Editing Day 3 (cont'd)
LATER:
Just got the chapter 1 & 2 markups. Gotta love when the editor starts off by saying:
I did your first chapter to show you what you were doing wrong.
Then goes on to highlight every single place you used was, were or had. It probably didn’t help that I went through yesterday and made a lot of those changes, because now I feel like I’ve already fixed stuff that she’s marked up. Plus, I’m not sold that ‘was, were and had’ are the tools of bad writing. It’s seems kind of knee jerk to rule out words completely. She says those words lead to ‘telling’ instead of ‘showing’ and we never want to tell. We were told at Chautauqua that, really, every story needs to do both. Showing is better, but you can’t show everything. And the worst thing is to show and tell the same thing. Do one or the other; just make sure you don’t do both. MS though, is of the belief that any telling is bad.
….
[deep breath]
O-KAY!!
[deeper breath]
I’ll try it.
And I’ll remind myself that I told her to be blunt b/c I was used to critique and didn’t need kid gloves. Still…I have to wonder what the other mss looked like. If mine’s so bad, why was it the winner?
LATER STILL:
Went through and finished the revisions to chapter 1. Still think getting rid of every was/were/had is overkill, but she was right about there being a lot of ‘telling’. Wrote a snotty reply email re was/were/had.
Did not sent the snotty email.
Yet.
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4 comments:
You won because you were the best submission and because they loved your piece! An editor would not spend that much time on something she did not absolutely love. Still, I agree w/ you. Was, were, had are not the devils spawn. Sometimes they are the perfect way to tell the story. Remember that you do have the right to say 'but I chose to keep it here because I really feel it works the best for the flow of the story'. What fun! Hard, intimidating, frustrating...yes, but fun!
Yeah--I should not lose sight of the fact that I'd rather be going through editing than not! Thanks Tess.
How rewarding it's going to be when you look back and see what all your hard work produced. You're a talented writer, Amy!
--Diana
Exciting and frustrating! I totally agree that you need both show and tell in a story... it's all about pacing. "Just try it" is good. Occasionally fighting for your right to use was, were, had is good too. You're right, the top writers use them when necessary.
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