Writing and Selling the YA Novel (18 page)

Spending time apart from your manuscript also gets you ready emotionally for accepting criticism. This is a tough part of the editing process, but it's also an essential part. No book is perfect the first time through. Have you heard the myth about Jack Kerouac's creation of
On the Road
? Legend says that Kerouac sat down at his typewriter, loaded up on coffee and Benzedrine, wrote the manuscript in one long scroll so he wouldn't have to stop to change sheets of paper in his typewriter, then sent it off to get published. You can still see the scroll today as part of an exhibit, but what most people don't realize is that it doesn't represent Kerouac's first draft. In fact,
On the Road
had already been done for years and had been rejected by every editor he'd sent it to. That famous scroll is actually a rewrite.

"Why tell you this? I relate this story because Kerouac's
On the Road
has been used to give countless people permission to look at editing as something "beneath" truly gifted writers, but nothing could be farther from the truth. What makes a writer great is the work she produces, and whether that is the result of five drafts or fifty drafts doesn't matter. Accepting the fact that your first draft will be flawed will take the sting out of the critiquing that needs to happen in order for it to improve.

When you put your book away for a while, the heightened emotions that are necessary to drive you through the writing process have time to cool down, and you'll find you're able to read it almost as a different person. The amount of time to put away your work will vary, but two weeks is usually cited as a minimum. I aim for a month, if possible, with a first draft, but you'll want to find the time period that's right for you. Once you've sequestered your novel, be sure to mark the date to take it back out again. Fresh eyes are great, but abandoning your novel is
not
what you're looking to achieve.

WATCHING FOR FLAWS
_

Now let's imagine that several weeks have passed. You take your manuscript out of the desk drawer where you put it and sit down, eager to read your amazing creation. You turn the pages, one by one, waiting to feel that same joy you felt when you were writing. Instead, your grin slowly fades and in place of the pride you'd been basking in (rightfully!) since finishing your book, you begin to feel a sickening kind of dread. The writing is sloppy. You can't tell who the main character is. The whole first section drags terribly. The location you thought you'd described so artfully now seems overdrawn. A quiet little voice starts to whisper in your ear, "This is the worst book ever written."

In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: "Don't panic!"

Banish that fear creeping up your spine that says your manuscript is unfixable. Silence the doubt that says you don't have the skill to improve your work. Editing, like anything else, is learnable, and the way

to learn it is by diving in. You can do it, and if you're committed to being a published writer, you
will
do it. Remind yourself that professional writers edit their work many, many times both before and after they've handed it to an editor. Even if you're not published yet, if your goal is to be a professional author, you'll want to behave like one. Tell yourself that becoming your own best editor is just one more step in this process.

Here's what I look for on my first fresh read of my books. To begin with, I want to get a clear sense of the entire picture. Although it's tempting to tackle individual passages right away, I usually read the whole book from start to finish without changing anything so I can get a sense of how the plot plays out and how the pacing works. I make mental notes about dialogue that sounds stilted, sections that might need to get cut, or places where my main character gets lost in an array of too many conflicting people or themes. I'm trying to read the book as an independent reader might read it.

Once I've got an overview of the problem areas, I tackle the broader issues first. Since larger problems like characterization or plot development may require a lot of rewriting, I find that it saves time not to get too nitpicky about things like word choice and grammar at this stage. Entire passages are apt to be deleted or changed significantly.

Here's a list of some of the things you might watch for on your first pass of editing:

• How do you feel about the story? Do you still enjoy it? Do you have any trouble suspending your disbelief?

• Check your pacing. Are you turning the pages to see what happens next or is the text wordy and slow? Could the tension

be taken up a notch or do events seem to occur organically, as if they couldn't happen in any other way?

• Watch for passages that seem self-indulgent. Samuel Johnson once said, "Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." While this might be a bit extreme, you do want to be aware of flowery passages that draw attention away from the story and to the writing itself.

• Keep an ear out for dialogue that sounds fake, and an eye out for long passages of uninterrupted text that might be changed into dialogue.

• See how you feel about your characters. Are you rooting for or despising the correct people? Do any of them get on your nerves? Do the secondary characters take over the book?

• How's the ending? Does the story seem to stop abruptly as if it suddenly plowed over a cliff? Or does it drag? Should it have ended several pages earlier?

• How's your beginning? Do you have a good opening line? Do you start with the action right away or does it take several pages before you begin the real story?

• Does information get passed along through the narrator telling the reader or through the reader seeing it for himself in active scenes?

• If you're writing humor, do you laugh in the right places? If you're writing horror, do you jump in the right places? If you're

writing fantasy or science fiction, are the rules of your world consistent or do they shift throughout the book?

• Does your setting seem vivid, like a snapshot? Does it evoke the intended emotion?

• What can you strengthen to take the book from good to great?

No matter how you feel about your first draft, remember that you can take the time you need to get each element right. Many times, fixing one trouble spot will solve another one. For example, if your main character's motivation isn't clear and she's getting overshadowed by your secondary characters, that will affect your reader's ability to get drawn into the plot. Maybe part of the reason the main character doesn't come alive is because we never see her talking to anyone else and never get a sense of what she would say or how she'd interact with others. By adding more active scenes, suddenly her motivation becomes crystal clear. As the main character steps up to the plate, you'll find you're turning those pages with enthusiasm again.

In a good book, everything is woven together tightly and every change you make will affect the whole. Small changes can have big effects. Don't be fooled into thinking that every solution must be drastic. Large issues can sometimes hinge on single sentences.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE "SMALL" STUFF?

You might be wondering ... When
do we get to the grammar?
By focusing on broader issues am I implying you should ignore grammar and word choice and let a copy editor deal with that? Since you're writing a book for teens can you let it slide by? Absolutely not.

Although dialogue in YA novels might be less grammatical, it's still important that your book read well. And that is largely your responsibility. It's a common misconception that copyediting is where grammatical issues get fixed so the author doesn't need to worry about it on his own. Stories are told about writers who submitted their work with lots of mistakes and a brilliant agent or editor saw through their poor presentation, recognizing the literary gem underneath. These stories get rehashed again and again, so we feel okay about not completing a task that most of us find tedious. But the fact of the matter is, these stories are told because they are exceptions. Rare exceptions.

And they aren't exceptions because agents and editors lack vision. They are exceptions because sloppy presentation usually means laziness on the part of the author. Sure, we're not all grammar geniuses, but we can all learn the basics, and if we don't want to or can't, we can at least rope someone else into helping us clean up our text.

Your goal is to give your readers—whether they are editors, agents, friends, family, or strangers—the smoothest, most engaging read possible. You want them to be entertained or moved by what you've written, not annoyed at having to slog through a book that's cumbersome to read. Just as we only have one chance to make a first impression when we meet new people, our books only have one chance to make a first impression on readers. I highly recommend reading
The Elements of Style
if you haven't already. It's a small, thin book that's a classic reference tool. If the idea of reading a reference book (no matter how thin it is!) makes your hair stand on end, try either
Woe is I
by Patricia T. O'Conner or
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
by Lynne Truss. Both of these books make grammar entertaining.

Since it would be nearly impossible for me to give you a good grammatical overview in the course of one chapter, I'm going to focus my attention on the most important and most frequent line-editing issues I see in manuscripts. These can range from grammatical mistakes to word choices, but what they have in common is they are more detail oriented as opposed to the broader sweeping issues we covered above. I hope you'll apply for extra credit by furthering your grammatical studies after class.

Here are the line-editing problems I encounter most frequently in manuscripts:

Too many words.
Manuscripts are often cluttered with needless words. Most of my early drafts are far too wordy, and if I read with an eye toward tightening my prose, I can take many of the excess words out. This not only streamlines the reading process, it makes every word count. Writing is not about putting as many words as possible onto a page; it's about choosing the very best ones.

Echoes.
Echoes are words unnecessarily repeated in close proximity. An example would be these two sentences: "The phone rang insistently. Jack answered the phone and asked who was calling."
The phone
is an echo, so you'd want to come up with a creative way to reword your sentences. How about this instead: "The ringing of the telephone jolted Jack awake. He answered it gruffly. 'Who's calling?'" (Notice how the dialogue brings it alive?)

Too many sentences beginning with "And" and "But."
Let's admit from the start that plenty of writers begin sentences with Aid or
But.
In moderation, I think this is okay, especially if it fits the narrative voice. BUT when used too often it can be very distracting. AND even if you have a good reason, if you find yourself using these words as sentence starters too often, try something else.

Using punctuation in place of plot.
We won't get into rules for submitting your manuscript until the next chapter, but I can tell you one thing right now: One of the surest signs that a manuscript is weak is the overuse of the exclamation point. What's wrong with the exclamation point? If a reader sees it too often it begins to have a numbing effect, and chances are the author is using it to convey excitement that ought to be found within the text. Make your plot exciting, not your punctuation. This applies to overuse of the dash, ellipsis, semicolon, bold, and italics as well. If it's out of the ordinary, use it sparingly. Save attention-grabbers for the times when you most need them.