Meet Carlos Cartes: “I write for the same reason I breathe: to carry on living.”
He’s the moderator of “On Fiction Writing” group on goodreads.com. “We seek to debate how we research, structure, plot, draft, edit, write, and rewrite our novels.” It's a public group; anyone can join. Fair warning, however, it’s not a showcase or an arena to promote your personal works.
Carlos J Cortes is the author of numerous unpublished novels and one of the World’s least influential people (his words, not mine). His first SF thriller, Perfect Circle, was published in 2008. The second, The Prisoner, another SF thriller, is scheduled for release 29 September 2009, both courtesy of Random House. He presently lives in Barcelona, Spain.
I asked permission to share his notes because they hit me square in the middle of my brain.
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Imagine that after no end of poring over the ghastly dribble we try to palm as prose, we reach the wishful—and often irrational—conclusion that our work is readable.
We must now strive to revise the text with discipline. It’s almost impossible for most of us to do the mental juggling needed to review a text looking for flaws under seventeen separate headings. Hence, I propose a sensible approach: read-as-we-look-for-a-single-flaw.
Repeat after me: “Adverbs are a curse, my writing is cursed and it must be exorcised.” Repeat it ad nauseam, like a mantra. If you feel giddy, stop. The first step must be to identify the rascals and bring them up into the open.
To do this, advance as follows:
You need the “find” tool in MS Word, on the “edit” menu.
On the “find” window, type ly (no spaces at either side). Click on ‘Highlight all items’. The text will move and a little color window will appear on any word containing ‘ly’. Look for the words ending in ‘ly.’Check that it’s an adverb (it can be an adjective or a noun). If it is, click on the highlight tool, on your toolbar at the top of the screen.
When you finish, the text will have a dose of chickenpox.
Now that you have identified the fiends don’t do anything. Don’t plunge headlong on to a search and destroy sortie. Most of those adverbs have a short life, but they don’t know it yet.
Settle down, relax, bunch your toes a few times and then wiggle them a bit.
Browse through your text; look for masses of unbroken text and for bordering paragraphs of similar length. If you detect some of these visual problems, read the offending passages and try to break the large items into smaller and reshape similar paragraphs to add variety. They say variety is the spice of life. It certainly is of literature.
Have you done? Excellent! Repeat the toe bunching and wiggling, it shakes up dormant neurons.
Now read with an eye to the first word of each paragraph. Any echoes? Obvious repetitions? Repair.
Read again. Check the first word of each sentence. Any echoes? Obvious repetitions? Repair.
The toe routine is essential in-between each read. If at the same time you manage a smile, the effect is doubled. If, by any chance you suffer a flitting pang of self-consciousness and realize, deep down, that you’re being silly with all that toe bunching, then the effect increases tenfold.
With every reading the offending adverbs must have stuck up like sore thumbs, you couldn’t help glancing at them and their colorful livery. From now on, without undue zeal, when they least expect it, pounce over one and delete it or replace with another turn of phrase or a stronger verb.
Read the text again, perhaps over a cup of tea, and check only the POV, nothing else matters. (You can massacre an adverb or two, just for the hell of it).
Return to the top of the page, scene, chapter or manuscript and examine sentence structure. Check each sentence, weigh it, chew it a bit as you would olives (or cherries if you don’t like olives). If you find a pit (unnecessary adjective, dangling modifier, silly conjunction, sillier noun or even sillier determiner) spit it out. Check for passive constructions and fragments (these are not problems if used with measure), but keep your eye open, they have gregarious tendencies and can ruin a paragraph. Repair.
Hit the beginning of the manuscript a few more times. Look for weak verbs, flocks of pronouns, gaggles of conjunctions and the like. Repair.
Start again with an eye for names. Try to distinguish the names of your characters by length and initial. Don’t use two similar sounding names. (“Come here, Joe”, said Jim. Jon glanced at Jan and frowned.) Strive for variety.
Now tackle dialogue. Take a passage at a time. Read it aloud. Does it sound silly? It is. Does the brave heroine sounds inane? She is. Does the burly macho captain sounds limp-wristed? He is.
While you’re at it, check the tags. Any time you come across “Come here, buster,” she hissed. You try to hiss it, if possible in front of a mirror. (The same applies with ‘growled, barked, wheezed’ and the like). When you collect your wits and stop laughing, rewrite the offending tag without forgetting the toe bunching and wiggling.
Repeat the procedure with stage directions. Don’t forget that some lines (“This is silly,” Peter said scratching his crotch. “Yes it is,” Lynne said scratching her underarm.), are only acceptable if you’re writing ‘The Itch’.
Next in line is punctuation. Divide the task into two parts: story punctuation and dialogue punctuation. Read slowly, check for non-existent periods, punctuation outside quotes and the plethora of places where the damn things play hide-and-seek. From time to time, ambush an unsuspecting adverb and clobber it.
After you complete this process, the color-clad bandits will be in frank retreat, decimated beyond recognition. Check on those that have resisted previous onslaughts. You may want to spare the lives of these adverbs for effect. Relax and bunch your toes.
To remove the offending colored marks, select the whole document, then click on the highlighting tool and select ‘none’ or ‘no color’, depending on the version of your word processor.
After this process is completed let the text (and your toes) rest for a week. Then read again, as you would a book from a library shelf.
Now you have a pseudo-polished manuscript and it should go to your trusted readers.
The dear unpaid people will detect flaws in continuity, pace, structure, plot and subjective issues. They will labor like beavers and burn the midnight oil to point out the silly things we've left behind. What? You have no such readers? Mmmmm... you must secure the complicity of decent readers. We need ‘others’. Others will detect things that we cannot. It’s a question of perspective. A book doctor? Forsooth! That’s a last-ditch solution, like hitting a psychologist when you run out of friends. I’ve suspected for a long time that behind every good writer there lurks a body of tip-top readers. I insist. Get a cadre of harsh readers and you’re halfway there.
Once you get your reader’s reviews and corrections, implement these that in your opinion have merit and ignore the rest.
Now you can format the manuscript, light a candle to St. Dimas (patron saint of lost causes), another to St. Marie Magdalene (benefactor of repentant hookers), and send it off for a round of rejection slips.
When you collect a baker’s dozen, start again.
No rejections? Then open the bubbly and laugh yourself silly with much toe bunching and wriggling.
You can learn more about Carlos at:
http://www.carlosjcortes.com
http://carlos-odd-world.blogspot.com/
http://cortes-theprisoner.blogspot.com/
http://cortes-perfectcircle.blogspot.com...
Happy writing!
Minnie Estelle Miller
Marvelously Mature Author and Essayist
