Editors’ notes
My second book featuring forensic sorcerer Frank Sampson, Pariah, is due for publication in January 2016. I finished a second draft a few weeks ago and recently got my editors’ notes, which consisted of two documents:
- Three pages of structural notes on topics like ‘Standalone vs. sequel’, ‘Clarity and pace’, developing key characters, specific scenes that don’t work, and other problematic issues…
- A copy of the Word file that I originally sent them, marked up with comments on specific points in the text.
So what am I supposed to do with these?
Well, I’m going to put the Word file aside — for now, at least. Why? Because after going over the shorter document point by point, I’ve come up with my own set of notes about what I propose to do. And since I envisage some fairly major structural changes I see no point in worrying over comments on scenes that may not even exist in the next draft.
That can come later.
Dithering
Let’s take one particular point from the first document. My editors at Random House Children’s Publishers, Ruth Knowles and Kirsten Armstrong, wrote:
This version felt a lot cleaner and easier to follow. Losing several characters didn’t affect our reading at all, and just made the plot that much more streamlined. We were also very pleased to see that the subplot about the pope’s death has been dispensed with…
Greater clarity will come from stripping back more characters from your cast. They’re falling over each other at the moment, and we’re not giving your leads their chance to shine – or us a proper chance to get to know them well enough. Can we have a think about who else we might be able to strip out? There are a lot of adult males… Do we need them?
Sometimes you struggle stubbornly against the inevitable. I spent a couple of days compiling lists of characters — some suggested in the notes, others that I put forward myself — who might usefully bite the dust.
For a while I considered replying that actually no: the plot really wouldn’t work without the existing cast…
Except that I was wrong. There was indeed, as the notes suggested, a specific group of adult males who could usefully disappear down the coal chute. OK, so I had to find a way to close a gap that their elimination caused, in order to allow one crucial character to meet up with another…
But, ouch! That required a significant change to the actions of that crucial character…
So on second thoughts, maybe not. If I made the proposed change, it would mess up a sequence later in the story that enabled Frank to get to a particular, essential location where certain events would occur…
So definitely: no. That wouldn’t work…
Magic
Only it would work! Marinating in the bath, I realised that I could change a physical scuffle into a magical event. That was good: more smells and flashing lights. There would have to be a new character, but he’d be a demon. So smells, flashing lights and screaming. Very good. And that demon would have a trajectory that still allowed Frank to make the necessary connection further down the line…
So yes, that should all be OK. The story becomes tighter and more ‘magical’.
Hopefully, anyway.
I’ve made some notes towards a formal re-outline; but at this stage in the game, they can only take me so far. Like Frank, I just have to whip out the scalpel, hack my way into the corpse and start tossing major organs over my shoulder. Hopefully, after I’ve re-examined everything and chucked out what doesn’t work, I can stuff the left-overs back into the carcass, plug it into the mains and throw the switch…
And, like Frankenstein’s monster, it will shamble to its feet and start to move in a sinister fashion…
Until it falls over a chair.
Donald Hounam 