The Out and Back

Getting new perspective on old pages, aka The Bullshit Test

Just before I left for a very great vacation, I printed a rough draft of Act II of my novel, about 100 pages. I usually like to print a draft when I feel I’ve worked through it all I can. I was not at that place with Act II; I hadn’t looked at any of it for at least a month and was sure if I actually looked at what I was exporting from Scrivener, I’d see plenty of things I’d feel compelled to go back and fix before printing.

So I decided the wisest course of action was to go ahead and print without looking. I knew that after two weeks away (without my laptop!), I would not want to look at a screen. I knew that when I came back, if I had to open Scrivener and try to figure out where the hell to start, I’d panic and not do anything at all. So I exported everything that was in the folder labeled Act II and printed it, leaving a neat pile of 100 pages on my desk to look at when I got back from vacation.

On vacation, we took two kinds of walks. In cities, we moved in rough loops, heading off in one direction and slowly shifting the trajectory to eventually loop back to the starting point. In the countryside, though, the walks were mostly out and backs.

I’ll be honest: I’ve never been a big fan of out and back hikes. Going back over the ground I just traveled doesn’t strike me as particularly thrilling. A loop, on the other hand, always moves forward, revealing new terrain.

I surprised myself on this trip by enjoying the out and backs very much. I found myself noticing much more deeply, so much so that the way out and the way back felt very different. Even though it was the same path, the way back offered a totally opposite perspective. The light was different, the weather too. Houses and hills I hadn’t seen before suddenly popped out. Sometimes on the way back, I’d find myself thinking, This looks nothing like the way we came. And then a minute later I’d recognize a landmark and think, Oh yes, I know exactly where we are.

The marriage of these experiences was surprisingly delightful, and it is, I think, a mark of middle age to have discovered such an affection for the out and back. I can remember being young, feeling a deep urgency to cover as much ground as possible, to see as much as I could of the undiscovered world. I still have a hankering for the unknown, but I’ve started to see the excitement and novelty in what’s right under my nose: a new perspective on the same ground.

When I got home, I had no desire to open my laptop. But the pages sitting on my desk looked mighty attractive.

Working on paper greatly reduces my urgency and anxiety. When I see something amiss on the printed page, I know I am not going to fix it right away. To do that I’d have to open my laptop, boot up Scrivener, find the section I’m looking at, and then actually make some changes. That sounds like a lot of work. It certainly requires getting out of my chair. Reading hard copy means when I see something that needs changing, I simply mark the page. I strike through, make accompanying notes, and keep reading.

Every time I reread anything I see something new, and that effect is quadrupled if it’s text I haven’t looked at for a while. The pages seem simultaneously new and familiar. There are inevitably details that surprise me completely (raise your hand if you’ve ever thought I have no memory of writing that) and then there are scenes I recall vividly, turns and climaxes I’m waiting for. It’s, well, kind of like an out and back.

Writing is so much a process of getting lost and then finding ourselves again. It took me about a week to read through Act II, take stock of the triumphs and missteps. There’s a lot of work to be done, but reading helped me discern an arc for each character—I could see where they began Act II and where they ought to end. The scenes those arcs are built on definitely need shoring up and some are not yet written. But by laying down the rough draft and revisiting it, by going out to discover the material and doubling back to review it, I was able to make out the contours of the landscape.

For those of you hankering for some more specifics, here’s a little more on what I was looking for in my review of Act II.

Emotional clarity. There are times you read something you’ve written and you just feel in your gut how right it is, how your character is doing and saying things that feel deeply true to who they are. This is emotional clarity, and when it appears, I celebrate and protect it. I keep all the moments and scenes with emotional clarity and use them to determine what my characters will do next and how an arc can be constructed from those emotions and actions.

Type 1 Bullshit. The opposite of emotional clarity is bullshit. It’s a little like that famous line about pornography: You know it when you see it. Often I write sentences that look and sound nice, but their meaning—usually about a character’s state of mind or desire—is completely wrong, the opposite of what I know that character’s truth to be. Those sentences I delete outright.

Type 2 Bullshit. Another variety of bullshit is aspirational, a sentence that says something about a character that isn’t true, but maybe says something the character wants to be true or could be true in the future, if a certain set of events transpire. Type 2 Bullshit often reveals where that character might end up—but is still bullshit because it depicts a change that won’t happen in the few sentences I’ve given to it, that requires more scene work to demonstrate the evolution.

Pacing. In fact most of what I find in a reread is poor pacing—changes that happen too fast, scenes that are choppy and abrupt or that drag on forever. Pretty much every revision handles pacing, but my second or third one focuses very specifically on making sure the emotional and physical movements of characters happen at a speed that the reader can follow at an enjoyable pace.

Are you still with me? Ready for the next step?

I use the information above to craft an arc (some might say an outline, and those people are not me because outlines give me hives) for a character over the span of the Act. I take what I’ve read and what I know and sketch out a scene progression that will guide my revision, indicating what I need to move, cut, and draft to get the dots to line up.

Is it that easy? Yes and no. I think it’s not a bad revision strategy to hold fast to the stuff you know is emotionally true, cut all the stuff that is straight up lies, and use pacing to unpack the stuff that isn’t exactly lies but needs more page space to allow the reader to experience, understand, and believe the character’s evolution.

It’s also an iterative process. I’ll do what I just described over the next few weeks and then…I’ll do it again. Then I’ll have some other people read it and do it again. And a few more times after that. I’ll take that same hike at least a dozen times before I declare it done. And I’ll enjoy the view and notice new things every time.