Writing • Eckleburg

December 3, 2021December 3, 2021

Developmentally Editing Characters in Eight Steps

developmentally editing characters

Developmentally Editing Characters

1. LIST CHARACTERS: When developmentally editing characters, first make a list of all characters within the narrative, both main characters and secondary characters.
2. SEARCH CHARACTERS: Do a search for each character within the manuscript and identify how many times a character appears by name within the manuscript. Do one or more of your secondary characters appear more often than your main characters? Why? (Perhaps this is simply pronoun usage, or it could be due to a neglect of character treatment.)
3. COLOR CODE CHARACTERS: Do a search/replace for each character within the document, highlighting each character with a different font color. Do your main characters appear consistently throughout the manuscript? If not, why? Do you main characters appear in the first chapter or paragraphs? If not, why? (Again, this could be intentional and successful, or it could be a neglect of character treatment.)
4. AMALGAMATE MAIN CHARACTERS: Study each character for necessity. Would one or more of your main characters benefit from amalgamation? What would happen if you amalgamated the protagonist and antagonist? (We often write too many characters into our early drafts. This is okay, it is part of the process, AND it can be a fantastic first step toward developing surprisingly deep and diverse characters upon amalgamation.)
5. AMALGAMATE SECONDARY CHARACTERS: Study each secondary character for necessity. Would one or more of your secondary characters benefit from amalgamation?
6. DIVINE INTRODUCTIONS: Each time you introduce a new character, give this character a “divine moment” in which this character makes an unforgettable impression upon the reader. If a character does not lend itself to a divine moment, maybe the character should be amalgamated into another character or cut altogether from the narrative.
7. CHARACTER TIMELINES: Using Excel or some of other software, create a timeline of your characters, main and secondary, beginning with their birthdays and continuing to the last date of the narrative. Add place details, global events, national events and community events to the timeline.
8. CYCLICAL DEVELOPMENT: Developmentally editing characters is a cyclical process. With each major revision of the work, repeat the above steps, always looking for ways to tighten characterizations within the narrative.

Why Online Writing Workshops?

Online writing workshops present the best of both worlds for creative writers: creative isolation and craft interaction. The New Yorker article by Louis Menand, “Show or Tell: Should Creative Writing be Taught?” proposes the perennial question of whether or not writers can be taught or must be born. Our stance at The Eckleburg Workshops is that writers can be shown many craft writing skills and be encouraged to explore voice through the practice of these skills as well as the observation of these skills in both master and developing narratives. It is our stance that creative writing can be sculpted and nurtured and is best taught by published authors and experienced writing teachers. This is what we give you in each and every writing course and in our One on One individualized manuscript sessions.

The Eckleburg Workshops: Online Writing Workshops

Eckleburg offers noncredit online writing workshops in fiction, poetry, essays, short stories, the novel and more. The writing workshops are intended for writers who want to focus on craft in an encouraging, professional, diverse environment.

All writing workshops are work-at-your-own-pace. When you are ready for individualized feedback—developmental edits, line edits and endnotes—submit your work. Our instructors have graduate degrees and professional publication experience in their writing workshop focuses and are happy to meet participants at whatever writing stage and focus participants find themselves. Participants may complete assignments anytime. We are open to English-speaking and writing participants both locally and globally and encourage gender and cultural diversity with a focus on historically marginalized voices.

Our instructors are award-winning and published authors and hold degrees from/taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Iowa’s International Writing Program, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Brown, Harvard, Columbia, New School, New York University, SUNY, Portland, San Diego State University, New York University, Bennington, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, the University of Oregon and more. They live in Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Ankara, San Diego, LA and Denver. Several of them are award-winning and with books out. They have been interviewed and published in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, The New York Times, Salon, and more. What our instructors share is an eye for innovative storytelling with solid narrative structure as well as a focus on personal voice. Learn more about our individual instructors. More Questions? Visit our FAQs Page.

Methods

Each work has its own strengths and needs, successes and focus areas. I approach each new work with an eye toward individual voice so that the work can take on a life of its own that focuses on your intentions. Below, you’ll find a link for submission guidelines and submitting your manuscript. As we move through your work, we’ll look at the following:

- What is the intention for the work, as communicated on the page and as is essential to the main characters?
- What is the authentic voice of the narrator, and how can this be brought out thoroughly and to the work’s best interest?
- What is your authentic voice and how can this be coupled with the needs of the narrative voice?
- Developmentally, how can the character arcs and the overall narrative be brought to fuller realization?
- Linguistically, how does the cadence, syntax and repetition in language support the overall artistry of the piece?
- Mechanically, are the choices being made in the overall best interest of the authentic narrative voice?
- What can be strengthened from word choice and comma usage?

Thank you for joining us at The Eckleburg Workshops. I promise to honor your hard work and talents.

How intensive is the Eckleburg Writing Workshops schedule?

You will be able to log in and complete the weekly writing prompts, readings, discussion prompts, etc. as it best fits into your schedule, whether you are at home or traveling. The online visual structure of the course makes it easy to read and respond via your desktop, laptop and smartphone. Submit work for individualized feedback when it is convenient for you and your project.

How do I register for the Eckleburg Writing Workshops?

Begin by clicking on the workshop link you would like to take. Next, click on the CART link and you will be taken to the payment portal where you can pay by credit card or Paypal. You can CANCEL at anytime with a click.

September 6, 2019September 6, 2019

Writing Psychic Distance (Authorial Distance) with John Gardner

As with the chemist at her microscope and the lookout in his tower, fictional point of view always involves the distance, close or far, of the perceiver from the thing perceived. Authorial distance, sometimes called psychic distance, is the degree to which we as readers feel on the one hand intimacy and identification with, or on the other hand detachment and alienation from, the characters. (Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft)

John Gardner on Psychic Distance (Authorial Distance)

Careless shifts in psychic distance [authorial distance] can be distracting. By psychic distance we mean the distance the reader feels between himself and the events in the story. Compare the following examples, the first meant to establish great psychic distance, the next meant to establish slightly less, and so on until in the last example, psychic distance, theoretically at least, is nil.

It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
Henry hated snowstorms.
God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul …

When psychic distance [authorial distance] is great, we look at the scene as if from far away—our usual position in the traditional tale, remote in time and space, formal in presentation (example 1 above would appear only in a tale); as distance grows shorter—as the camera dollies in, if you will—we approach the normal ground of the yarn (2 and 3) and short story or realistic novel (2 through 5). In good fiction, shifts in psychic distance are carefully controlled. At the beginning of the story, in the usual case, we find the writer using either long or medium shots. He moves in a little for scenes of high intensity, draws back for transitions, moves in still closer for the story’s climax. (Variations of all kinds are possible, of course, and the subtle writer is likely to use psychic distance, as he might any other fictional device, to get odd new effects. He may, for instance, keep a whole story at one psychic-distance setting, giving an eerie, rather icy effect if the setting is like that in example 2, an overheated effect that only great skill can keep from mush or sentimentality if the setting is like that in example 5. The point is that psychic distance, whether or not it is used conventionally, must be controlled.) A piece of fiction containing sudden and inexplicable shifts in psychic distance looks amateur and tends to drive the reader away. For instance: “Mary Borden hated woodpeckers. Lord, she thought, they’ll drive me crazy! The young woman had never known any personally, but Mary knew what she liked.” (The Art of Fiction)

Psychic Distance (Authorial Distance) Writing Exercise

Rewrite the first three to five paragraphs of a work you’ve already drafted with a closer perspective. If your work opens with a description of a room, rewrite the opening so it begins with a description of one object within the room. If the work opens with two characters, rewrite the opening so it begins with a focus on one character. If the work opens with one character, rewrite the opening so it begins with one particular attribute of the character. Consider how this rewritten, closer in point of view, might more fully anchor the reader into the opening. How might this closer-in point of view anchor the reader at the opening of each chapter, section….

Psychic Distance Writing Exercise

Using the above examples from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, create various psychic distances within your own work.

First, choose an opening line from a recent writing project—short story, novel, essay, etc. In which distance is your original line written?

Now, rewrite the line in the style of each example given by Gardner:

It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
Henry hated snowstorms.
God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul …

Give ourself a day or two and then go back to the lines and read them aloud. Have a trusted reader read them aloud to you. Which line is your favorite? Would you entire narrative benefit from the same psychic distance?

The Eckleburg Workshops

Join us at The Eckleburg Workshops for writing exercises and tips on psychic distance.

Work with a Reedsy Editor for Individualized Attention

Submit your work for developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, editorial assessment and more at Reedsy.com, where hundreds of experienced, awarded writers and editors are ready to read your work and help you make it the best it can be.

Psychic Distance (Authorial Distance) Sources

The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present. Eric Kandel.
The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. John Gardner.
“Cogito et Histoire de la Folie.” Jacques Derrida.
Cognitive Neuropsychology Section, Laboratory of Brain and Cognition.
Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss.
The Elements of Style. William Strunk.
Grant, Barry Keith. Auteurs & Authorship: Film Reader. 2008.
A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.
Jeong, Seung-hoon and Jeremy Szaniawski. The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship 21st Century Cinema. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2016.
New Oxford American Dictionary. Edited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.
The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Martin Puchner, et al.
The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. Gideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.
Sellors, C. Film Authorship: Auteurs & Other Myths. 2011.
Theories of Authorship. John Caughie.
Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner
Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.
Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

September 3, 2019September 4, 2019

Writing Reader-Response Criticism

Reader-Response Criticism is the conventional notion that a writer or speaker has an “idea,” encodes it—that is, turns it into words—and the reader or listener decodes it, deriving, when successful, the writer or speaker’s “idea.” The reader-response critics assume, however, that such equivalency between sender and receiver is impossible. The literary work, therefore, does not exist on the page; that is only the text. The text becomes a work only when it is read, just as a score becomes music only when it is played. Eric Kandel takes reader-response critcisim further with his theory of the “beholder’s share.” (The Norton Introduction to Literature)

Writing Reader-Response Exercise

How many literature teachers have prompted you to figure out “what the author means when…”? According the reader-response critics, “what the author means” is irrelevant to the reader’s experience of the text. The experience should be whatever the reader perceives and brings to the text.

First, choose a scene from a narrative you wrote several weeks or months ago. It should be a scene that you haven’t edited or read for a sufficient amount of time so that you will have fresh eyes.

As you read the scene, consider whether or not the “meaning” or context of the scene aligns with your original intention for the scene. This is different than the craft or technical intention. Of course, you want the technique of the scene to serve the overall narrative; however, the “meaning” of the scene might change over time as your experiences in life change over time, allowing for you and other readers to experience the scene in an organic and personal way that transcends the mere text.

If you find that the scene reads the same for you, regardless of time, and for other readers, regardless of their experiences, consider whether or not the scene could be “opened” a bit more so that readers can find personal connection. Of course, sometimes, we want our scenes to read more statically so to perform an essential need within the overall manuscript; however, too many static scenes can marginalize the reader’s creative response to the text.

Take time to consider reader-response within key scenes. Your readers will thank you.

Consider Other Critical Theories

Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)

Like Marxist criticism, feminist criticism derives from firm political and ideological commitments and insists that literature both reflects and influences human behavior in the larger world. Feminist criticism often, too, has practiced and political aims. Strongly conscious that most of recorded history has given grossly disproportionate attention to the interest, thoughts and actions of men, feminist thought endeavors both to extend contemporary attention to distinctively female concerns, ideas and accomplishments and to recover the largely unrecorded and unknown history of women in earlier times. (The Norton Introduction to Literature)

Write More Reader-Response in the [Em]Powering Self Workshop

The “[Em]Powering Self Workshop” is a gender and diversity narrative project taking its title from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman but it does not stop at gender. This workshop is open to all forms: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and hybrid. It is open to all genders, identities and backgrounds. In this course we will explore how progressive experiences with cultures, both our own and others, inform our voice in both the artistic expression of voice and the voice we give to self. It is our intention to give power over self, not others.