Bulking or supplementing?

Let’s say you have written hefty novella (as I have) and submitted it (as I did) to a publisher who wants novel-length works (as he did).  The story is complete with beginning, middle and ending.  The story arc is complete.  How do you make a 45,000 word thing an 80,000 word thing without repeating yourself?  Here’s my approach:

First, I make an Excel spread sheet listing every scene and its page number so I can go right to the insert points. 

Second, I look for the following:

• Lengthy exposition without dialog and I find ways to insert dialog.
• Inadequately described people or settings and I describe them.
• Cold descriptions and I insert emotion or internal dialog.

 Third and last, if all else fails, I invent new characters or situations.  This is the trickiest part since it can reveal itself as ‘padding’ unless the new situations are relevant to the story.  Otherwise, a reader could be led up a tributary and end up thinking, ‘What was that all about?’

Syncopation:

The definition of syncopation is elusive, at least the dictionary explanation.  But, we tend to know it when we hear it.  It is an irregular, out-of-rhythm beat that is, nonetheless, stimulating and pleasant to the ear.  

The practice of writing has its own form of syncopation.  In the simplest form, it appears when we write then shift gears to edit.  The pace and rhythm are totally different.  Then overlay several simultaneous projects and marketing activity – blogging, writing articles, being interviewed – and cacophony quickly threatens the desired and intended melody.  It takes concentration and focused intention to keep it all straight. 

Some people take pride in their ability to multitask even though certain studies insist that  fragmentation degrades work.  Others employ rigid schedule walls to write on Wednesday, edit on Thursday, market on Friday, rest on Sunday when the Great Author of it All rested.  Some people simply seize up and call it, romantically, ‘writers’ block’.  I call it overwhelm.

I am not immune to this threat to order and flow and am struggling to find my own pace and rhythm that will allow production to continue amidst assaults upon the attention span.  This will probably be a rest-of-my-life struggle but, for now, I’m finding that I can better deal with it all by sort of sliding from project to project rather than jumping.  I’m not recommending this to anyone else, I’m just saying….

Falling for my editor…again

My editor and, in the interest of full disclosure, wife, Barbara has grown in her ‘position’ re the writing/editing/publishing/marketing continuum.   My first request was for copy editing; finding the errors and omissions of spelling and punctuation.  From her background of writing and cleaning grant and contract proposals for a major corporation, I knew that would be right up her alley.  What I didn’t expect was her enlightened and perceptive guidance on mood and pace descriptions. 

I write fairly quickly — which explains ten novellas and 1 ½ books in a year — and crank out characters and situations by a process Barbara calls ‘channeling’.  I don’t know where it all comes from, it just does.  But, where I’m finished, Barbara begins.  She sees the missing mood and situational expositions that give the scenes soul and sensory dimensions.  At first I resisted, of course.  After all, I’m the author.  Harrumph.  Such cheek.  But, the results show the wisdom of her insights.  The work is far better for her contributions.  Result: we now write with co-author attribution and deservedly so.  Very soon I will be paraphrasing JFK by introducing myself as ‘the man who accompanied Barbara Wilson to the signing’.