Season 2, Episode 46: Knitting Together a Giant Quilt of Pain and Death…
IN THIS EPISODE
Abby's recently returned from the Author Accelerator Maine retreat, which was a powerhouse of writing breakthroughs. There was laughter! There were tears! There was motivation! Coaches got to work one-on-one with writers and got down to the why of each writer's novels, and how to get that down on the page.
This week, Mel's convinced as her edits are moving forward, her book is actually getting worse. She'll open up the later chapters of her book and be horrified at the number of changes that need to be made - she can't stop finding things to dislike. It's not even remotely where she wants it to be, which is somewhat to be expected, but it's terrifying. Kemlo says not to worry; it doesn't mean the book is getting worse - Mel is just getting better at editing.
“When you first start revisions, especially if you’ve never done it before, you don’t know what you don’t know...after you’ve done 17 chapters, you see layer upon layer of problems, and that can seem discouraging.”
Kemlo reminds us that at the end of Mel's book, she's pulling together a lot of threads that have been going this whole time - everything is going to come to a head in the next few chapters, and it's hard. It's hard for veteran writers, too. It's hard to keep all the plates spinning, and it gets exponentially more complicated the further you get along in your novel.
“It still boils down to one central idea: getting down what your protagonist is thinking and feeling on the page. As you keep going along, keep asking yourself why. Why? What’s the nuanced, specific thought or thing that’s making her feel that feeling? Let’s get into her head and feel what she’s experiencing in that moment.”
Do writers all struggle with the same things? Does everyone have "a thing" they continually struggle with? Kemlo says: "It feels like you're going over the same thing, over and over again, but think of it as a spiral. It seems like you're going it over and over again, but you're actually in a different place. You're closer to where you want to be." You'll eventually get there, and as you progress, you might be traversing the same land, but you know the land better this time around.
Mel thanks Kemlo for making specific suggestions on strengthening scenes. It's important that you know where the scene is going, but during editing, try to make it more than it already is. Whatever it means, make it mean more of it. Not only is Mel trying to show what's changed in her characters, but she also has to show what hasn't changed - what lessons her characters still have to learn, and may not learn, before the book is over. We want to see them making sense with the cards they've been dealt - or not! One way to demonstrate this is to show a character remembering something that had happened, but remembering it a different way, looking at it through whatever new perspective they've now acquired.
