The difference between “writing” and “editing” is not something that moves peoples’ emotions. Who cares?
But…if you’re interested in what real writing is…if it matters to you that what you’re writing be readable…if you feel that somehow James Baldwin was able to do more with words than can, say, Donald Trump, then “writing” and “editing” should matter to you.
The surprise comes when you understand that in the end there is no real difference between the two. Both are filled with the possibilities for expressive foolishness, falling short, and particularly in the case of the editing, memorable excellence.
In my own case, I compose (or “write”) very quickly. I know what is supposed to come in a particular passage of a novel because I have outlined the whole thing before I begin writing. So, the first draft comes out of me as does water from a spigot. It’s a relating of what happened first, then what happened after that, and then after that…and I congratulate myself for having stuck to the plot. But I know right away that this entire passage would appear amateurish to any reader who has a sense of what good writing is and, especially, what’s bad. It’s actually Outline #2, although longer than #1. My real writing takes place in the editing of the draft. And, for me, that process is slow and slower, endlessly repetitive, and deeply careful.
By the time I feel it is ready to be read by someone else, I will have edited every sentence of a novel or story many dozens of times, if not hundreds. Every word counts. Every phrase. Every piece of punctuation. Dialog especially and, in my particular case, the descriptions of the surroundings and the objects in every scene.
An object is just an object. However, every object in a piece of writing can be described from the point of view of the person observing it. In that moment, specific descriptive language can be used to tell how the character is feeling about this or that in this particular moment. Objects and surroundings take on a life of their own if they can be so shown.
For example, you can describe a teacup in endless ways. So, describing that teacup differently from the points of view of different characters can tell you a lot about those characters and how they differ from each other. A surrounding, and every object within that surrounding, can tell you a ton about what the particular character is feeling and thinking. Or what the mood is in the room in the particular scene. Or what deep emotional change the character is undergoing. The teacup becomes a precise source of information for whoever the character may be…the character who is looking at it, the character who is looking at how the teacup is being held by another character, or whomever…etc. etc.
It's up to the author, of course, to write about that teacup. In my own case, I might dwell in my editing on such an object or surrounding for hours, trying to write an exact description of it, so that the reader can better understand how the character is feeling at that very moment.
It is a lot to ask of a teacup. But it is an editing task of which every writer should take advantage.
For a specific example, you could describe a marsh as dark, maybe go on to use the word “grey,” and leave it at that. You could then continue to whatever is happening in there. But here is a famous example of such a place, from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, that memorably opens for the reader the personality of the main character, a boy named Pip:
“Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
“’Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’”
So, you have phrases that describe aspects of the marsh and that, happily for the reader, also set Pip’s particular emotional situation with certainty.
—“a memorable raw afternoon towards evening”…i.e. toward darkness
—“this bleak place overgrown with nettles”
—“dead and buried”…used twice, in the case of seven people—Pip’s parents and every one of his siblings—told in one phrase
—“dark, flat wilderness”
—“dikes and mounds and gates”…all of which impede direction
—”scattered”
—“low leaden line”
—“distant savage lair”
—“small bundle of shivers”
—“beginning to cry”
All this in just two sentences, the fourth and fifth paragraphs of the entire novel, which is about four hundred pages long. And we surely know who this boy is and how he is feeling in this moment.
Dickens keeps up this intensity of description throughout, and we know deeply about all the novel’s memorable characters in part because of such description. He wrote in long hand, and I can only imagine what the edits in his manuscripts looked like before they were copied out finally in a neat manner to be sent to the typesetter. I imagine it was frequently a mess, and also admire what precision of character almost always came from that mess.
We know that Dickens edited his stuff mightily. Every writer should. It’s where the real writing takes place.
© Copyright 2022. Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.
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Well said Terry.