BRIAN EVENSON

On Revision

BRIAN EVENSON is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the novel Last Days, which won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009, and the storycollection Fugue State. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program.

 

 

The thing that makes the difference between a good book and a great book is revision: taking the time to get the details right so that the dialogue is convincing, the development of the action consistent, the description crisp and accurate, the mood just right. With mystery and crime fiction this is especially important. Moments where the seams of the storytelling show or where the author telegraphs what’s coming next can ruin the experience for readers. These lapses can make readers distrust the author’s authority and can cast the fiction’s authenticity into doubt.

At times, that distrust is a tool you can use—there are sometimes reasons to make readers doubt the veracity of a situation or of what a character is saying—but it’s a tool that should be used very sparingly and very carefully.

When I’m writing a novel or a story, I try in the first draft to get the dynamics of the story and the plot in place. I try to create a basic sense of the order of events and what is happening, a clear sense of the conflict, a sense of the characters and their relationships to one another. I find if I can do all of that, I end up with a firm and sturdy narrative skeleton, which I can build flesh and skin around. If this skeleton isn’t in place early on, it’s much harder to build the story or novel (especially a novel) into a convincing living body.

In the ensuing drafts, I think a lot about the story’s pacing, a lot about the specific words that characters are using, a lot about how small details function in relation to one another, about what is revealed when and by whom. I’m looking to build up the story in a way that gives it a natural texture, which makes for a good, intense reading experience, one the reader can get lost in—the kind of reading experience I want to have as a reader myself.

If you don’t have that basic skeleton to begin with, revision is a very different matter, a much more desperate and demanding process where you often end up throwing large parts of the story away and shifting around big blocks of text. It usually takes more time than scrapping the project and starting over, and a lot of writers I know have stories about the novel they revised, seemingly without end, but could never get quite right, the novel that’s waiting in a drawer somewhere and is still not ready to be published.

Intense revision takes a lot of work, but sometimes it’s worth it. Some projects get their hooks into you and refuse to let go. When I was writing my novel The Open Curtain, I thought I knew where the book was going. I had an outline, knew what should happen when, felt like I had a good road map. And indeed I did know where I was going for the first two parts of the book. Then I got to the third and final part and realized that everything I’d planned for it just wasn’t right. It was like I’d followed the road map to a place where a bridge was washed out.

Then I did a stupid thing. Rather than try to figure out where the story needed to go, I stuck to the outline and followed it anyway. Not surprisingly, I ended up with a body whose head and torso appeared human but whose legs looked like they belonged to some other creature entirely. So I threw the last part away and tried again, not quite willing to dispense with the outline, but letting go of parts of it. That version was terrible, too.

Then I spent a long time—weeks first and then months—putting the outline aside and thinking about what should happen, trying different ideas for the ending that fizzled out. I was left with more than a thousand pages of material that I threw away. I knew the idea was good, knew I had something, but I just couldn’t make it work. Several times I almost gave the book up, but I kept coming back to it. And finally, suddenly, when I least expected it, I started that third part again and something clicked, and all at once I knew I had it. The book went on to be a finalist for the Edgar Award.

That’s an important part of revising: knowing when not to give up. Be persistent; be willing to spend some time and serious effort getting the book where you want it to be. Try to make an okay book a good book, and then strive to make that good book a great book.

Writing a novel is like entering a relationship, and like any relationship it can demand a lot from you if you want it to work. But you also need to know when to let go and move on.

EXERCISE

Take a scene that you feel is stuck—not working—and revise it to be in a different voice: if it’s in first person, write it in third person. If it’s in third person, write it in first. If it’s in the voice of the detective, rewrite it in the voice of the murderer, thinking about what he might notice that the detective would not.

Then sit back and take a close look at your rewrite. What do you notice about the scene that didn’t strike you before? What cracks or flaws do you see that weren’t apparent before? Is the problem the point of view? Even though you were initially writing from someone’s first-person perspective, were you trying to convey information the person wouldn’t know? Is the problem that the third-person voice wasn’t as objective as you thought? This is a way of giving yourself distance from the scene, letting you take a step back so you can see it more objectively.

Now take the revised scene and return it to the voice it was formerly in, but without looking at the original version—just working with the revised version. Try to preserve what you like about the new version while making it genuine to the original voice.

Tip: At a certain point in the revision process, I often discover I’m not sure about a character’s voice—something has changed between how she speaks or acts early in the book and how she speaks or acts later.

The easiest way to determine what’s wrong is to cut out all the static. Take the first few instances of the character’s speech, then a bit of dialogue chosen from the middle, then the last few bits of her dialogue. Copy it all in a separate document, without anything else, then read it straight through. What changes? What stays the same? Think back to the book: Is there a reason for her to change or not?

Often this step will reveal what you need to know. Other times you will need to go a step further. Take a few more bits from the middle of dialogue. But take a little more than just her speech; take lines just before and after to get a sense of whom she’s speaking to. More often than not, the problem will make itself clear.