Tag Archives: editing

The Uncle Karl Fix Pt. 2

21 Saturday Jun 2014

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Okay, so enough people have said something about “Uncle Karl” that you’ve (begrudgingly) decided to take a look at the scenes he’s in. Hopefully there’s been a few days/weeks/months between you finishing the writing and you going back to edit. The reason for this is that time can help you get a better perspective on your story. I can’t tell you how many times I wrote something that made complete sense in the middle of the writing, but when I went back through editing I was like: Wait! What?!

So, you’re looking at the scenes with Uncle Karl. The very first thing you need to ask yourself is: What is Uncle Karl bringing to the scene?

Try to be as objective as possible. This will be difficult. Probably at some point during your re-read of the scene you smile because of Uncle Karl. It’s tempting at this point to go: Hey, I don’t know what they (your friends who have been nice enough to read your story to help you edit it and make it better) are talking about. Uncle Karl is great. I’m the cleverest motherfucker here.

Alright, stop right there. Now I’m not saying you’re not clever, and you may be the cleverest one among your group of friends, you might even be the cleverest motherfucker writing about what you’re writing about, but…BUT…what if you’re not? And even if you truly are the cleverest writer to ever write, if people are too distracted by Uncle Karl to notice then in the end it doesn’t matter.

So you’ve re-read the scene with Uncle Karl in it with the question, What is Uncle Karl bringing to the scene, on your mind. Now for the second question: What is the scene trying to accomplish? Thinking of this question re-re-read the scene. Now is Uncle Karl helping or hindering what you’re trying to do in the scene?

Obviously if Uncle Karl is helping then Uncle Karl gets to stay. If Uncle Karl is hindering Uncle Karl gots to go.

You have to do this for each scene individually. I must stress: DON’T GET RID OF UNCLE KARL IN EVERY SCENE BECAUSE HE DOESN’T WORK IN JUST ONE. The reason I bring this up is because Uncle Karl isn’t just taking up space on the page, he’s taking up space in the world of the story. You took the time for the story to have Uncle Karl in it so the story WILL have a hole to fill if you take him out.

This is actually a good segue into the coolest question of “The Uncle Karl Fix”: What happens to the story if you take Uncle Karl out completely? BA-BA-BUUUUM!

For instance what if Uncle Karl is hindering one of your scenes, but he’s there to introduce something that will be important later in the story? So Uncle Karl is hindering the scene but helping the story. Fair enough, but what does taking him out completely do for the story? What if taking Uncle Karl out forces the Main Character to be more proactive? What’s wrong with that?

What I’m trying to get at is that getting rid of Uncle Karl doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can provide opportunities for the story to grow and move in directions you didn’t expect. From part one I mentioned my most recent “Uncle Karl” was that my story was from a character’s POV and that it just wasn’t working from their POV.

Yeah, I was upset. Something I wanted to do didn’t work. The story sucked. I had my maybe-they’re-just-not-smart/cool/into my genre-enough-to-get-what-I’m-trying-to-do moment, and once I calmed down I started thinking about the other characters in the story. When it occurred to me who’s POV it should be from all these ideas flooded into me about how I could play around with different aspects of the story, things that hadn’t even occurred to me the first time around, things that couldn’t have because the way the story was coming out. All of a sudden the story was breathing and alive again.

At the end of the day that’s all we, as writers, really want isn’t it? To have a story that’s fun to write and lives on its own.

The Uncle Karl Fix Pt. 1

06 Friday Jun 2014

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Okay, all the way back in March I talked about being objective about your writing and about the process of writing. As an example of objectivity I mention a character I called Crazy Uncle Karl and being attached to him even though he might not be the best thing for the story. If you don’t remember, or haven’t read, that entry go ahead, I’ll wait.

Now that we’re all caught up I want to talk in detail about the fixing of the Uncle Karl Problem. I want to clarify that the Uncle Karl Problem, as I like to call it because I like pithy names for things, doesn’t have to be just a character. It could be a character, a location, a scene, an object, or a concept. For instance in my most recently workshopped piece my “Uncle Karl” was the fact that I really wanted to tell the story from this one character’s point-of-view. It worked until about half way through the story and then because of the POV everything sort of doesn’t make sense and the people reading it had too many questions about what exactly was going on in the story, instead of just enjoying the story (which is really what I wanted). So the Uncle Karl wasn’t the character it was the fact that I wrote from that character’s point-of-view.

So let’s talk about how you know you have an Uncle Karl Problem. In the same post I mentioned that you should have more than one or two people read your stuff. It’s so you can more readily identify the Uncle Karl(s) in your story. For the sake of argument let’s say you have a group of six people to read your writing.

If one person in that group doesn’t like Uncle Karl: What are you going to do? You can’t please everyone all the time. Don’t worry about it.

If three people don’t like Uncle Karl: It’s a good idea to look at Uncle Karl. Maybe you can pull back on how crazy he is. Maybe only have him in the couple scenes no one really commented on him being in. At this point it’s a minor deal that people don’t like him. Still fifty-fifty is a good balance you don’t have to worry too much about him.

If four or more people in the group don’t like him: Okay, that’s a majority. I’m not going to lie to you it may be time to let Uncle Karl go. Look, he was fine in the first draft, you had a good time writing him, but if he’s getting in the way of the story he’s got to go.

At this point I’d like to disclaim that this system is just a guideline. I use this guideline and it helps me a lot in determining if something (or an entire story) is working or not. It is just a guideline though. It’s possible (very slimly) that you just so happened to beat the odds and stacked your writer’s/reading group with people who specifically don’t like Uncle Karl whenever he pops up in any story not just yours. It’s impossible to know that until you sit down and take a good hard look at Uncle Karl and what he’s doing for the story (suggestions and techniques on how to do this will be discussed in part 2).

Of course you don’t have to listen to your reading group. You can decide they don’t know what they’re talking about and not do anything with Uncle Karl. You are in charge of your writing. But then again, if you didn’t want their opinion why give them your story to read?

Zen and the Art of Writing Mechanics

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

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It’s been said by better people than me (over and over again) about many, many things: you have to have a firm grasp of the fundamentals to be able to do anything well. Why people think they can ignore it about writing and language is beyond me.

I recently joined a writing group. I was shocked by myself when I started reading others’ writing. Honestly, I didn’t think I was that guy. I thought I was more concerned with the stories than the grammar rules. However, I found myself floundering to get to the story because of the misuse of the words involved.

This is not another rant about comma use. No this is much more fundamental. This is about the misuse of language.

For instance (and every writer struggles with this one), passivity. Passive verb forms keep an action from fully forming (and people could argue that they keep a character and, more importantly, a story from fully developing as well). Examples of a passive sentence: Jenna was starting to understand. Active sentence: Jenna started to understand. Even better: Jenna understood now. You need your characters doing things otherwise you have a story that might have been instead of a story that is.

Another specific example of things that can muddle the pace of the story and put off your reader is prepositional phrases. Not that you shouldn’t use these, but over using them can cause sentence to keep going well past their intended point. Example: “ It’s not my fault,” said Johnny, who had to let the ball go in order to hang on. This is a speech tag, yet the sentence doesn’t just tell us who’s talking it goes into action too…except it doesn’t, because there are three prepositional phrases strung together. This is an example of overcomplicating a sentence.

Like I said, I really didn’t want to be this guy but I found myself missing the story being told because of constant misuses like these. It’s like seeing someone with matted hair, dirty t-shirt, and ripped jeans walking down the street. Is that a person you’d randomly stop so you could talk to them? It’s entirely possible that this person is a sensitive poet who’s had a bad couple of weeks and is on the way to do laundry and a shower, but are you going to test those odds?

The story actually has it worse than the afore mentioned person. If you did take the chance and stop to talk to the person, and they did turn out to be a down on their luck poet you might be able to look past the unkempt appearance. With the story though (and this is my point), the words are the story and the story is the words you use to tell it. Make sure your story is presentable.