One of my favorite parts of the editorial process is the way narratives are enriched just via regular old conversation. This may sound strange at first. After all, isn't it expected that authors would talk to their editor? Yes, but conversations between editors and authors don't often happen until after an editor has done the work of going through a manuscript line-by-line and turned around an editorial letter. And the conversation at that point is often a brief check-in with the author before the author heads off into revision land for a few weeks or months. Ultimately, because of the ease of technology, I think we often forget to talk to each, voice-to-voice no matter what the task or collaborative project or relationship. Email just becomes easy. And then add to that social media making us feel like we are seeing and talking to each other often even when we aren't; it's not hard to understand how voice-to-voice contact could be left behind. I know people who don't even use voicemail anymore and eschew telephone conversations...okay, I'm one of them. Texting tends to be my primary mode of conversation even with those closest to me.
And not because I don't enjoy talking to my friends or colleagues on the phone, but in the day-to-day grind, efficiency becomes paramount and I don't often even realize how much I'm missing that voice-to-voice connection, especially with my authors, until a day like today when I spend 45 minutes on the phone with an author I not only love working with because she's so talented, but is also someone whom I adore personally. We spent at least half the time on the phone today catching up on our respective families and laughing a lot.
And then we got down to the business at hand, last round revisions, meaning this author is one step away from being publication-ready after going through several rounds of revision. She's so close and we both found ourselves energized by being so close. How do we know she's close? The characterization is strong (as both a reader and editor I really care about these characters--they mean something to me as if they were real people); the pacing is well-executed and the book reads as if the author wrote the narrative in one effortless breath; the conflict is compelling and not something easily or neatly solved; the writing is memorable; the conclusion satisfying. So what's left you might ask? One never knows. What's left when all the must-haves for any novel are all in place actually differs from project to project and it's often in this final conversation where author and editor find out what's left.
Today's "what's left" happened to be consistency of theme, which ranged from something as minor as ensuring the main character's dog wasn't forgotten by the narrative to something slightly more complicated like ensuring the idea that a character is struggling with the concept of unfulfilled dreams doesn't suddenly appear in the last third of the narrative without being developed and consistently so earlier in the narrative. And in this examination of craft there is also another pitch for outlining--and not just outlining plot points or character growth but use of theme, clarifying for yourself how you want themes and their accompanying details to develop and appear in the narrative and to make sure it's done purposefully and seamlessly (we don't want to be heavy-handed with narrative themes, but we also don't want themes to be too subtle to resonate or awkwardly introduced too late into the narrative.)
Forgetting to properly integrate themes is a common craft concern, especially for my seat-of-the-pants writers out there. But clearly establishing the themes you want to explore in a narrative and always having those themes at the forefront of your mind when writing character descriptions, scene details and dialogue will save you from having to go back and rework everything to ensure themes read as a seamless part of your narrative's foundation. It's not impossible to revise for theme and make it feel seamless after the fact, but it's a lot harder and can involve a great deal of dismantling and rebuilding of narrative elements you are by now married to. Even if it's heavy-handed to start, it's easier to peal away layers than it is to build those layers. So today's advice on craft? Go into your narrative not only with a mind on character and story, but theme as well. Make it an organic part of your narrative from word one. You'll thank me in the revision process later. Here's hoping your "what's left" is little more than the words The End.
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