{"id":914,"date":"2009-11-30T20:08:54","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T03:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=914"},"modified":"2009-11-30T20:08:54","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T03:08:54","slug":"follow-the-ripples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=914","title":{"rendered":"Follow the Ripples"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"water<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m a very linear writer.\u00a0 I write my stories from beginning to end without skipping anything or writing anything out of order.\u00a0 In the past, I have tried writing a “fun” scene ahead of schedule, usually in an effort to get myself energized, but it has never worked out.\u00a0 I’ve learned that I am simply incapable of writing a scene until I know exactly what has happened in all the scenes before it.\u00a0 And because I also rarely outline, I never know exactly what has happened in all those scenes until I’ve written them.\u00a0 For me, writing is an act of discovery, and I never know what I will find in a story until I get there.<\/p>\n

Because of this, revisions are difficult for me.\u00a0 I don’t mean the subtle fidgeting and adjusting we all do with the words, the language used to tell the story.\u00a0 I mean the big stuff where you realize that a particular moment in the story has come too soon, or too late, or you need to insert a scene here, or a moment there.\u00a0 I mean the type of revision that affects character, or theme, or plot at the fundamental level.\u00a0 In the time it takes me to go back and insert a single page of this deeper kind of revision, I can usually write about ten pages of new material.\u00a0 Deep revising is time consuming and it’s hard.\u00a0 That’s because I can’t simply write a new page, cut, then paste it into the text.\u00a0 It’s more complicated than that.<\/p>\n

Working in a deep revision is like going back and dropping a rock in a pond.\u00a0 Once I do that, I’ve disturbed the whole narrative surface and I have to follow the ripples outward in every direction from the point of impact.\u00a0 A deep revision will change characters’ future choices, it may re-tune the tension and conflict, or it might throw off the pacing.\u00a0 I have to trace those effects from one side of the story to the other.\u00a0 I have to go back and make sure I’ve set the new scene up adequately in the preceding pages.\u00a0 I have to follow the story along and see how the deep revision impacts every subsequent scene after it, because it inevitably does.<\/p>\n

I know my book needs this new scene.\u00a0 And I know that once I’ve done the work and smoothed the surface back out, the resulting story will be better for it.\u00a0 So that’s what I’m working on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a very linear writer.\u00a0 I write my stories from beginning to end without skipping anything or writing anything out of order.\u00a0 In the past, I have tried writing a “fun” scene ahead of schedule, usually in an effort to get myself energized, but it has never worked out.\u00a0 I’ve learned that I am simply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mtjQ-eK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}