill your darlings" part of writing. I hate it and I fear it, but I know that it's necessary. So, in order to get myself in the mood, I took an old flash story and rewrote it. Cutting and adding, and changing the gist of the original story, "Perfection", and taking it from a 300 word flash http://flashpanalley.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/perfection-by-sandra-seamans/ to a 500 word flash with a new title and a slightly different angle:
Shattered Illusions
Jane hurried down the old log road, skirting the fallen tree branches and puddles of water that littered the road in the wake of the fast moving thunderstorm that had passed through the area. The storm had brought with it a smothering humidity but Pip knew exactly where she could cool off.
Worry chased her, making her feet move faster. Her husband was sleeping off a weekend drunk, if he woke up and found her gone there’d be hell to pay. But the thought of the cooling waters in Sylvia’s pool, well, a beating would be a small price to pay for a bit of relief from the heat.
Breaking out of the woods, Jane smothered a soft curse. The house lights were on and a fancy sports car was parked in the driveway. Sylvia’s husband must have returned from his business trip. She knelt down in the darkness waiting for the lights to go off so she could slip into the pool that filled the white-picket-fenced backyard.
Jane envied the woman who lived in the house that had once graced the covers of “House Beautiful”. And Sylvia, with her unblemished skin, silky blond hair that shimmered gold in the sunlight, and her perfectly toned body, had once been a cover girl herself. Jane felt like a fat frump whenever she saw Sylvia, hating the drab olive color of her skin and the frizzy curls in her black hair. Sylvia was everything Jane wanted to be and never could never be. The closest she came, was cleaning the woman’s house and sneaking into her pool at night.
Shouting and the sound of smashing china shook Jane out of her daydreams. A loud thud and a slammed door chased shivers up her spine. Those were familiar sounds in Jane’s world, but surely not in Sylvia’s.
Sylvia’s husband was a hard working man who appeared to be on more intimate terms with his frequent flier miles than his wife. His time away was spent checking out exotic locations for his travel agency, returning home to his wife after weeks in the perfumed sunshine of far away islands. Places he never took Sylvia. Jane always found it odd that Sylvia only cried when he came home. Now she began to understand the reason for the tears. They weren’t so different after all.
Jane breathed a sigh of relief when Sylvia slipped out of the house, her bare feet padding quietly across the flagstone patio toward the edge of the pool. She watched as Sylvia stripped the designer clothes from her body, her naked perfection drenched in moonlight. Jane’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of such celestial beauty, but the tears running down Sylvia’s cheeks belied the perfection. Jane rose from her hiding place, she wanted to tell Sylvia that she wasn’t alone. Instead, her screams filled the air, as Sylvia put a gun to her head and splattered blood and brain matter across the moonlit pool.
END
Using that exercise has helped me prepare to move into the longer story and hopefully as I work, the fears will subside and I'll get the story whipped into shape.
How do you approach the rewriting and editing portion of your stories? Do you freeze up a bit or do you slash away like a ninja on speed?
8 comments:
I rewrite and edit as I go, starting each day from the first word. It's very slow. I never slash and burn after it's done as you describe.
I think it comes from beginning with writing poetry. My problem today is how to you push along a story that just doesn't excite you. Maybe it will turn out well, but I don't have much enthusiasm for it.
I do that also, Patti, but sometimes the stories take a different direction from my original vision and I have to go back and do the slash and burn.
When I have to push a story, I generally just set it aside. If I don't like it, I'm pretty sure the reader won't. Sometimes walking away gives me a better picture of what the story can be and I get excited again.
The FIRST thing I do if I'm going for a major rewrite of the story is save the orginal as is under the title: storyorgdoc. only THEN do I begin the rewrite under something like "STorynew." Never work from your original on that kind of task. Some of those darlings may turn out to be useful.
I keep hardcopies of the originals, Charles. For some reason, it's easier for me to find what I want on the hard copy than in a computer file. Though I have taken large chunks of stories and put them in a save cuts file in case I need them. I like your idea though and I do have the originals of this particular story in some RTF files.
Similar to what Charles did, when I decided to do a major rewrite/gutting of a 31 page story, I saved the new version under the new name and printed out the old one.
Once I'd finished the new one (extra 4K/7 pages) I deleted the old one.
As for freezing up, I did for about a week on my recently completed book project. I needed to lengthen the prologue and it took me the better part of a week to figure out how to do it without messing up the rest of the book.
Yes, I think that's the basic fear, G, that we'll screw up what we already have and wind up with a piece of crap.
I push forward, then often backtrack when something doesn't work or the story changes paths. I slash and burn repeatedly through the course of writing a story-- the longer the story, the more hacking, slashing, and do-overs. If I particularly like a passage, I do save it in a Cut Scenes file, never to be resurrected again, but it's there if I wanted it ;-)
My stories rarely end up the way I thought they would eventually, so it requires reworking. And because my stories are entirely unoutline/ pre-plotted, I don't know what will happen in a scene until that scene is written, thereofre, anytime something changes, I have to go back and start at that point and save as much, if anything, in between where I was and where the new idea changes things. (Does that makes sense? It's clearer in my head, but not in words.)
It makes perfect sense, Clair, and that's exactly how I write. I ususally have a beginning and a possible ending when I start but then one the characters will do or say something that entirely changes the story. I love it when that happens but it sure makes for a lot of rewriting at times.
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