Development editing: a tale of two halves - by Rowena House

What a summer, hey? Hot, long, and creatively a season of two halves, the first full of despondency, the second far more rewarding.

With hindsight, I can see that the despondency stemmed from events linked to, but essentially outside the writing process. That is, after finishing Draft 1 of the C17th work-in-progress in April, I set it aside to ‘compost’ for at least six weeks while I began the PhD’s critical commentary.

That commentary required me to re-read five years’ worth of research and creative notebooks to re-discover what I’d forgotten along the way.

Instead of inspiration, however, the 2020 and 2021 notebooks triggered memories about family deaths and associated crises during those years which I thought I’d dealt with, but which exploded afresh, leaving everything else in ruins. Inevitably, it took time to pick up the pieces.

Fortunately, research came to the rescue in the form of a deep dive into legal history, a nice, solid and simple thing to do. Or so I thought. In fact, the bigotry of the seventeenth century drove me mad which turned out to be jolly useful, as I’ll explain below. Meanwhile, jangled nerves were soothed by a meeting with fellow writer friends at an academic conference. 

The subject of the conference also proved instructive. It was about the discipline of creative criticism, something I’d not heard of before, but turned out to be what I was doing! That is, the WIP responds creatively to another writer’s work, in my case that of a pamphleteer. Who knew?

I think that conference might have been a turning point in terms of getting back on track with the development edit, but it didn’t feel it at the time. Rather, I felt dumb for not knowing that’s what my story was about. Hey ho.

Anyhow, summertime offered opportunities for the familiar pick-me-up of physical research trips. I went to a restored Norman keep, similar to the one where the witch trials took place and wandered around it for hours, and later to the location of the witch trials on the same days they took place. Well, almost the same days as I failed to account for the shift from the Julian to Gregorian calendars.

Despite the eleven-day discrepancy, places and times that had, up till then, been purely imaginary became real: the slant of the sun on a window, landscapes my characters would have lived in, plants they would have seen. Wandering through France had been a big part of researching The Goose Road and making WW1 feel real; I knew it would help this time. (Why I put it off for so long is probably worth exploring, but not now.)

Anyhow, back in June, while still feeling miserable, a brief one-to-one with an editor had convinced me to revisit the feminist B-plot which I’d put on hold in 2024 after failing for years to come up with a convincing and relevant female character and plot.

Having re-committed to this idea, the anger I felt over the irrational bigotry of powerful seventeenth-century men regarding the (im)possibility of witchcraft super-charged something in my subconscious, which promptly delivered both a character and the bones of her plot within hours of making that decision.

It happened on retreat at Casa Ana in the Sierra Nevada, Spain, a break from home which I’d hoped would end the blues but turned into a disaster for the aforesaid reasons about triggered memories. But perhaps the emotional extremity of that period was one of the drivers behind that sudden creative moment. 

So, ta, patriarchal bigots, then and now. You’re seriously worth fighting against.

Since then, her story has developed in leaps and bounds, fed by years of research and guided by trusted plotting systems like John Truby’s seven story steps and Story Grid’s foolscap templates, along with the ‘backroom girls’ of the unconscious who’ve come up trumps repeatedly when set story problems to solve.

It feels good to have a woman’s viewpoint interrupting my male protagonist’s story. She’s not an obvious heroine. Not a victim. Not a witch. Just a woman in and of her time who can speak to us (I hope).

Thanks to her and another retreat at the ever-brilliant Chez Castillon this month, I now have the first quarter of their combined manuscript on file, with the development edited A-plot braided with Draft 1 of her B-plot, plus a head buzzing with ideas. Phew. 

PS Daily writing updates over on Facebook at Rowena House Author. Would be lovely to chat there.

Not on X or Instagram much. 

Endings Part I: where to start? By Rowena House

My favourite writing guru, Robert McKee, explains in Story the great benefit to the writer of knowing our endings: once we have one, we can reverse the process of cause and effect to build a better story.

Whether you retrofit that better story after finishing a first draft or plot it from the outset is a personal choice, or maybe a function of our psychology. Me, I plot because I can’t help it, but I try not to over-plot as that hampers writing with passion and honesty.

But sooner or later we all have to look at the story from a reader’s point of view. And that, I think, is when we really need to decide on an outline for the ending at least.

Not convinced? Then how about this: the ending contains the “obligatory scene”, the one the entire story has been building towards (more in Part II next month about which scene this is, the Crisis decision or Climax action).

If the obligatory scene doesn’t resolve the problem set up in Act 1, the overall plot (and major character arc) will almost certainly need a wholesale rethink to tie the two together and create a unified whole.

The problem (as every writer, editor and guru worth their salt points out) is that original endings are getting harder to write; there are just so many stories about these days, readers have seen it all before.

The solution? To expend a great deal of imaginative time and effort devising the most satisfying ending possible within our story worlds.

That way, fingers crossed, readers (and editors) will ask for more.

Okay, fine, said a writer friend with whom I was having this conversation last week. But what does all that mean in practice? These two ABBA blogs are my attempt to answer his question as far as I can.

Plotting endings

Scouring the literature, I’d say there’s a broad consensus about four main endings for archetypal plots in any genre, i.e. those with one or more lead character with a defined story goal.

These four are: positive, negative, ambiguous/open and ironic endings.

For more on each, do have a look at James Scott Bell’s The Last Fifty Pages: the Art & Craft of Unforgettable Endings. I got it for a bargain £3.oo on Kindle. In Write your Novel from the Middle, Bell describes an alternative, holistic plotting method which unifies the ending with the start and middle, rounding out his advice in Plot & Structure. I thoroughly recommend all three books. Meanwhile…

A positive ending is one where the protagonist achieves their goal and is happy about it. This is a staple for romances, enlivened by the obstacles strewn in the way of the couple’s happily-ever-after.

For other genres, positive endings tend to be enriched by sacrifices made along the way, with their attendant psychological wounds, and/or crucial life lessons learned.

I think positive endings are very useful for children’s, teen and Young Adult fiction, since (in my worldview) hope for the future ought to be their birth-right. We can give our characters hell along the way, but…

A negative ending is one where the protagonist does NOT get what they want and is sad/angry/devastated about it. Or dead - and not in a nice, self-sacrificing way, either. Shakespeare was big on negative ending; see Hamlet, Macbeth etc. It’s the come-uppance, tragic pay off; a punishment for making an anti-social or immoral life choice. So probably not a great ending for Picture Books through to lower MG!

Ambiguous endings (did they or didn’t they damn well get what they wanted?) or, more kindly, open endings tend to be found at the more literary end of the spectrum, also in short stories.

Open endings leave it up to the reader to imagine life after the story, and wonder about the ramifications for the characters of its events. Personally, I love a good open ending, but I know they bug some readers, a minority of whom might well write you a rude Amazon review.

For young people’s fiction, I guess it’s a matter of degree: the more sophisticated the story (and the older the reader) the more nuance and uncertainty they can handle. But for me nuance is best handled through...

Irony

Irony is, imho, the richest hunting ground for original material for endings. I can’t comment on fiction for readers younger than 11 as I’ve not been in contact with those markets for years, but I reckon irony can work in any story aimed at 11 to 101 years-old readers.

If you read Kelly McCaughrain’s excellent ABBA post last week, you’ll have seen her favourite character arc (inspired by KM Weiland) which - to simplify for the sake of brevity - pits a protagonist’s desire against their subconscious or unknown need, culminating in the discovery of a truth which demonstrates that what they needed was, all along, more important than what they wanted. That’s a tried and trusted form of irony with lots of positive overtones. Here’s the link for more details:

https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2019/08/quick-character-quiz-kelly-mccaughrain.html

Irony is also the backbone of Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moorish warrior who learns he had what he wanted all along, a loyal wife in Desdemona, but only after he’s killed her in his unwarranted jealous rage.

There is deep irony in the title of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (spoiler alert), home of Jane Seymour who will supplant Anne Boleyn in King Henry VIII’s affections in the following book, leading to Anne’s execution. After 650 pages about Cromwell helping Henry to get what he wants (Anne), Wolf Hall are the last two words of this epic novel.

Other classic examples of irony include a protagonist who:

·       gets what they want, only to find it wasn’t worth the getting (a variant on the positive ending);

·       doesn’t get what they want, but is glad about it due their transformation wrought by the story’s events (riffing on the negative ending);

·       realises they’ve thrown away the very thing/person that could have made them happy (see Othello above); a variant of which is,

·       realising they’ve rejected the person who could have been their friend/ally/true love in favour of someone who isn’t.

·       Being destroyed by the person/thing they’ve set out to destroy is perhaps best left to YA horror and adult fiction.

·       Discovering a deeply-held belief is in fact a lie is probably one for mature readers as well.

·       Discovering an ally is an enemy and vice versa is a well-recognised ironic twist for just about any genre, if perhaps a tad clichéd.

Natch, there are more, but I won’t try to list them all.

For upbeat endings, negative ironic twists can also be used to set up the ending, e.g. after coming face-to-face with a cruel irony at the close of Act 2, the shock of finding out the truth precipitates the final Crisis decision and Climax in Act 3.

All of which might sound rather formulaic, but if irony worked for Shakespeare and Hilary Mantel…

For me, discovering a story’s ending - imagining it, reimagining it, sleeping on it, plotting it or weaving back and forth from it during an edit (thinking all the while about how it will resonate with a reader, and how it might resonate more) - is one of the hardest parts of the storyteller’s craft, but - ultimately - the most satisfying.

Next month I’ll look at another side of the process: the structure of endings and how that links with character arcs, including the interwoven roles of the Crisis decision, Climax action and the Resolution.

See you then, I hope!

@HouseRowena on Twitter

Rowena House Author on Facebook

Website: rowenahouse.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Writing Picture Books – Heather Dyer

I'm a freelance developmental editor of children's books, so I see a lot of picture books written by beginners. They are (wisely) seeking feedback before they submit their work to editors and agents.

Here are things I most often suggest:

CUT! CUT! CUT! Editing is usually about taking words out. Often the first verse or first few lines can be cut as they’re preamble to the story ‘proper’. Don’t describe anything that can be illustrated. Don’t include too much dialogue or character reflection. Show things happening in short order, briefly, and keep the language simple. Any words that aren’t serving the storyline need to be removed – they’re padding, and they slow your story down. 

Rhyming verses can be nice, but they’re difficult to translate, and publishers often depend on foreign sales to cover the cost of producing these expensive picture books. Narrative prose is easier to sell abroad.

Unless you’re a professional illustrator, don’t attempt to draw illustrations or have an illustrator friend do them for you. 

A publisher will want to have a say in the style, content and layout of illustrations, and if they want to commission your story they will find an illustrator for you. You may be asked for your opinion – but the illustrator will be given the creative freedom to come up with their own designs.

However, if there’s something in your story that needs to be illustrated because it’s crucial to the storyline – but hasn’t been mentioned in the text – then you can write a short note to the illustrator, describing what needs to be shown.

Although the illustrations and layout won’t be up to you, as author, it is very useful to distribute the text of your story across the ‘imagined’ pages of a finished picture book. This can help show you where you have too much text relating to one page or scene. It can also show you how often the ‘scene’ needs changing, since each page should contain an illustration that’s sufficiently different to the pages before and after (except where you want a double-page spread). You'll see what I mean once you start paginating your text and imagining what might appear on the corresponding page.

How many pages in a picture book? Usually 24, 32 or 40. It's always a number that’s divisible by 8, for printing reasons. The first and last pages are usually front matter or end pages, so you could think about starting your story on page 4 or 5.

You don’t need to submit this plan, just put the imaginary page number above each section of text in your manuscript. This will help the editor or agent ‘visualize’ how the story will unfold across the pages of a finished book.

For a brilliant example of how concise a picture book can be, and how the text works in tandem with the illustrations, check out Jon Klassen’s wonderful This is Not My Hat. Here’s a book that’s beautiful in its simplicity and in which the text and illustrations rely upon each other, Despite it's simplicity, it contains an ambiguous message that makes even adults think twice.

Here, the little fish is speaking. The little fish has stolen the big fish's hat, and thinks s/he's got away with it. But s/he has been spotted by the crab.

Note the lovely contradiction here between the text and the illustrations! This example demonstrates how little needs to be said in the text - and how much the illustrations can add.

In a picture book, the text and the illustrations work in tandem to tell the story. So, although you don't have to be an illustrator to write a children's book, it does help to think about how the text might work alongside the illustrations.

An author might be consulted on the illustrations, but they won't be able to dictate to the illustrator. It can feel scary relinquishing control, but it can also be wonderful to see how much atmosphere, humour and characterisation an illustrator can add to your story. It's like seeing your story come to life.

Good luck!

Heather Dyer, Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow

http://rlfconsultants.com/consultants/heather-dyer/

www.heatherdyer.co.uk