The difference between “writing” and “editing” is not something that moves many peoples’ emotions. Aren’t they the same? Who cares?
But…if you’re interested in what real writing is…if it matters to you that what you’re reading 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. As we know, Donald Trump doesn’t edit.
The surprise comes when you understand that the editing is of greater importance to the writing and that both are essential to the final piece’s 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. My real writing takes place in the editing and re-editing of that first 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 almost every sentence of a novel 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.
Yes, an object is just an object. But you can describe a teacup in endless ways. So, describing that cup 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 (or the characters are) 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.
When I’m writing, I usually dwell upon my editing of such an object or surrounding, trying to write an exact description of it, so that the reader can better understand how the character is feeling at that very moment, or how the scene is proceeding.
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, and maybe go on to use the word “grey.” You could then continue on 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
“low leaden line”
“distant savage lair”
“small bundle of shivers”
“beginning to cry”
All this indeed in just two sentences, the fourth and fifth paragraphs of the entire novel, which is about four hundred pages long.
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 own stuff mightily. Every writer should. Editing is the most important phase of writing.
Note: I’m talking here about the writer editing his or her own work. The editing that comes about when the writer is working with a separate editor is another matter, and not as often successful.
Copyright ©2023 Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.
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