one last look at the terrible science of merciless self-editing
Alright friends, once more unto the breach! You know how this works by now (if you don’t, go back and read the last 4 posts, I’ll wait).
If you haven’t heard the saying, it goes: Kill your darlings.
What it means is you can’t be afraid to delete. It’s one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. Words on a page isn’t the ultimate goal, only a means to an end, and that end is: to tell a story your audience finds compelling.
As a writer, space is at a premium; anyone querying will be familiar with the agonies of keeping an eye on word count. Thing is, trimming the metaphorical fat is the easy part, and often doesn’t get you far. You tossed that word salad, you savagely sliced away a subplot that didn’t seem necessary, and that wretched word count just isn’t going down.
Not to worry. It’s my experience that some of our worst sins against brevity have as special monster-power a talent for camouflage: the eye passes over them. Once you find them, slaying them is child’s play.
For our final adventure, we’re going to attack the particularly capricious beast that is your hero’s past.
Episode 5: Night of the Living Flashback
ripping off that hockey mask to reveal the ugly truth: readers don’t necessarily care how your hero got to be that way
I know this feels counterintuitive, and you know me: no such thing as a rule without an exception. Backstory is crucial, it’s what makes your characters feel real.
Here’s the rub: if you did your job right, you’ve got your audience invested, but the story they’re interested in isn’t the one you’re suddenly telling. They want to know about the crisis you got them pumped about, and here you are blathering on about some shit that’s only tangentially related.
How do you spot the difference? It’s a tough call, because how much is too much depends on many factors.
- your voice/ style
- the reader’s personal taste
- the story you’re telling
You’re not reading this so I can fail to give you advice, though, so here are some thoughts.
Backstory
A few questions to consider when weighing whether to highlight/ delete a chunk of text:
- relevance: the fact that it made your protag the person they are isn’t necessarily enough. Did it make them specifically the right (or wrong) person to deal with the crisis that is, after all, what we actually care about?
- concision: whether or not it’s interesting, it definitely isn’t the story you’re telling. Can you help me understand this in a few short sentences or are we talking chapters here?
- synchronicity: this element of your character’s past didn’t just influence their personality and habits, but created the circumstances that put them in the position of protagonist. Jackpot!
Flashbacks
Not everyone will agree, but I happen to love a good flashback. Done right, this can blow the top off your narrative. Done less right, it’s vexing and readers will probably skip ahead until they find their way back to current events.
Issues to consider as you contemplate plugging in that piece of text that –let’s be honest — you wrote months ago when you were working on your book bible.
- deception: a POV character can’t lie to the audience, but they can certainly fib by omission. The most powerful flashbacks I’ve encountered tear the mask off an untruth our hero has been allowing us to believe since we met them.
- secrets & mysteries: this can be a fun way to introduce a crucial piece of information a character failed to pick up on back before the plot evolved.
- clarity: if you plan to insert a few flashbacks, be sure it’s easy for readers to tell past from present. You might consider separating these segments visually and referring to your past and present protag by slightly different names.
(Basilisk) eyes on the prize
This is a post about cutting text, not adding it, so let me loop us back. Your flashback needs to present new information, and it needs to be stunning, so much so that telling us about it in the present narrative comes a distant second.
Don’t let them take over. This happens. You lose sight of which story you’re telling. Maybe you made space for your flashbacks in such a way that they developed a sense of imperative, and now you feel compelled to produce more scenes from the past to keep your structure consistent. If you find yourself doing that, you might want to go back to the drawing board.
As far as the origin story is concerned, you might convince your readers to be intrigued by the minutiae of your protag’s upbringing, but you have to hook them first. That means cutting all that stuff and telling a gripping story.
And there you have it! Word count is a cruel master and I know a lot of writers really struggle with the editing process. I’ve seen people complain about the maddening experience of winding up right back at the number they started with, because for every word they cut, they added one.
Remember, it isn’t just your prose that can use a punch-up. Sometimes the guilty parties are macroscopic, and you can cut big chunks of verbiage that weren’t contributing.
Hopefully somewhere in this series was a helpful tip on a common misstep you hadn’t even noticed you were doing. I had a lot of fun writing this, and I won’t apologize for my lame Halloween jokes. I regret nothing!
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