2 | The Writer • May 2020
FROM THE EDITOR
NICKI PORTER
Keep writing (and revising),Nicki Porter
Senior Editor
@nickimporterTidying up
Roll up your sleeves, scribes. This month we’re
spring-cleaning our prose.
We’re embracing revision, not dreading it. Our
drafts are going to emerge from our linguistic
boot camp leaner, cleaner, lighter, and swifter.
We’re going to Marie Kondo our mansucripts. If a
single word, a meager semicolon in our work
doesn’t bring us joy, it’s getting the boot. And
when we eject all the nonsense that’s weighing
down our drafts, they’re going to sing so sweetly
even the staunchest, grouchiest, Grinchiest of
editors won’t be able to resist them.
When I say nonsense, I mean it quite literally:
We must scrub out the elements in our manu-
scripts that make no sense in the context of the
story. If we are trying to get to an inciting inci-
dent quickly, it’s a bit absurd to spend three para-
graphs on your character’s past life as a
zookeeper. If we are showing the reader villainous
behavior, it seems foolish to waste words telling
the reader a character is a villain, a bad guy, a
bully, a real bad egg. If the clever joke on page
four distracts from the emotional resonance of a
sorrowful event, logic dictates we must cut it.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Logic. Because the
truth is – when we’re tenderly holding pages of a
story we’ve cobbled together with our own
mind, offering them to editors, knowing full in
our hearts that it’s just the best and truest and
most marvelous thing we’ve ever created – logic
doesn’t always enter the equation. Logic, most
times, isn’t even in the room. Logic is barri-
caded behind six deadbolted doors in the base-
ment of our creative process, so far away from
the buzz and hum of creation we couldn’t hear it
if we tried.The good news is there are two surefire ways to
invite Logic back to the discussion before our sto-
ries meet an editor’s eye. One is relying on an hon-
est, nonjudgmental critique partner, who can
gently point out places where nonsense might arise.
The second is time. Time allows our brain to
shift from Writer to Reader, experiencing our sto-
ries as a stranger might. Only then can we ana-
lyze how the story is working as a whole without
being distracted at the sentence level.
That’s the good news. The best news is that with
more time, you’ll learn your own “tells,” the danger
zones in drafts where you’re especially prone to
writerly tomfoolery. Perhaps you lean heavily on
too-long sentences and forget to write short ones;
perhaps you are an adverb fiend, wasting words
describing action instead of showing action. Per-
haps you are a world-class dialogue writer who
ignores setting; perhaps you are a champion set-
ting-builder who ignores dialogue. You will build a
checklist of these strengths and weaknesses that
will make revision easier each time you attempt it.
Don’t get me wrong: It’ll always be brutal, killing
those darlings, but that checklist will make those
darlings a little easier to spot.
As an editor, all I ask from any short story is
that it has something to say. Clutter, nonsense,
flab – all of these things obscure that message,
making it impossible to hear a story’s truth. Take
some time and really listen to your stories. Ask
yourself: What are they trying to say? And what
in this draft is preventing them from saying it?
When you find it, cut it. Be bold, be merciless,
be brutal. Because the real truth of writing is that
so much of its power lies not with what you put
on the page, but what you leave off.