Relationships and Relationship Arcs--Revising to strengthen character and intensify plot

I've been scarce for months.  I'm living in Nigeria, so it is more difficult to get on the internet and post.  Here is a piece I wrote up for Through the Tollbooth. Sorry no visuals . . . . they take a lot more internet than I have.  Hope you enjoy this.

Relationships and Revision

Relationships are KEY to a story: The way a relationship evolves and changes is often much of what IS the story and plot.

A character learns and grows and struggles because of interacting with other characters.

Also, interactions between characters are often at the intersection of action and emotions, and these relationships convince the reader to care about what happens to the characters.

RELATIONSHIP ARCS

I love relationship arcs.

As part of my revision process I analyze my manuscript’s relationship arcs. This arc is the up and down between two characters. In the same way that a character has a character arc and a book has a plot arc, relationships also have an arc. I visualize them as the typical plot diagram--with ups and downs and usually a climax.

Similar to a plot arc, a relationship arc will have turning points, reversals, and sometimes a climax. Sometimes the relationship arc is, at the core, also a subplot. (I could also argue that most subplots would be a relationship arc.)

[For more info about plot arcs visit Ingred Sundberg's Story Structure Diagrams.]

I have found that considering relationship arcs helps me catch all sorts of both plot and character details that need tweaking or sometimes more intensive revision. It also makes me more aware of the relationships between characters.

As I look at relationship arcs, I focus separately on each important and significant relationship in the story. In most cases the relationships I examine are the relationship between the main character and a secondary character.

How do I usually approach each relationship arc?

(Keeping track of the relationship between characters will depend on the writer and the relationship being examined. One can do it as a chart or graph, written out by scene, or in one’s head, or with sticky notes or note cards . . . . . whatever works.)

1. I find every scene where the two characters appear and consider the following questions.

• Where and how do things change between the characters?
• What are their actions and emotions?
• What are the ups? The downs?
• Is there a climax?
• Does the other character disappear for a long period of time? (It is fine to have a character not in a series of scenes--but this means the author needs to not forget that relationships develop off-stage.)
• What is the purpose of this relationship? Is this relationship critical for the story, or is there no change between the characters, or is a character a flat stand-in-character who does not pull his weight?
• How does the relationship change throughout the story?
• If this relationship is a subplot I ask myself if there is some sort of interaction that can be layered on top of the main plot line in any scene.

I also consider if these scenes are in their proper places, in the proper order, and that the "right" amount of space exists between the scenes for this relationship.

2. After I have considered all the above questions, I use plot theory and character theory and apply that to the specific relationship I'm looking at.

• Where is the beginning, the turning points, reversals, climax, change and growth, conflict, and complications of the relationship?
• If these items don’t exist--is that relationship needed? Or does the missing element need to be added?

3. Emotional points. In addition to the physical plot of the relationship, there will also be an emotional layer. If there isn't an emotional aspect to every relationship, I question if it belongs.

4. We can also consider the thematic considerations and if possible, make the relationship a mirror or repetition or variation of the physical or emotional plots of the book.

Basically, the Relationship Arc will have turning points like a plot arc and have emotional change like a character arc.

I repeat the above steps with each significant relationship. Don’t worry--in many cases, it can be a fairly quick process. A writer does not need to analyze every relationship. Even laying out the most important 2 to 4 relationships which the main character has can be super helpful.

LAYERS

After looking at major relationships, I look at how and where the relationships layer. By having turning points of different relationships coming frequently, the tension on the page will make the story more intense.

I find that by separating out and looking at major relationship arcs, I insure that each character is needed, gain another perspective on characterization, can fine-tune my plot and keep the tension nice, and well, fix all sorts of problems that arise in drafts.

Relationships and the interactions between characters are often the engine that move the story forward, creating plot, while showing who that character is.

Revision: links to authors who share early drafts

I'm always fascinated at how different writers revise their manuscripts.

I gave examples in a past post about Lewis Carroll and also shared my rainbow manuscript revision technique.

I recently found out that CBCC of University of Wisconsin placed Ellen Raskin's drafts of The Westing Game online. (The Westing Game won the Newbery award in 1979.)

Here's a link to the drafts and to the audio of Raskin talking about her manuscripts! 
The information and background about the book design (Raskin was very involved) is fascinating. (The first printing was shredded.)
The working notes and intro to the project are also excellent.

Deep revision for me often means cutting characters, adding characters, changing plot points, strengthening desire lines, and once *gasp* changing the premise, which meant rewriting that entire novel. Deep revision also includes cutting chapters and writing new chapters and scenes.

Below are links to other authors who share their revision process. All their examples are excellent.

Janni Simner posted various versions and an excellent analysis of the opening paragraphs of her short story, "Song for Two Voices" in 2005. In this post she also talks about finding the right voice for this story. She often shares thoughts about revision on her blog.

Melissa Marr shared early drafts from pages in her notebooks in 2009. See here and here.

More recently, earlier this year, Maggie Stiefvater shared her some of her revisions on her blog.
She also asked other authors to share their revision thoughts and process: Stiefvater gives links on her blog to ten authors who share their drafts.

Kill Your Darlings, but Keep Their Ghosts and Shadows

  Sometimes I feel like I’m wielding a machete or a flamethrower when I’m revising a book. Pages burn into ashes. Sentences blow away like the seeds of a dandelion clock.

There are times we must remove our Darlings.
(“Remove”: a sterile word for “cut” and “kill,” which implies blood is involved.)

We may remove
a word.
A sentence.
A scene.
A desire.
A motive.
A character.

Or another element of the story.

The revision may be substantial, and it is like we are pulling the warp threads out of a plot or sending the keystone from a character arc tumbling to the ground.

The art of writing involves knowing what needs to stay and what needs to be removed.

A positive spin: We are deleting cutting rescuing our Darlings from a place they don’t belong as we find the best way to tell our story.

What happens to the words we delete?
Scenes we eliminate?
Characters we yank from the pages?

Our Darlings may go on to another life as we tuck them away in our mental “use later” file or into a “cut from book” file in the computer. We can save an awesome turn of phrase to use at another time later. We can borrow and steal elements from a deleted scene for another story. Not a word we write is wasted.

When I remove words/ sentences/scenes/characters from a story, what else happens?

Example One: In my novel, River, I cut a significant secondary character. She wasn’t pulling her weight. (Truth be told, she didn’t want to be in the book.)

When I revised, elements of her character that were critical to moving the plot forward shifted to two other secondary characters.

Example Two: [These opening sentences are taken from one of my picture books that I wrote while at VCFA while in the picture book semester. This book was a finalist in the 2010 SCBWI Barbara Karlin Grant competition.]

1. “We climb our mountains from the inside, up and up we climb.” (First draft—when I was desperately trying to get words on the page so I could make my VCFA packet deadline.)
2. “Today we will conquer a new peak, the highest peak in the mountain range.” (2^nd draft.)
3. “Today we are explorers. We cross the bridge toward the mountains wild . . .”  (Final draft, after numerous revisions.)

Only two significant words remain in the final draft: “we” and “mountains.” The concept of going “inside” shifts to a spread later in the manuscript. The word “explorers” in the final version captures the idea I wanted to express in the earlier versions.

Ghosts and Shadows
The essence of what is cut removed often floats around and squeezes into other sentences or parts of the book. At times, deleting and writing more words acts as a palimpsest: not all that was removed is fully erased. Vestiges remain.

Even when we kill our Darlings, they live on as ghosts and shadows. Aspects of what we removed remain in the pages. In essence, although what we cut is no longer there, ghosts of those words will haunt our pages and flit between sentences.

What is your experience with the traces and shadows, the ghosts of your Darlings?

Art of Revision—The Rainbow Manuscript technique

Art of Revision—The Rainbow Manuscript technique

I started using colorful fonts when revising after Martine Leavitt, my advisor at Vermont College of Fine Arts asked me to make all my changes in red. 

Red!

My manuscript was bleeding after I was done: 

Screenshots of my novel, River at 10% zoom. Shown
are the beginning (top), middle, and end (bottom.)

Yes, I made that many changes; the changes represent a deep revision.

As I worked I grew to love red font!

Because all red words are better words, better sentences, and even new scenes at times, I have grown to think of red as a positive writing color, instead of the color that marks all my mistakes.

Later revision of River

 Using another font color lets me see what I’m doing, or what I recently changed.  In some cases it is helpful when I read through my novel the next time, as I can see what I changed.  Other times, the red font was just for the process, and I switch the font all back to black before I work on it again.. 

Also, if I work for several hours or a couple days and feel I didn’t make much headway, I can look at the colorful font, and realize, yes, I did make good progress.

I don’t use colored font with every draft. It’s not useful to me in early drafts. 

Occasionally, if I need to both be aware of the last changes I made and need to track my current changes as I take an additional revision pass, I’ll add another color, like blue. If I move a substantial passage, I may mark those sentences with another font color for those passages. 

By the end of the revision pass, at least temporarily, I have a rainbow manuscript.

Screenshot of my novel, Crossings-a late revision at 10% zoom

Revising: Learning from Lewis Carroll

I am fascinated by how different writers revise.

Lewis Carroll wrote two versions of a book. He wrote (by hand) and illustrated Alice's Adventures Under Ground in 1862. (The link takes you to the book at Gutenberg.org.)
This book was expanded, revised, and published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (illustrations by John Tenniel) in 1866. (The second link takes you to an 1866 copy of Alice which can be downloaded in most formats or read online at Internet Archive.org.)

The first chapter of the Under Ground book is almost identical to the beginning of the Wonderland book. Carroll only changes a couple words, such as "nosegay" into "fan."

There is a noticeable word change in the middle:
The ostrich changes to a flamingo!

Illustration by Lewis Carroll
I wonder why Carroll made this choice when he revised.
What is the difference between playing croquet with an ostrich or a flamingo?
Did he make this change because of the size of the bird?
The color of the bird?
Maybe flamingos are more docile.

Large scale revision is shown in the final chapters of the book. Three pages in the Under Ground book expand into two chapters in the Wonderland book!

When I write an initial story, I write an "exploratory draft." This is where I discover plot and characters; it is later when I revise, that I flesh out the scenes and find the best way to tell the story. This type of loose exploratory draft is what I see in those 3 pages of Under Ground.
It was a delight to discover (without access to all of Carroll's notes) how Alice Adventure's Under Ground was revised into Alice Adventure's in Wonderland. It is worth the time to read the conclusion of both versions and think about Lewis Carroll's revision choices.