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Technical Topic -- Fiddling with Words in the Second Draft

Friday, January 5, 2018 15:10

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Joanna Bourne, Historical Romance

There are folks who get the words right the first time they lay them down. I am not one of those people.

Think of it as shooting an arrow. Some folks let it fly and it hits in the gold. I shoot and the arrow lands all bent up at an angle and it's somewhere out in the third ring, which is blue. So I go over and take it out and try again. Or I sneak it out and move it a bit inward and decide whether I like it there.
And I usually decide not and move it a bit ... and move it a bit more.

Because that’s how I roll.

So anyhow, here's the process.

I've taken a paragraph of the new WIP and put down the decisions that lie in the slow, tedious process whereby I move Draft One to Draft Two.

I’m sure you will all be fascinated by this.

This paragraph is way early in the first scene.
Its purpose is threefold:
-- I lift the top of the POV character’s skull and show what she’s like.
-- I describe some scenery.
-- I signal the reader that we got a Time Traveller here.

what the jug/pot would have looked like

The Draft Two paragraph:

A jug nudged at her from the left, passed over by Hishisha who was at the blinky, giggly stage of mead imbibing. She was fifteen or sixteen, tall even in this crowd, snub nosed, pale blond, tanned brown with the summer, [anthropological skull type]. She was one of the unmarried sisters, half sisters, cousins, and god knew what who lived in the house of Medkarratu, chief man of the village. They’d amiably gathered in a stranger, here for the festival. More than gathered her in. They’d shoved over and shared the furs of their bed with her, chatted with her endlessly and incomprehensibly, sprinkled generous helpings of fresh seeds and berries on her gruel, and combed and braided her hair into the same knots and interweavings they wore.

Here’s how I arrived at it:

First DraftL:

Hishisha who was at the blinky, amiable stage of mead imbibing

In the Second Draft it becomes:

Hishisha who was at the blinky, giggly stage of mead imbibing

Why:

Giggly is visual and specific. Amiable is less so. And I probably want to use amiable somewhere else.

Draft One:

She was fifteen or sixteen, marriageable in this wherewhen, tall and slender as a New York model, (or tall for this ethnic,) blue eyed, snub nosed, fair skinned but brown with the summer, [anthropological skull type].

Draft Two:

She was fifteen or sixteen, tall even in this crowd, snub nosed, pale blond, tanned brown with the summer, [anthropological skull type].

Why:

The sentence is supposed to give an immediate picture of one person, and by extension, the crowd that surrounds the POV character. I want to put the one person in a historical context.

And I want to pull out every word I can. This “person description” is exactly the sort of thing the reader’s eye skips right over.

Let me go back and unpack my choices, phrase by phrase:

fifteen or sixteen. This imprecision is consistent with the POV character not being well acquainted with the girl. This works.

marriageable: This is true and interesting and it’s the sort of thing an anthropologist or other scientifically trained observer would think. It sets us in a historical context.
But it also takes us haring off with the girl’s marriage prospects in our teeth and we’re not going there. This info is not visible in the immediate scene. We want to stay in the scene.

Wherewhen: One of my made up words. I’ll use it later in dialog, not here in narration. We don’t expect the narrator to be the first to drop jargon on us. When the word appears in dialog, it’s the character laying a neologism down and dialog has looser expectations and rules than narrative.

tall and slender as a New York model. Oh Pleeeease! Jo, this is dreadful.
I put this in to emphasize we have a modern POV here. But my POV character wouldn’t think in pop culture terms. This is (1) imprecise, (2) not appropriate to the character’s mind, (3) not suited to the mind-set of my likely readers. Tawdry phrasing. Ugly. Kill it with poison.

tall even for this ethnic. which I put in to see if it was better, isn't. It's maybe something an anthropologist would say -- I'd have to find out -- but “ethnic” is a quagmire into which I do not want to step. Let’s just not.

tall even in this crowd. I like the informality of “crowd”. It's idiomatic, modern phrasing. But this isn't right either. But it doesn't sing. I dunnoh.

blue eyed, snub nosed, yellow haired, fair skinned but brown with the summer

becomes

snub nosed, pale blond, tanned brown with the summer.

This is fewer words and fewer images but it conveys the same picture. Nine words instead of thirteen.
If I say she’s tanned I don’t have to say she’s fair skinned. If she’s pale blond we can assume she has light-color eyes. Who looks at or thinks about eye color anyway unless they are gazing at length, close up, into the eyes of their beloved?

Fair skinned is another clumsy-footed word choice in 2018.

Draft One:

one of the unmarried sisters or half sisters and cousins, women who lived in the house of

Medkarratun, chief man of the village.

Draft Two:

one of the unmarried sisters, half sisters, cousins, and god knew what who lived in the house of Medkarratu, chief man of the village.

Why:

I changed the name Medkarratun because I’m trying for a made-up Celtic name that doesn’t look so much as though it’s been filtered through Latin.

The line up of relatives who live in the chief’s house is fiddled around a bit for clarity and to simplify sentence structure.

Draft One:

They’d amiably adopted the visitor, here for the festival.
Draft Two:

They’d amiably gathered in a stranger, here for the festival. More than gathered her in.

Why:

When I look at some bit of writing and say “This is not good writing” it’s usually because the wording is not exact. One common type of "not exact" wording is exaggerated, overstated, overdramatic, purple prose.

The women in that chief’s house didn’t “adopt” her. They gave her a warm, sincere welcome, not a lifetime commitment of sisterhood. Let us be prosaic for 99% of what we're talking about. This makes the occasional forays into purple pack a little more punch.

Draft One:

given her generous helpings of fresh seeds and nuts on her gruel

Draft Two:

sprinkled generous helpings of fresh seeds and berries on her gruel,

Why:

"Sprinkled" is a more exciting and visual verb than "given". And if it’s midsummer they won’t have many nuts yet, but they will have berries

Draft One:

braided her hair in the same complex of knots and interweavings they wore.

attrib kwarner

Draft Two:

combed and braided her hair in the same knots and interweavings they wore.

Why: I added “combed” because I have so many pictures in my head of Celtic combs. They’re a big part of the toolkit for these folks.

(We are not going to mention lice. No. This is a Romance-y sorta story and we are not even going to think about them.)

I pulled out “complex of” because I just wrote that bit so I could use complex as a noun. This is me showing off. I convey that the hair is complex plenty fine when I talk about knots and interweavings. I don’t have to say this twice.

Time to simplify and toss out my fancy usage.

Also, if I use interweavings that’s enough showing off for a couple of pages.

Should I make that" braided into knots and interweavings" Hmmm ... Can you braid an interweaving? Whatthe hell is an interweaving anyway?
This is why I have Third Drafts.

[anthropological skull type]. Brachiocephalic? Whatever. I do not mind going all science-y but I have to look it up. I think a nice long technical term fits nicely here for cadence or something.
So there you have it. That's what I was thinking as I moved from earlier words to later

ones. While this is a single case here, working on a single paragraph, it's pretty much how I do this part of wrestling words.

It's a lot faster to d than to write about, thank goodness.

RITA-winning author Joanna Bourne writes historical fiction set in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and Regency England. It was a time of love and sacrifice, clashing ideals, and really cool clothing.

Source: http://jobourne.blogspot.com/2018/01/technical-topic-fiddling-with-words-in.html

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