When The Editor Asks Too Much

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Crystal asks: If an editor asks for too much in the  revisions process, should I withdraw my story rather than continue?

Hi Crystal,

The short version here is that I think you answer is  in your question. If the editor is asking for too        much, then it's too much. No single instance of    publication is valuable enough to hurt yourself or  your writing over it. Withdraw the story and submit  it somewhere else, unless perhaps you desperately need the money and the venue has a track record of paying well and promptly. But let's talk about what "too much" is and how we identify it. 

First, I would refer you, and all my readers, to Ann Pancake's Reading How You're Read: The Art of Evaluating Criticism. While the article focuses on workshop criticism, much of it holds true for editorial feedback as well. For a writer experienced enough to be submitting regularly, much of it is likely to be a little 101, but it never hurts to remind yourself of the basics, especially in the higher stakes context of deciding whether to withdraw a piece rather than implement the requested revisions. The first step, waiting for the initial period of hurt and defensiveness to pass, is especially important for my next suggestion. 

Once you're mostly over it, once you can look at the feedback with an open mind, is there anything that still just feels wrong to you? If you're a bit alexithymic, like me, you may need to practice identifying what that wrongness feels like for you. (I'm gonna do a whole post on this kind of thing later). Personally, I get dizzy, a little nauseated, and I have that eyes-aching, can't-I-just-go-to-bed? feeling that follows a serious bout of crying, only without the dehydration headache. It might be different for you. Mind you, I feel that was for about 12 hours after any major change is proposed to a project I'm working on, so I have to give it a minute. But, if you've given yourself some time and you still feel that wrongness, start poking at it, sit in it, journal about it, maybe start drafting an email (which you won't send) to your editor explaining why you don't want to make the change. The idea here is to try and identify if it's just overwhelming or whether it would be betraying something important about the story. It's okay if you don't get a clear answer. Your feelings are important information on their own, and you don't need an airtight argument, even to yourself, to know you can't in good conscience make a certain change. Maybe you can't identify exactly why you need Lily's birthday party to happen in-scene, but when you think about the story without it, the whole thing suddenly feels lightless and lifeless. That can be enough to go on, especially if you feel similarly about several suggested edits. If it's overwhelming, that can be a good enough reason to withdraw too, if you can't do the edit in a way that will work for the piece in the time allotted - better to pull it than let it be immortalized as a half-assed version of itself. 

Next, or alternatively, we make a more cognitive version of the same check. You know what is important about the story, what the themes are, what your intend it, what it's about. The Death Of the Author has its place, but that place is not in the revision process - you're not dead until it's published. (As Pancake points out in the article linked above, it is possible for a reader to "get" your story before you do, but if you're submitting for publication you are almost certainly past that point). Spend some time mentally reviewing what your story needs to be and do in order to be the thing that it is. Maybe physically write out a list. Like,

• Gwythyr's fight against the evil overlord mirrors his struggle with trauma.
• Themes: found family, difference between forgiveness and compassion.
• Feelings range from fun and light to cathartic. 

If your editor is asking you to make it darker, with the Overlord more unambiguously evil and everyone angrier and not taking care of each other as much, that won't work. If the suggested edits conflict with the list, with your core vision for the work, then that's asking too much. 

The third step is to turn our will and our lives over to - no, that's not right. The third step is what I call the Oppressive Asshole Check. Is your editor asking you to remove or tone down elements of the story that reflect a character's experience of marginalization? To standardize or exaggerate language (in dialogue or narration) that reflects a specific cultural background? To masculinize or feminize a female character to make her "stronger" or more "realistic"? To strip vulnerability to emotional intelligence from a male character? To make a disabled character more stoic, or more helpless? To straight up change the race, gender, sexuality, or disability status of a character to something more "normal"? To include the deadname of a trans character or change the pronouns of a nonbinary one? That is asking waaaay to much. Withdraw the piece and, if you feel safe doing so, make sure they know why. 

Caveat: some of these suggestions should be looked at differently if they are coming from a sensitivity reader letting you know that you overstepped. Make sure you're not being the Oppressive Asshole. 

There is a fourth consideration, which is at once more and less subjective than the others. Sometimes the suggested revisions aren't wrong or inappropriate per se, just intensive and numerous. Maybe you feel like the story is already where you want it, and while the suggested changes wouldn't be bad for it, you sincerely think they're unnecessary and you don't have the time, energy, or brain for an intensive rewrite. If you're confident that the story is done and good and will find a home somewhere else as-is, then implementing those edits may be more trouble than it's worth. This can also apply to suggestions that you like, double or halve the length of a piece. Sometimes it's too much because it's literally just too much. 

Crystal, I hope this helps. Everyone else, I hope you learned something, and that you'll keep sending me questions so we can do this again soon. If you can find time between the posts I'm inundating you with this week, remember to be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 2

Photo by Abdul Samad via Unsplash

This is the second longest chapter in Storm Front, and quite a lot of it is painstaking description of a room we will not re-enter at any point in the series. And painstaking description of a lot of other things. 

This chapter is where Butcher's newness as an author is most obviously on display. It didn't need to be this long. There is value in giving a very thorough description of Murphy, who is important throughout the series and whom we don't really get to see in any non-professional capacity until Summer Knight, but Carmichael is given almost as much page space, and he dies in the next book, only reappearing briefly in Ghost Story. 

There's some good characterization in the over-description, especially once Dresden is actually looking at the murder scene. The note, interpret, note, interpret pattern of observation is a core feature of Dresden's narrative voice and professional approach, and introducing it here demonstrates aptly that he can do it under pressure, and when he's upset. The combination of details that matter (Jennifer Stanton's eye color) and details that don't (Tommy's tattoo) is good mystery writing, even if he does take too long about it. But this need for thoroughness gets in its own way as often as it helps. The repeated specification of the left side of the chest, left lung, etc introduces anatomical inaccuracy that didn't need to be there. When Dresden stands near the CD player, a moment that functions to help establish the nature and severity of his issues with technology (the CD starts skipping almost immediately), he notes that it is "state of the art, although not an expensive brand," which raises far more questions than it answers. How does Dresden, who as we have just seen cannot stand near a stereo system without it glitching out, know on sight what constitutes a "state of the art" model, especially if it isn't a luxury brand. I suppose he might have picked up the information pouring over one of those catalogs Best Buy keeps sending him, but we don't find out about those until I think Blood Rites. 

We run into a worse version of the same problem earlier in the chapter, with the description of Murphy's makeup, which is apparently "of sufficient quality and quantity that it was difficult to tell she was wearing any at all". Literally what does this mean? Is she wearing quite a lot of makeup, including highlighters, neutralizers, and other things that, used correctly, can make other makeup less obvious? Is she wearing super minimal makeup, perhaps just a "nude" lipstick and some brown eyeliner, both from high-quality brands that resist smudging, crumbling, or otherwise failing in ways that overtly announce their presence? The description we're given is just complex enough to be useless. We know her makeup is "expertly applied". If the only other description we got was that it was "simple", "understated", or both, we could reasonably get the gist and fill in the details. If we had been told literally any specifics about the type, colors, or techniques involved, we would have something to build on to form a clear idea of the state of Murphy's face. Instead, we are mostly left with the impression that Dresden, or perhaps Jim Butches, can't actually tell whether a person is wearing makeup or not, something which is in general understandable for a 25-ish year old man, but seems out of keeping with Dresden's observational skills, especially given that he could tell at a glance that Jennifer Stanton's hair was dyed. 

This chapter is also where most of the basic "rules" of magic are laid out. The differences between evocation and thaumaturgy, and the requirements for each of them, the fact that you have to believe in magic to get it to work, and the idea that "magic comes from life" are all first introduced here, and the concept of a soul gaze, the White Council, the Laws of Magic, and the Doom of Damocles receive their first mentions. A few concepts, like True Names, magic circles, and potion making are left for later chapters, but most of the basics are here. There's a good balance stuck between using Murphy's relative ignorance to explain the world building and letting Dresden's narration directly address the reader. 

We also get the rundowns on both Bianca, vampire proprietress of the Velvet Room, and John Marcone, distressingly capable mobster. The description balance issue between Murphy and Carmichael is not repeated here. Bianca, who only matters in this book and the third one, is sketched out in a few sentences, while Marcone, who is present in about 2/3 of the books going forward, gets a detailed description of his current activities, and as much backstory as Dresden currently has access to. While the pretext for their introductions is that Jennifer Stanton worked for the Velvet Room and Tommy Tom was Marcone's personal enforcer, it very much looks like we're being set up to expect one or both of these two to be the villain of this book - while it doesn't necessarily feel like it on an 8th or 9th read, the reality that they are both victims targeted by the real killer, is a genuine twist. 

We've gotten the phrase "the confines of the elevator" two chapters running now. I'm going to be keeping an eye out, as we progress through this reread, for other indicators that, technology issues notwithstanding, Dresden may also just be claustrophobic. 

Our obligatory Cringey Moment here (as I mentioned in the Chapter 1 writeup, we've got an average of one per book, but some of the later ones don't have one - he gets a bunch in early), is the introduction of Dresden's whole fucking chivalry thing. It's actually much worse here than it becomes later in the series. The whole "can't resist helping a lady" thing is annoying but bearable, and occasionally an effective conceit for dragging Dresden into plot he would otherwise know better than to touch. Opening the door for Murphy when he knows it makes her uncomfortable because, in his own fucking words, he "enjoys" performative chivalry is...something else entirely. 

I did find it interesting that Harry is straight up, uncomplicatedly wrong in his initial theory about who is likely to be responsible for the murder, and what the motive is, even as the "feminine vengeance" theory foreshadows Helen Beckett's involvement. I don't think we ever see him be this level of wrong again (although the whole "demon ghost" thing in Grave Peril comes close), and it's largely because later-books Dresden would never commit so strongly to a hypothesis when he knew so little about what was going on. In the same conversation, we once again see Dresden being very reluctant to lie about magic, even when the available alternative (without talking about things he doesn't feel like he can talk about) is being so vague and obstructive that he makes Murphy suspicious. 

The chapter ends with Dresden getting threatened into accepting a ride from Marcone. Suspenseful!
Long chapters make for long writeups. Tune in next week(ish) for Chapter 3, which will hopefully be shorter and sweeter. 
I'm still working on all the other things I promised in the last one of these, and maybe a regular post or two as well. I've been focusing hard on writing fiction, and getting a lot of reading done, but sadly very little of it is gay and only about half of it has crime, so I'm gonna need you all to help me make up the difference this week - be gay, do crimes, and read ALL the things!

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 1

Photo by Eckhard Hoehmann on Unsplash

Technically speaking, not a lot happens in the first chapter of Storm Front, but it nonetheless gets more done than I was initially inclined to give it credit for. 

The story opens with an almost implausibly hostile encounter with the mailman, during which it is established that Dresden is neither a psychic nor a stage magician. While this kind of preemptive denial would be thoroughly unnecessary in 2020, or even like, 2005, Storm Front was written in the late 1990s and published in 2000, when urban fantasy for adults was not a Thing to anything like the extent it is now. In the first Harry Potter book, which was published in 1997, that Harry wonders whether he will be expected to pull a rabbit out of the Sorting Hat, and even The Magicians (2009) addresses the fact that until very recently, "magic" meant card tricks and illusions to most people, especially in the absence of the trappings of epic fantasy. In the context in which Storm Front was written, it was actually valuable to establish this, even if I could quibble with the rather inelegant way it was accomplished. 

After he gets his mail, Harry launches into an internal monologue about the nature of modern society, the failures of science and technology, and the fact that he's broke. The inclusion of "crack babies" among the ills of the modern world is decidedly cringey in 2020, but that's a failing that any moderately socially aware fan of the series will have learned to tolerate. Jim Butches averages about one of these deeply uncomfortable fuckups per book, and he works a ways ahead on that quota in the first few. 

Most of the rest of the chapter is taken up by the two phone calls that set into motion the major events of the book. Monica Sells wants Dresden to find her husband, and Karrin Murphy needs him to come look at a pair of dead bodies in a hotel room. Dresden is almost self-sabotageingly cranky with Murphy, but given the extent to which she thinks she can order him around, this may be his way of trying to set some boundaries with her. They aren't really friends yet at this point in the series. 

Around and between the phone calls, Dresden also reflects on a recent case in which he determined that nothing supernatural was going on and basically just went home, collecting only an hour's pay. This is actually sort of an important illustration of Dresden's principles, made all the more salient by the fact that he acts like sort of a sketchy dick throughout most of this book. Where magic is concerned, and kind of only where magic is concerned, Dresden is scrupulously honest, and as ethical and honorable as circumstances will allow. While we do see other indicators of that elsewhere in this book, without this specific example it would be reasonable to suppose that Dresden's uprightness in this area was largely or entirely a result of the Doom of Damocles and his understandable desire to avoid coming even close to breaking any of the Laws of Magic. However, there is absolutely nothing in the Laws that would have prevented him from lying to a mortal, lighting some candles, using a little ventas servitas to blow things around, and claiming to have done an exorcism. That the laws do nothing to disallow that kind of thing is mentioned several times later in the series. Only the fact that it would have been morally wrong to do so prevented him, and that is a significant piece of characterization. 

This chapter also establishes Dresden's difficult with and distrust of technology, up to and including whatever an "automatic pencil" is supposed to be.
Stay tuned for my writeup of Chapter 2, a review of Hannah Moscowitz's Sick Kids In Love, and a little something about Peace Talks once it comes out. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read ALL the things.