Killing your babies, and other editorial ordeals
Work in Progress #1
This series of articles, based, as the subtitle suggests, on work that is currently on my desk and desktop, has a twofold aim - to share the current concerns with which I am wrestling as a writer, and, much more importantly, to open up a conversation between us all about those concerns. Writing is of necessity a solitary occupation, but the challenges which writers face, whether of non-fiction or fiction, and whatever the genre, are common to us all. To know that others are wrestling with the same demons is to feel less alone. To learn from others sneaky moves to take those demons down is to become more empowered. So let’s share what works.
First of all a confession - I am an Olympic level procrastinator. Though I am not quite on a par with Douglas Adams (‘I love deadlines, I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by’), I am nonetheless painfully aware that I focus best and actually produce my best work when a deadline1 looms. There is a whole article waiting to be written (yes, I’m aware of the irony) on why some of us put ourselves under this kind of unnecessary pressure, and whether it’s beneficial or just plain stupid.
So to the particular demon dancing on my desktop at the moment. A few years ago (seven to be precise - the number matters, as will be clear in a moment) I published a historical crime novel with a publisher who was subsequently taken over, asset-stripped and closed down. The rights to my novel reverted to me. After a reasonably short period of grousing and grumbling, I thought, OK, an opportunity to make it a better book. I sent the existing manuscript to my agent (who had not been involved in the previous publication of the book), and she responded with a meticulous, precise and perceptive analysis of its strengths and weaknesses. Now, finally, I am buckling down to tackling the changes.
The book is set during the First World War, on the Western Front, around the Battle of Cambrai. This is why the timing was important - the Battle of Cambrai, the first proper tank battle the world had seen, took place in 1917, and Small Deaths (the novel’s title at the time) was published in November 1917, on the hundredth anniversary of that battle.
The bare bones of the book - the events, the places and the people (well, most of them) - remain unchanged, but everything else is up for grabs, which is partly exhilarating, partly scary, and partly, as the title of this piece suggests, downright painful. The fact that so much time has elapsed since I first wrote the book has enabled me to approach the revisions with a cool, if not always dispassionate eye. There will inevitably be particular phrases and characters that you are disproportionately fond of. The central question, though, must always be - do they move the book forward? If not, however charming, however insightful, however elegantly cadenced, they must go. If you can’t bear to obliterate them entirely, you can, perhaps, put these phrases, these characters, in a folder to be retrieved for another book at another time. Here and now, though, where the book you are working on is concerned, you have to channel the Red Queen and cry, ‘Off with their heads!’.
One of the things that immediately struck me when coming back to the manuscript of this book was the question of dialogue in a historical novel - how do you give your characters voices which are in keeping with their time without sounding arch or artificial? Andrew Taylor, in his magnificent Ashes of London series2 set in and around the Restoration of the monarchy in seventeenth century England, manages to bring his characters’ voices to life without a single ‘eftsoons’ or ‘gadzooks’ - it is a remarkable skill. Twentieth century voices and turns of phrase are, I feel, are both easier and more difficult to conjure up. Easier because more immediately familiar, more difficult just because of that familiarity - early twentieth century turns of phrase have the quaintness and peculiarity of your great-grandfather’s knitted woollen swimming suit - taken for granted at the time but striking us now as distinctly odd.
To share a concrete example. Small Deaths is written from multiple points of view, with the reader sharing in each character’s thoughts. There are two characters who appear early on in the narrative who will both come to play an important part in the story as the plot unfolds. One is an army major, a doctor in charge of a Casualty Clearing Station. The other is a much younger man, an infantry lieutenant who left his middle-class home to volunteer to fight in the trenches. They need to have distinctive voices, but equally they need to be of their time. I sought to establish their voices in my head by reading a lot of contemporary writings. For the major I particularly looked to Conan Doyle’s Watson, Sherlock Holmes’ bluff, self-deprecating sidekick. For the lieutenant, I read the diaries and letters written by young men fighting in the trenches.
Here are examples of how that turned out.
First, the major:
“ The major's briefing had been brisk, workmanlike, exciting and terrifying in equal measure. The major, sitting in the back of the staff car being driven back to the CCS, started to go through his notes, beginning to put in order of priority everything that needed to be done in readiness for the forthcoming battle. There were a number of difficulties he could foresee, not the least of them being to keep all the preparations as secret as possible, surprise being, as they had been told forcefully a number of times, absolutely of the essence. Fundamentally, as far as he and his men were concerned, it came down to three essentials - supplies topped up, beds emptied, and everyone in position and ready to jump to it when the time came. The Powers That Be had seemed positively optimistic over this new plan of attack. The major wished he could believe in his superiors as much as they appeared to believe in themselves.
Back at the CCS, he dismissed the car and driver, and made his way over to the bedroom in the farmhouse which also served as his private office. He had a lot of planning to do. ”
Next, the lieutenant:
“ Murray lay sprawled on the fire step. The Boy Jones (to distinguish him from the Man Jones) stood above him, crouched, looking through the periscope across to the Jerries half a mile away. Murray tried to angle himself so that the midday sun touched his face. They'd been in the line for coming up to ten days – another four and they'd be relieved, squirming back down the supply lines to the road, and then tumbling down the road to the rear, to fresh water, thin wine (if he could scrounge some up) and sleep.
The guns were thumping further down the line – some other poor buggers would be going over the top then, he supposed. He found his eyes shutting, but forced them open. Murray was determined to feel the sun, to see the day. He wriggled round and knelt up on the fire step next to Boy. Slowly, slowly, he reached up so that his fingers were on the top step, and then he drew himself up by inches, his face close to the caked, dry mud of the trench wall, and lifted his head so that he could see across No Man's Land.
Murray rested his gaze on the clumps of grass which lay lank, ungrazed, across the open space. In the summer there had been flowers – poppies, daisies, something low and blue he couldn't name, thronging the ground. They had thrived on last winter's dead, unrecovered. Now they too were dead, but next year they would bloom again. Oh for crying out loud! Tired metaphors for tired minds. Murray shook his head in self-disgust. He laid his cheek against the cold trench wall and shut his eyes.
He dozed, dreaming of summer grass. ”
Do they work? Are they distinct? Do they give a flavour of the men I’m writing about? That’s what I have to work out now. I’d very much value your thoughts. Please share your ideas in the comments, on these passages, and on any other topic touched on in this article. I would be genuinely grateful for your point of view.
According to Merriam-Webster, the term originates from prison usage in the 19th century - an actual line on the ground beyond which a prisoner could not go for risk of being shot dead. Makes your publisher’s demands for timely submissions seem positively kindly…
Ashes of London series by Andrew Taylor.