Welcome to the first installment of My Writing Toolkit, where I share my efforts to strengthen and galvanize my writing, including real samples of my own rough drafts – both before and after! These adventures, for the foreseeable future, are largely intended to improve the quality of my prose rather than focus on big-picture, structural issues.
Why do this on a rough draft, when some of this may change or vanish altogether in future drafts? Why not just wait until later?
Three reasons!
The first one is that using my own story as workshop material offers immediate gratification; actual, visible improvement. While using passages provided by others can be helpful, and I'll use those as well, this way there's no wondering, Okay, this works great here, but I'm nervous it won't have such a positive effect for my own work!
Secondly, the writing process I've settled into the last year or so looks like:
- A detailed outline, start to finish, so my plot is neither convoluted nor gappy.
- A draft that hovers somewhere between a zero draft and a rough draft – sparse, yet fulsome. Everything that needs to happen on the page, happens.
Beyond that point is where the layers of sensory detail, depth of emotion, and recurring motifs come into play, but we're not there yet. That initial draft is a perfect playground, and I'll end up with even better groundwork for those rich, textured layers!
And thirdly, it's true that the result on the page might vanish in future drafts, which is why I won't take the time to go through my entire rough draft to date for each exercise. But the knowledge and experience I've gained will remain regardless. Besides, the earlier I reinforce these ideas, the more they'll be ingrained in the foundation of my writing, which leads to less revisions later – or at least that's the hope. 😉
Speaking of less revisions, I don't ever expect the improvements to my prose to negate the need for beta readers and editors. However, by improving my craft, I'll give these wonderful people something more fantastic to work with. Yay!
Today's writing adventure
On a recent perusal of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, I was drawn to their gentle admonishment about overusing "the as construction and the -ing construction", sometimes because, "This tends to place some of your action at one remove from your reader, to make the actions seem incidental, unimportant," and other times because, "They can give rise to physical impossibilities." (pp. 193 - 194)
My early drafts were teeming with this nonsense! Two things that most aggravate me about that:
- The inaccuracy. Some actions are just too clumsy, if not impossible, to occur simultaneously.
- Pages with multitudes of as and -ing constructions read at turtle speed. Sometimes you want to slow things down, but the more prevalent it is, the more sluggish my draft feels.
That sluggishness is the main reason I want to integrate more active writing into earlier drafts: it helps instill varied pacing from the start, and I can get more intentional with this in later drafts. When everything feels sloooow while writing, my writing process crawls, too.
With all that in mind, let's have a look at a section from one of my rough drafts—a contemporary romance novella:
- BEFORE -
"I was just about to raid the fridge."
"There's not much. Typical Friday dregs."
"That figures." Lauren looked for herself, blinking owlishly as James flicked on the overhead light. A few half-empty tupperware containers, and a couple foil-wrapped slices of pepperoni and pineapple pizza.
I actually like the "as" in this case, because it gives a sense of what they're both doing in this moment and shows a change in the setting (the reader can now imagine the room in full light, rather than just being lit by the light of the fridge). But the "blinking owlishly" has to go. Not only is it passive, my characters blink ALL THE TIME!
After a quick revision, it looks like this:
- AFTER -
"I was just about to raid the fridge."
"There's not much. Typical Friday dregs."
"That figures." Lauren looked for herself as James flicked on the overhead light. A few half-empty tupperware containers, and a couple foil-wrapped slices of pepperoni and pineapple pizza.
A simple change, but it flows better already. Let's look at another example:
- BEFORE -
James walked over to the wall, starting at the beginning. He looked at the earliest sketches and mockups, showing long abandoned ideas for derelict skyscrapers and overrun highways, then moved to the first screenshots of the clock towers and spaceships that featured in the game's main setting.
"Starting at the beginning" is unnecessary, because it's clear in the next line that he's starting with the "earliest sketches and mockups". And I can do something with "showing", as well, though it's okay as it is. Here's the fix:
- AFTER -
James walked over to the wall. He looked at the earliest sketches and mockups, long abandoned depictions of derelict skyscrapers and overrun highways, then moved to the first screenshots of the clock towers and spaceships that featured in the game's main setting.
Not only is it more succinct, but I prefer the rhythm of how this reads out loud. There's a time and place for repeating things for emphasis, but this moment isn't important enough to merit that.
Shall we have another?
- BEFORE -
He called after Buddy, but he was a goner, galloping down the hall, ears flapping, then careening out of sight.
Taking off at a run, James tried to follow in his paw-steps, but Buddy was nowhere to be seen when he turned the corner.
I'm looking forward to playing up the humour of this chase in a future draft, but for now it just needs a more succinct framework:
- AFTER -
He called after Buddy, who galloped along the hall, ears flapping, and careened out of sight. James followed in his paw-steps, but Buddy was nowhere to be seen.
Mission accomplished! 😉
Let's have a look at one of those "as" moments, where one of my main characters is yelling at the stormy weather outside her apartment:
- BEFORE -
"Oh, shut up." Lauren glared outside as she scrambled past the coffee table, trying not to dislodge last night's takeout boxes, and began to dig into the back of the couch. "We all know it's freezing."
This doesn't make sense as a simultaneous occurrence and begs disaster—good luck scrambling past a piece of furniture while looking outside at the stormy weather and not falling flat on your face! It's also too long a moment for Lauren to be looking outside, if it's both when she's moving past the coffee table and searching down the back of the couch for her phone.
Here's how I've changed this passage:
- AFTER -
"Oh, shut up." Lauren scrambled past the coffee table, trying not to dislodge last night's takeout boxes, and began to dig into the back of the couch. "We all know it's freezing."
I took the first phrase ("glared outside as she") out entirely—the dialogue here conveys her annoyance just fine. I did keep the "trying" for now, though. It seems to work, connected solely to her navigating between pieces of furniture.
How did this writing exercise go?
It was super! Some portions were less prone to passivity and "as" phrasings than others, and the more I looked at the offending sections, the more clearly I could discern between places where it worked and places in need of revision. I've also noticed that in the week or so since first doing this exercise, my subsequent writing has less of these "stylistic constructions" (Self-Editing, p. 193). Love it!
The way I went about this was relatively simple - not diving into different kinds of passive phrasing, various grammatical constructions, and so on. And I'm glad. What I did here has already changed my writing for the better, and I can deepen my explorations of these topics in the future, building on what I've learned in the past.
Also, this may be early days, but I've already realized the need for a bespoke revisions checklist, one that includes both recommendations from resources like Self-Editing for Fiction Writers and things picked up through my own analyses, like my characters' tendency to blink every five seconds. Some of this will improve in time, and whatever sticks like a bur, no problem! I've got a customized checklist to help me out!
I'm excited to carry on with this series, and will link the next revision adventure here when it's ready. In the meantime, happy revising!
Helpful Resources & Works Cited
Berve, Caitlin. "Passive Voice: How to Recognize and Fix It in Creative Writing." Ignited Ink Writing, 13 October 2019. Accessed 12 February 2024.
Browne, Renni and Dave King. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. 2nd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.