Revisions Which a Minute Will Reverse

[truepenny]

[first published on Storytellers Unplugged, December 29, 2007; thanks to the Wayback Machine for helping me rescue it]

I’m up to my neck in revisions for Corambis, my fourth book. In fact, I may be in over my head.

2007 was the year I learned I can’t write a book in a year. Actually, that’s not quite true. I can write a book in a year. What I can’t do is write a good book. The first draft of Corambis was certainly a book. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end; it had characters and plot.

It had clichés.

I talked last month about genre conventions, and that post was a direct result of the thinking I’ve been doing about revising Corambis. Because apparently how my process works is that I write the draft with all the genre conventions in it, and then I write the draft where I take them all out again.

I would like, someday, to be able to skip straight to Step 2, but that hasn’t happened yet.

In my particular case, the genre conventions were there for what is actually, in fairness, a very good reason. They were providing plot structure. One reason to write about a scullery boy who turns out to be king is that that convention comes with a built in plot. You don’t have to worry about how to structure your story; the genre conventions do it for you.

This is very seductive, especially when you have a deadline. Especially when plot and structure are not your strong point and you know it.

But it comes back to bite you on the ass in the end, when you look at the book you’ve written and think, my god, this is cheap and trite and flimsy, and worst of all, it isn’t true.

The purpose of fiction is to tell the truth by lying. And genre conventions are part of the structure of lies, not part of the structure of truth. You need both structures, mind you; you can’t get to the truth unless your lies are strong and brave and beautiful. But genre conventions are lies within lies, lies about lies . . . lies about the way we tell lies in order to tell the truth.

“Beauty without cruelty, ever so much worse than untrue,” Kris Delmhorst says in one of her songs, and that’s my problem with genre conventions. They’re too easy. They say you can have beauty without cruelty; they say you can tell lies without worrying about the truth. And if I believe anything about storytelling, it’s that you have to care about the truth behind your lies.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I have some scullery boys to chase out of my plot.

Comments

[friendlydog.livejournal.com]

Nice to see this, and the other old posts.

Ambrosia fan?

While I'm at it, would you kindly explain what UBC stands for? Search was no help.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

UBC stands for "Unread Book Challenge," which is where that whole string of book-reviewish posts started: holding myself accountable for actually reading the books I buy. (Buying books, for me, is a pleasure all by itself, and I can get a little carried away.)

I had to Google Ambrosia to figure out what they are, so the answer there is no.

[friendlydog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining UBC. I ought to challenge myself! I have a shelf devoted solely to new, unread books, and it has overflowed.

And I am such a cultural troglodyte; I should have known Ambrosia were quoting someone else (here, Eliot).

Thanks again for your reply, and I am looking forward to your next book, under whatever name!