I recently got my manuscript The Egyptian Enigma back from developmental editor Kathryn Craft. Her 20-page evaluation highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript. Luckily, much of it was good!
The main problem with the manuscript was that it lacked enough focus to really pull everything together. The plot wandered into odd places, and the characters didn’t always seem to have purpose behind their actions. As soon as I read this, I agreed—it was something that had bothered me but I couldn’t explain it.
Kathryn’s solution was 2-part:
1) clarify my protagonist’s goal so I could trim away the scenes that did not directly forward or obstruct his reaching that goal
I can do that!
2) stay true to the underlying premise of the book.
Excuse me, the what?
The Premise.
Now I’m in trouble, because I have no clue what that is.
Luckily, Kathryn is awesome, and she explains in great detail in her evaluation what a premise is and why it’s important: “A premise is kind of like a moral but not as didactic—it is your story’s raison d’etre. The structure of your premise will suggest story movement. That structure is typically:____________ leads to ___________.”
I have two co-authors whom I will have to talk to before crafting a final premise, but for the purposes of this post I will state the premise as: “Digging up information from the past leads to solutions for a better future.”
Having an underlying premise will help guide what plot points are needed to move the story forward. All plot points will show the protagonist “digging” into things, all of which will lead him into deeper trouble. But since we have a premise in place, we will be able to identify any scenes or plot points that are irrelevant and therefore can be cut.
Having an underlying premise also allows you to use your characters to deepen or to refute that premise, thus giving the characters more purpose and stronger arcs. My protag believes the past holds the key to a better future, and so digs at things perhaps best left buried. His brother believes that digging into the past is fruitless and painful and therefore should be avoided. You can also have characters with related premises, such as a woman digging into the past to try to understand and come to terms with her husband’s murder, or a girl digging in the past to gain the attention and favor of her mother in the present.
So having a strong underlying premise helps bring your plot into focus and helps you find new and deeper emotional roles for your supporting characters. A premise is, as Kathryn stated, a moral, but it is also a worldview held by the main character. This will shape the main character’s actions (and thus the plot) and bring him into conflict with people who do not hold the same worldview.
Now that we know what a premise is, and what the function is, my co-authors and I can hammer out a premise to act as the underpinning of our novel. Once we have that and our character’s goal, knowing what to cut or rearrange or rewrite should become much clearer.
Kathryn said that the character’s goal should be like a strung arrow pointing the way to the climactic ending.
If that is the case, then the premise is the bow holding the arrow up.
Tapping into the Reader’s Inner Ear
Books are a print media. So it makes sense that writing should be a visual art. And in fact, we do think about how the words look on the page. We consider how much white space there is, how the varied paragraph lengths look on the page, and try hard to eliminate those one-word “orphan” lines (they drive me crazy).
Some take it deeper than that, considering how the words themselves look. Short sentences and short words in an action scene promote tension, for example. But even more than that, the particular letters that make up a word can convey a visual sense of the word. Consider “faint” and “swoon.” They mean pretty much the same thing, but just looking at them gives a different sense of the action. The upright, skinny letters in faint give it a quick, hard look. The rounded, wide letters of swoon stretch out the action.
Clearly, however, writing is not considered a visual art. We don’t say to one another, “That sentence doesn’t look right.” We say it doesn’t sound right. And not just about dialogue, although that is especially important. There’s a reason we are told to read our novel aloud when editing: We need to know how it SOUNDS.
Writing is an aural art. We describe rhythm and pace, the cadence of the sentences. We talk about alliteration and assonance and onomatopoeia. We say words resonate, or a work speaks to us. We discuss a writer’s voice and tone. In short, we rely on the reader’s inner ear.
Which makes me wonder what the reading experience is like for people who are deaf.
I have, for a variety of reasons, become interested in American Sign Language (ASL). Because of that, I took an ASL course. Our teacher was deaf. She explained to us that she spoke ASL, and although she read in English, English was her second language. I had never thought about that before.
So now I wonder how people who have been deaf from birth or who have no memory of spoken language experience reading. The cadence of the sentences is missing for them. The suggestive sound of the words does not exist. Whereas they have one sign that can mean various things based on context, we have many words that all mean the same thing. And although we writers agonize over getting the dialogue to sound natural, it will never read as natural for ASL speakers, because ASL has a very different grammatical structure than English does.
Is reading dull for them? Do they feel that they are missing one level of the meaning? I know when people write about smells or taste, I (who have no sense of smell) often feel disconnected from the passage or the meaning they are trying to convey. But a writer’s reliance on the inner ear (his own and the reader’s) is more than just a stray passage here and there—it goes to the core of writing. It is in every word.
My writing is usually devoid of any reference to smell or taste, as they are not factors in the way I experience everyday life. Similarly, a deaf person’s perception of the world is fundamentally different that someone who can hear. I wonder, then, if a deaf person’s style of writing would be intrinsically different than a hearing person’s?
Does anyone know of any fiction writers who are deaf?