Rewriting is like emergency surgery. You lay the mangled body out and prod it, limb by limb, trying to decide what can be salvaged and what needs to be amputated.
After a certain amount of hacking and sawing, you’re left with an incomplete cadaver that you may—or may not—be able to bring back to life… and two boxes of bits. One, labelled ‘Trash’ or ‘Bin’ on the computer, contains elements that are only good to throw to the dogs. The other, a folder that I create myself and usually label ‘Spares’, contains anything from single lines to entire scenes that may have been located in the wrong part of the story, but which I may, with luck, manage usefully to stitch on somewhere else.
Here’s the original version of a scene from Pariah, the second book in my Gifted series. It’s a description of a dream. I’ve edited the draft slightly, so it makes sense out of context. The narrator, Frank, is a fifteen-year-old sorcerer; and Marvo is his friend.
So I’m having this dream and I’m in the room in Intensive Care and it’s my dad lying on the floor and he’s dead… but his eyes are open so he can watch me. There’s this river flowing through the room, too, with boats drifting along…
I’m doing this spell to bring Dad back from the dead. I’ve got the incantation written on a piece of paper, but my eyes have gone all blurry and I can’t see what I’ve written. But I think I can remember some of it. I say, ‘Marvo,’ but nothing happens.
So I say it again and still nothing happens.
I say it again…
And again…
And I’m awake.
I liked this, and I felt it added something to the story… but it didn’t work. I had no idea whether it was worth trying to salvage it or, if it was salvageable, where it might go. In the end, I just parked it in ‘Spares’ and forgot about it.
Several months and rewrites down the line, I became aware of a yawning gap in the story and concocted a new scene to fill it…
Background: Frank’s pissed just about everybody off, including the Society of Sorcerers, who have revoked his licence to practise sorcery; so he’s hiding out in his studio at the back of what he calls the ‘termite nest’—actually a monastery. He’s hungry and exhausted, and mad at everybody, including himself. He slips out to raid the kitchen, and finds all the ‘termites’ (monks) in the chapel, face down on the floor, praying.
As I worked on this scene, I realised that once he was in the chapel Frank could lie down with the other monks, just fall asleep… and have the dream I’d left among the ‘Spares’…
I open the chapel door silently and sneak in. Up at the front, the termites are flat on their faces on the floor, in a semi-circle round a statue of their patron, Saint Cornelius Agrippa. He’s looking down at them like, what the hell is this? Arms out wide, habits spread out: twenty grey butterflies. They’re making this sinister muttering noise that sounds less like praying than . . . I dunno, but they sound really angry.
I know I’m wrecked, but I’m in a very weird mood, even by my standards. I tiptoe towards the front and kneel silently, then lie out flat. Arms wide. The stone floor cold against my cheek.
What am I after? Do I want God to forgive me? Do I expect the saint to step down from the plinth, pat me on the shoulder and tell me that everything’s going to be all right? Do I need to be part of something, even if it’s just the termites feeling pissed off with life? Yeah, that sounds about right.
I find myself praying. I’m asking God to give Marvo a break and make it so her brother isn’t really dead after all. I’m asking him to save Kazia from whatever she’s involved in. I’m asking him to tell me what to do about Matthew . . .
Who am I kidding? It’s not like the man upstairs gives a monkey’s. I mean, I know the termites say he made the world, but is that really true? Maybe he just tripped over it, like a kid lost in the woods falling over an ants’ nest. And now maybe he’s having fun poking it with a stick and seeing what scuttles out.
The muttering noise echoes around the chapel. There’s a waft of incense that smells of rotting flesh. The light outside is fading fast. It’s cold in here . . .
So I know I’m asleep because I’m having this dream. I’m in the autopsy room in the mortuary, and it’s my dad lying on the slab. He’s dead—except his eyes are open so he can watch me. There’s a river flowing through the room too, with barges drifting along it. I know where they’re going: downstream, to London.
I’m all dressed up in my sorcerer’s party outfit—hat, robe, belt, slippers and all the instruments—and I’m doing this spell to bring my dad back from the dead. I’ve got the incantation written on a piece of paper, but I’ve come over all blurry, I can’t find my glasses, and I can’t read what I’ve written.
But I think I can remember some of it. I say, ‘Marvo,’ but nothing happens.
So I say it again and still nothing happens. I say it again: ‘Marvo . . .’
And I’m awake, flat on my face on the cold floor of the monastery chapel.
What’s interesting is that when I started on this new scene, I wasn’t wondering about where to put the dream—I wasn’t consciously thinking about it at all. I was looking for a solution to what seemed like an entirely different problem.
That’s the thing I love about rewrites. You’ve dug yourself into a hole. You find a way out… and you get this added bonus: a solution to a completely different problem. It feels neat.
Maybe too neat…
The featured image is Max Beckmann (1884–1950), Hölle der Vögel (Birds’ Hell), oil on canvas, 1937-38.
Donald Hounam 