July 02, 2007

I am writing this post both to avoid and to describe the terror of revision.

It's easy to get attached to the way a piece is built when you've "finished" it, particularly if you've gotten decent feedback on it as it stands. Moving or cutting a paragraph or a sentence might cause the whole thing to unravel and collapse into a heap, as though it's a delicately balanced structure that is sensitive and doesn't want to be poked at.

But there are always changes that have to be made, and if the essential story is good enough it will survive being yanked around. For example, this:

On his way towards the bar, Shelley cut across one corner of the dance floor, passing through the sonic dampener's boundary.

...isn't quite as good a first sentence* as this:

One of the dancers stepped off of the sparkling dance floor and sought Shelley’s gaze from across the room, holding it for a few heartbeats before stepping up to the mahogany bar and ordering a pint glass of something dark.

In the first one, the protagonist walks up to a bar. Who cares?

In the second, a guy makes significant eye contact with the protagonist from across the room, then walks up to the bar. There's a suggestion that something is about to happen, and perhaps the reader will be more inclined to find out what that is.

The trouble is, that second sentence, along with what happens next, used to live about a third of the way down page two. After thinking about it for awhile, I realized that I was reluctant to move the original first sentence and its accompanying details because I was attached to the technology it described (the sonic dampeners). There is a dusting of near-future sci-fi in this piece, and although it's necessary to the plot, that's not what drives it. This story isn't about things, it's about people.

So I rearranged, hacked out some dialogue about opera that really had nothing to do with anything, and ended up cutting 161 words, bringing the piece down to about 2250. The technology still exists in the story, but now it's on page four.

I think these changes are improvements, but I'm not sure. I think they better serve the story and the characters. But, again, I'm not sure.

This story has already been through my original writer's group and two workshops, so it's time to stop seeking feedback. There's only one way to find out whether it's ready: it goes off to The Sun by the end of the week.

This will be my first submission since 1995.

Now: back to it. Once more unto the page, dear friends, once more. Or close the laptop and drink martinis!

*And not as good as this one, but as my story has no camels, I can't use it.