Evisceration! How to lose 45,000 words in 2 days.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a story in the writing, must be in want of more words.”
And boy howdy did San Francisco suffer from that disease. Last week I began to pull back from the 2nm view of my story to at least a 3 foot view and then a 274 foot view and finally a 30,000 foot view. I nearly jumped without a parachute. Where did my tidy story go? All those clever plot twists that tied together? Where did *THAT* character come from? Who wrote this crap?
Sigh.
I dusted off my original synopsis from last spring’s Liberty Hall MidSommer Madness, where this baby was conceived, and realized I’d tumbled into a well known software trap: Feature Creep. I didn’t recognize it in its current form, missing the usual petulant engineers and product managers stomping tiny feet about favorite features.
No, this was just me, “Wow wouldn’t it be cool if….”. Yes, that is the exit sign to Chaostown on the Demonic possession expressway.
So Saturday morning, cup of coffee in hand and clad in fuzzy slippers, I deconstructed the story, re-architected the plot and carved away anything not necessary to the core theme and motivations. I also wallpapered the dining room in very large Post-It Notes.
Sunday I moved cards around, changing scenes, tightening, tweaking and killing off characters. I think it looks festive.
By Monday morning things were looking good, so I collapsed the new structure back into my SuperNoteCard Deck and today I am writing the new synopsis. I’ll use the note card structure in Scrivener to keep my story in sync with the SuperNoteCard Deck. I guess I could chuck SNC, but I like the cross referencing feature; it made this whole evisceration process go much smoother letting me find random extra characters and ideas and trace them though the ugly bloat that was my story. It’s worth the extra book keeping to mange the two card decks.
With the new synopsis written, I am grounded in the story and will start writing and rewriting. I lost about 45,000 words in this process. In fact, I am energized not bothered. The story is much stronger and tighter. What I find more that a little interesting is how similar this process is to developing software. I will be well served by applying the software tools and methodologies that I have learned over the years.
To Infinity and Beyond!
And my apologies to Jane Austen.
Themocracy
I enjoy reading about your journey as much as I enjoy your destinations. If you gather all your blog posts, tweets and other entries you could publish a non-fiction book on the process. You have motivated me to start the journey anyway.
You’re my hero now, Leslie. Looking forward to you teaching me how it’s done!