On Craft--How Not to Edit Away Ambition

I sent off a long Editorial letter today for a book I not only love, but one I am especially impressed by. In my letter, I suggested a pretty major change to the plotting and I wasn't quite sure how the author would respond (see Editors get nervous, too), but ultimately I knew it was the right change for the book and would solve a great many concerns in the narrative. Luckily, the suggestion made sense to my author and he was on board. I'll chalk that up to brilliant editing. But I did spend a great deal of time weighing the pros and cons of this particular edit, which was essentially to excise a large chunk of the plot, which would act as the first domino to fall so to speak and would in turn effect many other plot points in the narrative. I anguished (more so than usual) over the direction my editorial notes were taking. Is this the right thing? Am I certain? I checked in with myself again and again on this question. But alas, I was sure. Then what was my hesitation? Why the need to continually check in with myself on this edit? My fear was that I may have been editing out one of the best things the plot has going for it: its ambition.

I see a lot of manuscripts. A lot. On average, anywhere from 20-30 manuscripts are submitted to me a month. A shocking (or maybe not so shocking) number of them are so similar in theme, subject matter and execution, that it often feels as if writers have been given some formula that someone told them was the magic recipe to publication. The books I pursue for publication are those that stand out from the crowd. A narrative can do that in many ways from the quality of the writing to a stirring emotional baseline to strong characterization to an especially compelling and memorable voice. The books I pursue for publication are usually some combination of all of the above. But the books that get me most excited are the books that are not only artfully crafted, but also those that are ambitiously crafted--a narrative approach that ups the ante. If it's a romance, it's not your typical romance--there's some spin on the traditional boy meets girl, boy loses girl scenario that I didn't see coming. If it's a mystery, it's one where perhaps the main character is an unreliable narrator putting all the clues into question. Or perhaps it's an ordinary story of life and love and work, but told in second person from the perspective of a group...say an office, like in one of my favorite novels And Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. A narrative that is not executed in a traditional straight-forward manner, but in an approach that is surprising and not often tried is exciting. It's exciting to writers (as it's a satisfying challenge), to editors (after one read of an ambitious narrative, we can already see the NYT book review where Michiko Kakutani sings our author's praises) and for readers who are tired of the same old, same old and are very vocal about that weariness.

Ambition is what gives truly great novels that sparkle and shine that lasts. Why does To Kill A Mockingbird  endure? Because it's ambitous and surprising and impressive in that ambition. And I'm not talking about its content, which is indeed masterful, but just as masterful is its ambitious execution. I still recall that feeling of amazement in understanding that Harper Lee had ensnared me in a perfect circular narrative. The great joy in rereading To Kill A Mockingbird is searching for that moment when the narrative made its turn, that moment when Miss Lee set us on the path to return to the moment where we began the novel without us noticing at all. Such a seamlessly, effortlessly executed feat. That is why To Kill a Mockingbird endures.

Today, I sent off an editorial letter to an author who has similar ambition and it would be arrogant of me to not have wondered if my editorial letter to this author wasn't the equivalent of telling Harper Lee to 86 the circular narrative of To Kill a Mockingbird. An editor never wants to mess with the very thing that makes a novel special. So how was I so sure this wasn't what I was doing? I examined what was left of the novel after suggesting a major section of plot be eliminated. And what was left still dazzled and the shine was not at all diminished by what was no longer there.

Editing is also a craft. And until an author has found their editor, an author must edit themselves. Today's thought on craft? Don't edit away your narrative's ambition. Understand what about your narrative's execution makes it stand out in a crowd and cleave to it. All else is superfluous.

Stacey