Jun 29 2012

Some thoughts on editing

You’ll excuse me a brief hiatus from updating the website, as I got married last month! A busily wonderful time, and for anyone that’s interested we’ve got a little wedding highlights video we’re rather proud of.

Now I’m back to work, editing the new play I mentioned a few months ago. Editing is often thought of as the weary slog that follows the creative burst – some perspiration to balance your inspiration – but I feel this is unfair. A good edit can be every bit as creative and rewarding as the initial act of writing.

I think this misperception comes from the sense of pressure that hangs over every word when you’re deciding what to keep and what to cut, the idea that you may have to change everything, and that your work will never be done. And perhaps also the pernicious thought that a good writer would simply get it right the first time. Not so. A proper edit is really the triumph of your writing process, revealing the hard edges of your work to make it shine. It’s the chance to make sure you’re saying what you really meant to say.

A few simple rules can help get your editorial ball rolling. The following thoughts are drawn from my recent experience editing the play, but they can easily be extended to other forms of writing.

To start with: take out any words you don’t need. This may make your work shorter but, almost always, shorter is better. The words you don’t need are getting in the way of the good bit. I’m not saying you should get rid of any elaborate language: verbal dexterity is often quite necessary to deliver your point or particularly in drama to say something about the character using those words. Different characters have different ways of making themselves known, or of failing to.

The advice is really to find the purpose of your words, and be ruthless. Does that line reveal something about the plot, about a character or about the relation between two characters? Does it create an essential setting or mood? Could the line be shorter and still make its point? Could that point be made through action instead?

Many times when I’m reading through my work I’ll come across a line or a phrase that troubles me. I’ll look at a sentence and feel there’s something not quite right with it without being able to say why. I might then tinker with the sentence, change the order, substitute some synonyms, but invariably the breakthrough moment comes when I say to myself, ‘actually, do you need that sentence at all?’ There’s a tremendous sense of release that comes with ridding yourself of a bad line.

Your edit is also your chance to jump between the level of close detail and the wider structural level. If you’re only agonising over individual lines you’re not stepping back to feel the shape of the whole drama. As best I can, I will take the audience’s point of view and ask myself where the peaks are coming, and do they feel right? What is the effect I’m trying to create on the audience through the dramatic shifts?

One question that always arises for me from the structural perspective is: can I start further in? Do I need my opening section at all? Often the writer is desperate to set the scene in the opening pages, or there’s a process of warming up, preparing for the real action. All of which is of far more value to the writer than to the audience.

By all means use these pages to help you get started with your first draft, but the edit is where you can let them go. From the audience’s point of view a little disorientation in the opening scene is a good thing, it hooks their interest. They are stepping into a conflict already in progress – the world of the play exists before the audience’s window into that world opens.

If you start a little further into the action you can exploit the natural human propensity to try and catch up, to fill in the blanks, to want to take sides. Trust that your audience will understand what is going on, and you can deliver the detail along the way.

Next time I’ll follow this train of thought with some observations about editing dialogue in particular. How can you make sure your characters are speaking believably while still saying the things you need them to say?

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Jan 30 2012

Asking unnecessary questions

I’ve been working on a new play this month (details under wraps for the moment), and I’ve found it very helpful to build full profiles for each character before I begin any dialogue. The profile consists of a set of questions about the character’s background, physical characteristics, likes and dislikes, past experiences, that sort of thing.

Often the questions you ask are quite unrelated to the story in which you’re using the character. But by asking those questions and coming up with answers you find out things you didn’t know about the character – or maybe didn’t know that you knew – which in turn gives you much greater confidence when deploying the character in your story.

The first questions you ask about any character tend to concern the function that person fills in your story. So if your character is going to rob a bank and take some other characters hostage you might ask ‘why does this person have no respect for the law?’, ‘is he prepared to kill to achieve his goal?’, ‘is there some childhood experience that helps explain his current actions?’ The search for motive initiates a simple definition of character.

But it’s when you start asking the unrelated questions that the character really comes to life. Which newspaper does s/he read, if any? Where did s/he grow up? How does s/he vote? What music does s/he like? Even if you answer these questions at random you have somewhere to start from, thanks to the implications which spring up almost unbidden.

So your bank robber loves 80s heavy metal bands. Does this mean he equally hates 80s pop? Which childhood friend or influential adult introduced him to his favourite bands? Has his taste since evolved to more contemporary rock bands or is he stuck in the past?

Or if he reads the Express, is that out of habit, or because he agrees with the paper’s editorial stance, or because his parents read the Express? Each answer reveals a new facet of his personality, and these nuances deepen your understanding of the character beyond whatever it is you need him to do or think to fill his prescribed role in your plot.

Sometimes the answers eventually find their way into your story, sometimes they don’t, but they all help to give you a concrete sense of that person such that you could now drop him into any situation and you’d know how he would react. That you’ve gained a prior sense of the character’s response to any other question that may arise. And you can begin to test how the character will rub against other characters in the story. Will there be a natural dramatic tension to engage the audience?

This may seem like stating the obvious to some – of course you should have a detailed understanding of your characters before you write their story – but to me it has proved a breakthrough. I’ve previously tended to start writing and work out my characters along the way. The story always came first, and if I didn’t have a story I was stuck.

Now, by forcing myself to step back and work on the profiles first, I feel I’m getting to know my characters before we set out on the journey, beyond the confines of any particular story. And it’s amazing to me how quickly they come to life once you start asking the questions you don’t need to ask.

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