GUEST BLOGGER: ERIC BEETNER

Guest Blog: 
Last second changes – the writer’s bread and butter

by Eric Beetner

Most writers would agree that revisions are where the real work takes place. It can be frustrating, fun, infuriating, cathartic, and boring as hell. I don’t know any writers who like reading their own work. (none who admit it anyway) And once you’ve completed a novel-length work often times the last thing in the world you feel like doing is starting at the top and going over it all again.

I am in the midst of a final read-through on my latest book co-written with J.B. Kohl titled Borrowed Trouble. We’ve got a publishing date set, cover art done, blurbs have come in and are actually positive. This last once-over should be only to check the formatting and make sure all the commas and quotes are in the right place. Right?

Well, just last night I wrote to my co-author (yep, we’ve never met. She lives on the opposite coast and our partnership is all done online. It’s a brave new world.) I told her of an issue I found as I was reading through. It seemed like a major why-haven’t-we-noticed-this-before problem. It is probably more of a personal preference, don’t want  to risk confusing the reader type of issue but it involves absolutely gutting an entire chapter and coming up with a whole new scene. Did I mention the final manuscript is due in two weeks?

But in some ways, that is what this process is for. This book has gone through many changes as it evolved. Our original outline for book #1, One Too Many Blows To The Head, barely changed at all. Borrowed Trouble has been much more fluid and with our unique working style, trading chapters across time zones via email, the process has been a real experiment in adaptability.

For example, Jennifer sent in a chapter that introduced a character who wasn’t in the outline at all. I loved him. He’s a great and vibrant villain. I knew we needed more of him. The story changed fairly dramatically to accommodate him. A deviation from the original plan? Sure. But the book is better for it.

On One Too Many Blows To The Head we pulled an epilogue out at the last second. It was a set up for what became Borrowed Trouble but at the time the plot wasn’t fully fleshed out and we didn’t want to pin ourselves to anything. Once it went down in print it would be quite a slap in the face to readers to switch it up on them, kind of like the mysterious disappearing older brother on Happy DaysBewitched or the suddenly switching Darren on . 

Writing a couple of guys like our (anti) heroes, Ray Ward and Dean Fokoli, can be a challenge. They don’t really like each other much. In the first book they were enemies and now they must team up, reluctantly. And for most of the time they aren’t together. The timeline of two parallel stories is a bitch to get right.

One guy might get way out ahead of the other and need to be pulled back. Chapter breaks are moved, scenes cut, scenes added. A whole island excursion for our boys went away during the writing. That never got written at all but this recent development is something that has been in the book since draft #1, although it is the changes around it that caused the issue. Sometimes changing one thing becomes the first domino to fall. 

Oh well. Could be worse. Coming up with new ideas to write yourself out of a corner is a challenge any writer should relish. Some writers who eschew outlines altogether manage to write entire books by the seat of their pants. I know I couldn’t do it but the prospect of making last minute changes does not intimidate me, and that’s not only because this particular issue came up in one of Jennifer’s chapters so I’m relatively off the hook. The hardest part for me was breaking the news that I thought we had a problem. 

Her response was a from-the-gut Charlie Brown-esque “AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!” Perfect.

All along in the revisions of any of my work, with a partner or without, I try to keep the mantra in mind – “When in doubt, cut it out.” If I go around and around about whether or not some scene, some line, some character even, is working or maybe not working – the very fact that I’m asking the question is my answer. Basically, if you have to ask, “Does this deserve to be in or out?” the answer is always: OUT.

In my day-to-day paying job I work as a TV editor. (nope I don’t make a living selling books. Shocking, I know) The work is a great way to keep in shape for the thousands of decisions of what to keep in and what to take out that take place when writing a novel. My whole world is storytelling, sometimes on screen and sometimes on the page. And yes, the irony is not lost on me that I both write books and contribute to their demise and irrelevance through television, but if the two worlds can coexist in my small life I have hope they can share space in the larger cultural universe. 

Editing and revision effects pace, effects whether you interrupt the reader’s experience by forcing them to re-read a sentence or scene for clarity issues. I use the same rule cutting for the screen – if I’m questioning a cut it means it doesn’t belong there. I have the added pressure of a network running time to keep me trimming on a TV show but with a novel it is easy to think you have all the time in the world. Not true.

As a reader I get bored easily. Could be the fact that I basically watch TV for a living and make it faster and shorter but really it comes down to the same issue – efficient storytelling. 

So a first draft of any of my novels comes in shorter than the revised draft and then that draft gets trimmed down to a final that is shorter than the in-between. This last pass is the time to really ask the tough questions of what deserves to make it or not. Anything I’ve been on the fence about since early on gets excised. Just like a coin flip, you sometimes don’t even know you’re on the fence about it, or are too attached to something to make the tough call, until the deadline is upon you. Funny how once that coin starts to turn in the air, the decision you thought was so hard suddenly becomes crystal clear.

So I keep trimming, keep shoring up the foundation. In the case of Chapter 30, it is a down-to-the-studs renovation taking place just before the owners move in. Don’t you worry, we’ll get it done. Some of the best work happens under pressure. And in over fifteen years of editing I’ve never sent dead air out to broadcast. There will be words on a page when this is over. More than 78,000 of them at last count. The final tally will be a little different but we’ll know we did what was right for the reader. 

Every writer has a basement full of the corpses of deleted scenes and material that hit the cutting room floor at the last second. The books are better for it. If books ever get “extras” like DVDs maybe the old chapter will get a second life. Really, it’s best to keep the little mistakes hidden away forever. How many times have you watched the Deleted Scenes from a movie and thought the film would be better with that junk in? I’ll vote never. 

So chapter 30 goes back to the drawing board. You’ll never know the difference. And each time I go through the process of making the tough decisions of what is best for the story, I become a better writer. And just like Charlie Brown and that stubborn football, I’ll keep at it no matter how many times I end up flat on my back.

Bio:

Eric Beetner

Writer (who isn't these days?) For our purposes here, a crime fiction writer. Short stories and novels. I also write screenplays in many genres.My BLOG