Revisions, Major and Minor

Chapters Edited: 7
Scenes Edited: 20
Scenes Completely Rewritten: 3
Words Murdered: 1,959 (7.4%)

People hunting Hagai: 5
Times Hagai puts his foot in his mouth: 3
People Sam has fought with: 1
People Sam has stolen from: 4 (plus many that weren't dramatized)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

These are some things I keep finding while I'm editing. If you've ever edited your own stuff, these probably won't be much of a surprise.

• Lots of unnecessary "Hagai saw" "Hagai watched" "Hagai heard". He's the point of view character. If I write it, of course he's the one that notices it.
• A lot of "started to" "began to" "almost" and "nearly". Declarative is better. "He ran," not "He started to run."
• A few (though not as many as I feared) unnecessary dialogue tags: he said, she said. If the tag doesn't add information that's not obvious from the dialogue itself, then it's gotta go.
• A lot of telling and unnecessary details, especially in the less-planned scenes. I'd write details and ideas as I thought of them. All of those details helped me understand what happened, but most were unnecessary to relay events to the reader. In fact, they get in the way. This happened especially in the beginning, where I had to rewrite two scenes in order to smooth them out (the opening of Chapter 1 is one example).

So far, I've only found one major plot revision that should've been caught in an earlier stage. It was a weak spot in the plot, where motivations became really complex, hard to follow, and consequently weak.

See, after Sam steals the stone from Hagai, Hagai runs into a police officer, Lieutenant Tobin. Tobin wants Hagai to help him get incriminating evidence on Sam, while Hagai just wants Tobin to tell him where to find Sam so he can try and get the stone back. When Hagai finds Sam, and Sam doesn't give back the stone, Hagai thinks he can get Sam arrested and get the stone back that way, so he tries to get the evidence Tobin asked for (in this case, gold coins from a certain bank). Sam says he'll pay Hagai in gold if Hagai does a certain job for him. But while doing the job, Hagai is told that Sam is the only one who can lead him to his mother, so he changes his mind, but the police are already set to arrest Sam so Hagai has to betray them and help Sam escape, but...

Messy, right? I can hardly follow it, and I wrote it. So I scrapped it and replaced it with something simpler. Hagai goes to the cops, but now he's up-front about the stone and agrees to help them arrest Sam. Hagai still does a job for Sam, but his motivation is more clear: to trap and arrest Sam. Until, of course, he learns that Sam is the only one who can lead him to his mother, and Hagai must decide what's more important: the law or finding his mother.

Well, it'll be better in book form. Anyway, that change required a scrapped scene and some medium-sized changes in two other chapters. Natalie's post on malleability is timely, for me. I'm sure there are major changes needed that I can't see yet, but the first step is not being afraid of the ones I see.

The Germination of a Story

Chapters edited: 5
Scenes edited: 16
Words murdered: 1,320 (6.5% - either I'm getting lazy or my writing got better after chapter 4)

Times Hagai nearly dies: 3
Times Hagai puts his foot in his mouth: 3
Times Sam gets in a fight: 1
---------------------------------------------

Ideas are cheap. They're everywhere, but they're not enough to make a story. They need to mix, ripen, maybe bake (dang, now I'm hungry). The path from idea to story can be a long one. I want to show you what the path has looked like for me so far with Joey Stone.

It started because I wanted to write a school story with fantasy/spy/ninja elements, a la Naruto. A friend asked me to write a short story for her, so I fleshed out the idea with some psionic rules I'd made for an e-RPG, created a skeleton world (near future), and put some characters in it. I squeezed out a mediocre short story called Joey Stone.

I liked the characters and the powers, but there was nothing to the world and no story big enough yet for a novel (besides which, I was still writing Travelers), so I let it sit for a while.

Last summer, I watched Witch Hunter Robin and really liked the idea of using psions to hunt other psions. I also liked the connotations of "witches" better than "psions." I got that feeling again when I read the back of Marie Brennan's Doppleganger and mistakenly thought it was urban fantasy instead of the regular kind. Something about modern day witch hunters appeals to me, obviously.

A few months ago, I had a dream about a group of people who required technology to use their powers. One of their enemies discovered how to cancel out their technology. They were left powerless, until a young man was born among them who could use his powers without artificial aid, and he taught them how to do it themselves. This dream, combined with actually reading Doppleganger, got me thinking about the society of these "witches" and what it would have to be like for them to survive and stay hidden.

At this point, all these ideas were mixing together in my mind. The world was starting to take shape. I started thinking how to set the story at least partially in Thailand. I wanted to give the story a unique flavor and write what I know, but at the same time not seem too gimmicky (e.g. "It's X-Men in Thailand!").

But I still didn't have a story.

The other day I saw Babylon A.D.* It was okay, but I loved some of the future/tech ideas. It got me thinking about an America that's very hard to get into (hm, just like real life), and the story idea got stronger:

A Thai village girl discovers she has special powers. She is hunted for them, trying to understand them herself. She is rescued by a woman named Charity who explains the girl is one of the Cunning - people with extraordinary powers - and that there are those who would like to see all the Cunning Folk burn. Together, they fight their way into America where the girl will be safe, she hopes.

It needs a lot of work, and I'm not 100% certain I like it yet, but it doesn't matter. The idea is there, germinating, ripening, waiting for the next idea to hit my brain pan and make it better than it was. I have two more Air Pirates stories to write first, so there's plenty of time. Probably by the time I get to drafting Joey Stone, it'll be entirely different. Again.

What about you? Where do you get ideas, and how do you make them into a story?


* You'll notice I often steal ideas from other stories. There's nothing wrong with this, so long as you're not lazy about it. Steal what you like and make it your own. Amateurs imitate. Professionals steal.

Chapter Titles

EDITING STATS
Chapters Edited: 3
Scenes Edited: 9
Words Murdered: 1,017 (about 10%)

People hunting MC: 4 (that he knows of)
Times MC nearly dies: 2
Airships destroyed: 1
------------------------------------------------

I have no intention of telling anybody how to do chapter titles. The opposite, actually. What do you like in your chapter titles? If you're writing, how do you do them?

I've seen them done a thousand ways. Short title. Long title. Chapters titled with the name of the POV character. Titles by date or location. Straightforward titles. Obscure titles. No titles (numbers only). No titles (not even numbers). No chapters at all.

Personally, I like numbers and relatively straightforward titles. It makes it easier to flip back and find some piece of information on page 32 that is suddenly relevant on page 337. It also helps me remember the plot of the book better. But that's just my preference. I'm not going to hate a book because the chapters are titled by POV characters (George Martin) or because there are no chapters at all (Terry Pratchett).

When I write, I tend to title chapters by my preference too (numbered, straightforward). In fact, I was flipping through the books on my shelf, and I realized I have been completely influenced by Orson Scott Card in my chapter titles. In every book of his I have, the chapters are numbered with short, often one-word titles. Likewise, all my chapters:

• are numbered.
• have short, descriptive titles.
• sometimes, but not always, have titles with more than one meaning.

That last one makes naming chapters fun for me. I love throwing out chapter titles that get the reader excited about reading the chapter, but also misdirect a bit. Like I'll have a chapter titled "Betrayal", and the reader goes (hopefully), "Ooh, plot twist!" And maybe there is an important betrayal that occurs in the chapter, but it's not the one the reader expected when they read the title.

You know, stuff like that. I actually don't know if Card ever does the double meaning thing, and I don't know if readers even notice things like that (I probably wouldn't), but I do it anyway. It's fun.

And if an agent or editor ever says to me, "These chapter titles are dumb. They all need to go," I'll say, "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I thought so too, sir. Would you like some more coffee?"

Air Pirates Status and Excerpt

I've fixed everything that needs fixing (for now) and am on to Stage 6, the full read-through. It might take a while, especially in the beginning. Whoever wrote these first chapters was a terrible writer. I've had to destroy one of every four words.

The beginning is better now - not great, but better. Good enough that I'm willing to show the current version to you. Feel free to offer critiques, if you like. I... I think I can take it.

Chapter 1 - Hagai

Hagai woke with a book attached to his face. Peeling it off, he found his glasses where they'd fallen nearby and put them on. Page 91 of Lushita's City was ruined. It was wrinkled by sweat, the words faded - probably imprinted on his face in reverse. Aunt Booker wouldn't be happy with him, but who was?

With a groan, he stood and shuffled to the dresser - the only furniture in the room other than his sleep pad. He took out the neatly folded shirt and pants from their respective stacks and put them on. While he buttoned his shirt - a routine he did deliberately slow - he stared out the window. The suns were up already - the amber was even near peak. It was going to be a hot day. With luck, he wouldn't have to be out in it.

Far below, the town of Providence bristled with work. Past that lay the sea - glittering blue for the most part, but out past the reef, the water was murky, almost black. The skylers called it dark water. The worst fate for a skyler was to have their ship fall out of the air over a patch of it. It was about the only thing nobody pretended to be brave about.

Aunt Booker's voice hollered from downstairs. "You done buttoning your shirt yet, Haggie?"

How did she always know?

So You Want to be a Ninja...

Basics. Spelling, grammar, punctuation - these are your katas, the fundamentals. Any peasant can throw a punch or toss together a grammatically correct sentence. You must know why it is correct. You must be so familiar with the rules that even your Twitter updates are punctuated properly. Only then can you improvise, creating your own forms - doing so by intent, not laziness.

Words. Words are your weapons, and you must become familiar with as many as possible. More than familiar, you must become adept in their use. A simple farmer can pick up a sword and make a clumsy effort at wielding it. You must be its master. In addition, you must know which weapons are appropriate for a situation. A polearm is all but useless in assassination, as 'puissant' and 'scion' would find a poor home in the mouth of the common taxi driver.

With knowledge of weapons and katas, you would make a decent fighter, a writer of e-mails, a composer of persuasive essays. Any daimyo would be glad to have you among their common militia, but you would not be a ninja.

Style. Fighting is more than killing your opponent, and writing is more than words strung in the proper order. The samurai know this, and you can learn much from them. You must be aware of the clarity of your writing, the variation of sentence structure, the powerful techniques of imagery and metaphor. Writing is an art, not simply a means of communication.

With a knowledge of style, you could choose your own path. You could become a mercenary, writing for whomever would pay you. You could begin the path of the samurai, accepting their bushido and writing only the truth - news, non-fiction, and the like. If you seek a life of security and reputation, then perhaps the way of the samurai is for you.

Or you could begin the life of a ninja. To the samurai, bushido is life. To the ninja, it is a hindrance. The art of the ninja is one of lies and misdirection, surprise and subterfuge. To become a ninja, you must learn many techniques the samurai are not taught, master them, and make them your own.

You must learn the secrets of tension and plot, what drives a story forward and hooks the reader until the end. You must learn to create characters that are real, believable, and can gain or lose sympathy with the audience, as the situation dictates. You must understand the ways of dialogue to make your characters to speak without tearing down the lie you have constructed.

Once you have learned everything required to be a ninja, you will have only just begun. Millions have gone before you. Most do not survive. The shinobi masters whose names you've heard are the exception, not the rule.

It takes more determination than you've ever known to become a ninja, but you can do it. I believe in you.

And if I'm wrong, it won't matter. You'll be dead.

Subtasks and an Air Pirates Excerpt

I realized one of my problems with editing is that I can't keep track of my progress as easily as I can with writing the draft. The result is that I feel unproductive which, ironically, makes me unproductive.

I think I've solved that by cutting it into relatively bite-sized stages. I did that before, but these are a little more concrete (i.e. for each stage, I have about 10-20 specific items that need changing).

Stage 1: Strong Ending. (Includes all the changes to beginning and middle that will help improve the ending).
Stage 2: Continuity.
Stage 3: Global Changes (i.e. capitalizing officerial titles or being consistent with the definite article and ship names).
Stage 4: Other Revisions. (Mostly improvement notes I made while drafting).
Stage 5: Strong Beginning.
Stage 6: Full Read-Through. (The subtasks of this one are individual chapters).

I've finished stages 1, 2, and 3. I'm almost done with stage 4, but stage 5 will be hard and stage 6 will be super-rough. Hopefully if I can track my progress and check things off of a list, it will help me stay determined. (I do like lists).

The title of this post also promises an excerpt, so here you go. I had a hard time finding one, since the beginning has all the world explanations in it but is also the least-polished.

This is the beginning of chapter 3. The stone has shown Hagai a vision in which the Oleanna, a merchant airship, crashes into the docks. Unsure whether he's seeing the future, he runs to the docks to find everything exactly as it was in the vision prior to the crash, and he starts to get worried. (In the excerpt, a dak is like a goat).

Chapter 3

The Oleanna hung in the sky like a child's lost balloon, no bigger than Hagai's thumb at this distance. For a moment, Hagai thought the string of coincidences might end there. It didn't look like anything was wrong. If anything, the Oleanna was getting smaller as it floated away.

That was before he heard the explosion.

It was really quiet for an explosion. Just a small, muffled pop like distant fireworks. Hagai thought he imagined it at first. For a while, he hoped maybe it wasn't an explosion after all, until he saw smoke issuing from the top of the Oleanna above him. That was also when the daks started getting nervous.

"Did you hear that?" Hagai asked the dak counter.

"Nay."

"That explosion, up in the sky. You didn't hear it?"

"Nay," the man replied, but he looked up towards the smoking airship.

"I heard an explosion, and then that smoke started coming out of the Oleanna."

The man squinted. "Nay, they're breezy. That's just exhaust from her boiler."

"No, it was an explosion. I heard it. I think they're in trouble."

"She's fine, see? She's still going."

The daks were getting louder and starting to push against the fences. Only Hagai seemed to notice. "Okay, look," he said, "I know this is going to sound weird, but… I know that ship is going to crash into the docks. We need to get out of here. We need to warn everybody to get out of here."

"What?" he laughed. "What are you on about?"

"I got this stone, see, and it shows me the future." He put his hand on the sling.

"What'd you get that at the circ or something?"

"No, look..." Hagai looked up again. The airship looked bigger. "It's gonna... it's gonna crash right there." He pointed. "People are gonna get hurt. The… the daks there are gonna break out and run wild, and, and you break your leg, and - "

"Here, now. That some kind of threat?"

"No! No, I just… I mean that's just what I saw."

"I got work to do, dog. Take your circus toy home."

"But I..." Hagai started, but the man had already turned around. The daks were restless now, and the dak counter looked pretty upset about it. Hagai left him alone. He looked for someone else to tell. There were plenty of skylers and dock workers everywhere, but they all seemed real busy. He considered yelling out a warning to everyone, but decided against it. He tried a one-on-one approach.

To one man he said, "Excuse me, I - "

"Outta my way, boy."

To another: "I'm sorry to bother you, b- "

"Does this look light to you?"

"Excuse me, is that ship on fire?"

"Boiler exhaust. Please to move."

"Hey, that ship's falling."

"Nah, it's just coming in to port."

"But it just took off!" Hagai pleaded to the back of the last man.

Nobody would hear him, and the airship was getting closer.

19 Months of Air Pirates

It took me 19 months from word 1 to word 99,675 on Air Pirates. I told you I'd talk about the process, so here it is.

I write these kinds of posts to analyze my own process, to see what works and what doesn't and hopefully to improve. I hope other people can glean something useful from this as well, but if not, no worries.

This post is also an excuse for me to make charts. I like charts.


I started writing Air Pirates officially in September 2007. I'd been thinking about it for a lot longer than that (I have documents dating back to 2003), and I'm still not finished with it (the editing phase is a lot harder than I remember), but the first draft took about a year and a half to write.

You can see I had a slow start, and a plateau in early 2008 that I'll explain in a second. This next chart shows that more clearly. It's a chart of how many words I wrote in each month.


Clearly there's an upward trend, but it's pretty unstable. I'd write well for 2-3 months, then stop for 2-3 months, and so on. Here's how it went down.

Aug-Oct 07 (Slow): It took me 3 or 4 drafts to get the beginning, and rewrites weren't counted towards the final word count. Once I figured out how the story started, it got easier.

Feb-Apr 08 (Slow): At this point, I'd written four chapters of Air Pirates and needed to outline the rest of the story if I was going to get anywhere. Travelers also came back from the betas and for the first time I started seriously editing and working on queries.

May-Jul 08 (Fast): I really think the reason for my increase here was that I started thinking like a pro. In working on my query, and trying to figure out what to do next, I'd begun reading blogs like Nathan Bransford and Query Shark, as well as author's blogs. I learned a lot about writing good query letters, but also the publishing business as a whole. More than anything, I learned that this was something I really wanted to do.

Aug-Sep 08 (Slow): I tried writing a short story in the Air Pirates' world. I'd never written a short story for the purpose of publication before, so it took a lot of time (and it still isn't published). Our trip to the US slowed things down a bit too.

Oct-Apr 09 (Fast, mostly): The increase in word count here is most likely due to my wife's commitment to me. She started helping me get away for 2 hours a day, most days, just to write. I still wrote in whatever stolen moments I could, but having 2 undistracted hours really helped me discipline myself. I want to blame the dip here on holiday visitors, but I think it was due more to my lack of self-discipline than anything. I'm trying to get better at that.

Final Analysis. On average, I wrote 5,000 words a month on Air Pirates. I know that, with discipline, I can do 10,000 a month pretty regularly. Hopefully that means I can draft a novel in 9-10 months, but we'll see. I won't be doing any drafting for a while yet until I can get through all this editing I'm supposed to be doing.