Chapter 12

Call in Your Executive Brain

Don Your Editor’s Cap

“You need a certain head on your shoulders to edit a novel, and it’s not the head of a writer in the thick of it, nor the head of a professional editor who’s read it in twelve different versions. It’s the head of a smart stranger who picks it off a bookshelf and begins to read. You need to get the head of that smart stranger somehow. You need to forget you ever wrote that book.”

—Zadie Smith

All writers benefit from the ministrations of an editor. While the writer is the artist, the editor is the mechanic, or the craftsman of the final product. The editor works in tandem with the writer, bringing unique talents and a fresh and more comprehensive perspective.

Few, if any, writers whose work sells to a publisher are not edited. The level of editing required fluctuates, dependent upon the artistry and craft of the writer, but even the most accomplished, most talented, most prolific authors work with an editor who scrutinizes his work. For every great book written, one can rightly assume that a great editor helped the author craft the final version. In fact, when authors begin to think they don’t need any editing and rebuff suggestions, their work typically suffers.

Thus two things you can do to vastly improve your chances of being published are to conscientiously edit and rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite. It’s one thing to complete a first draft and think you’re such a genius that it’s ready to go as is, and quite another to complete a first draft and proceed to invest equal time and effort in editing and rewriting until it’s as good as you can make it. Lazy writers rarely become professional writers; and editors of all ilk dread working with a writer who thinks all she has to do is spew out words and have the editor, dazzled by her genius, do all the grunt work.

Even if you’re lucky enough to be able to hire a professional editor (from whom you can learn how to become a better writer and self-editor), self-editing skills play a significant role in the true crafting of the work. Professional editors (of which I am one) need you to give them your best effort. If the first draft falls far short of the end goal, they won’t be able to help you craft something spectacular. Unless you’re already a writing genius, a mediocre first draft that is not then revisited is not likely to be published or to gather flattering reviews if published.

Time for the Editor’s Cap

Your editing brain is not the same as your writing brain, which is why you kindly ask the editor to step outside while your more imaginative and spontaneous brain is writing the first draft. You call in the editing brain when you’ve had a few days, weeks, or months to gain a modicum of emotional and intellectual distance from the first draft. Your more focused, more methodical, detail-oriented brain is better suited to editing than your more creative, spontaneous, emotional brain. One delivers the goods; the other crafts and perfects the goods. The brain you need for editing is your executive brain; so let’s discuss how you, as the first editor, can successfully edit and rewrite.

View the Work More Objectively

The executive brain is the one you can train to view your work objectively, sans emotion, and prejudgment. Although it seems odd, it’s most helpful when you can read and reassess the work with complete objectivity—almost as if someone else wrote it and you are seeing it for the first time. Naturally, that’s not an easy thing to do, but doing whatever you can to come close to the level of objectivity is desirable.

Wait a While Before Reading Your Book

The best way to achieve this is to wait a while before settling in to edit. Spend time generating new ideas, plotting new books (or screenplays or plays), or writing something else. Why not spend a few weeks composing essays on the writing process you’ve just experienced for your website? (Yes, you will want a writing website.) Or you could spend a few weeks researching a new topic or doing additional research on the book you’re about to edit. The thing is: resist temptation to dive back into crafting the story too soon.

Print a Copy to Read

As we discussed in the previous chapter, printing a copy of your book offers your brain a visual of what those three hundred or so pages look like piled up. It’s also a tactile experience, particularly if you love the feel of paper and writing on paper. In addition, studies have found that reading books on the screen is different from viewing them on paper. Reading on paper makes it stick longer than reading on the screen. It’s even better if you take notes while you read, as you’re interpreting it for yourself, and that makes it stick best of all.

Skim Read the First Time Through

To view the work objectively, try to set aside emotions, particularly fear. Release any strictures or precepts (set ideas) that someone else may have told you, and keep the responsibility on this first read-through light. Instead of honing in on details—nitpicking word choice, for example—read the story as you imagine a reader might, with a fresh eye. At least try pretending that you’ve never seen, or heard, the story; and read through it as fast as you can (skimming or fast reading instead of slow reading). Don’t even take notes on the first read-through. What you are seeking is a nonjudgmental feel (an intuitive feel, rather than an emotional feel) for the story and how well you’ve captured what you wanted to capture.

Conduct a Macro-Edit: Focus on the Work as a Whole

After the first general impression read-through, read the work again, but this time, widen your focus to include assessing how each component works within the whole. Basically you’re conducting a macro-edit, focusing only on the larger components of structure, style, tone, theme, pacing, character arc, and so on.

Use a Checklist

Using the checklist below, see how you’re faring on each element. This time read with a pen or pencil in your hand so you can jot down notes. However, we’re still talking broad notes, focused on structure, so don’t lapse into changing sentences. For example, begin by looking for a three-act structure, noticing how the story ebbs and flows within each act.

• Does the first act open with a bang in the first ten pages, luring the reader into your lair?
• Is your main character/protagonist and his situation someone and something a reader will want to follow for three hundred or more pages?
• Is the protagonist being forced (or about to be forced) to take action to overcome life-changing challenges?
• Does he have a worthy antagonist or opponent (unique and fascinating in her own way)?
• Is there enough opposition, emanating within the protagonist or from the antagonist, to create and sustain conflict?
• Does the first chapter of the first act draw the reader into the story by establishing compelling characters, a gripping storyline, a meaningful setting, theme, tone, and so on?
• Is the story grounded in a time, place, and situation that are all central to the story?
• Does the second act (the middle) reflect the growing complexity of the plot?
• Is character motivation, or what’s at risk, sufficient to continue propelling the plot forward?
• Is your protagonist being constantly challenged?
• Is the action, tension, and conflict escalating due to what your protagonist and antagonist do or don’t do?
• Is the action causative and causal? This happens, and then this happens as a result of that?
• Are the stakes becoming higher; is your protagonist in peril?
• Does enough action, or rising tension, occur in the middle to sustain reader interest?
• Is your protagonist rising to the occasion, growing as a result of his actions?
• Is your antagonist equally drawn, sufficiently counteractive?
• Does the third act quickly build toward a climax?
• Is the climax the pinnacle of conflict? Does it change everything for your protagonist?
• Does your protagonist prevail, due to his own efforts?
• Has your character undergone a life-changing experience or epiphany?
• Does the story have a satisfying ending (not necessarily happy or sad, but satisfying)?

Remember, you are building and reinforcing your executive brain’s editing skills by gathering information on a macro-level. Soon you’ll be honing in and making actual edits, but at this stage, it’s more important to conduct a global assessment. Viewing and reviewing your work, as a whole, broadens your perspective and will provide significant insights that your brain will reveal when rewriting.

Look for Consistency in Style

As you macro-edit, also notice style. Whether you purposefully adopted a particular style or tried to mimic a certain style, you will want to make sure stylistic devices are consistent throughout the book. Begin with these questions:

• Did I achieve a singular, strong voice? Is it consistent throughout the work?
• Is the entire book written in past tense, or did I flip to present tense here and there?
• Is my point of view consistent throughout the book? Did I primarily use first-person narration and occasionally flip to third-person limited point of view or to omniscient point of view (or whatever the case may be)?
• If I switched point of view, did I do so effectively? (General rule of thumb: one point of view per scene; no more than three per chapter.)
• Is the tone of the book consistent? If it changed, was it evident when and, more importantly, why?
• Is the theme fully represented? Is there an evolution, or revolution, of thought?

What you are doing is assessing a deeper layer of the work and determining whether it’s effective. Again, this is not the down ‘n’ dirty stage of editing; this is still a macro-edit. By breaking down the editing process, you are helping your brain take in as much information as possible, which will boost its executive functioning when you begin editing and rewriting. Remember, your executive brain likes input—as much relevant information as possible that relates to the task at hand—and spending time to conduct this broad review can be more helpful than you may realize. Often our creative brain surprises us with genius, and it’s important to notice where genius occurs, as well as the places where it falls short.

Proceed From a Macro- to a Micro-Edit

Once you’ve printed, read aloud, and assessed the work from the perspective of a broad overview, it’s time to transition from a macro-edit to a micro-edit. This is when you want to focus your brain on paying attention to all the elements that create a work of genius: scenes, pacing, conflict levels, characterization, setting, narrative, dialogue, and so on.

Give Your Brain Directives for the Rewrite

Remember that you’re engaging your executive brain (the prefrontal cortex) and want to avoid having your emotional limbic brain barge in. To do this, focus solely on mechanics, reading with a slow, cold eye. Here is some “shorthand” you can jot down in the manuscript to alert your brain to the changes you need to make when it’s time to rewrite:

In other words, read like an editor, one who is noting what works and doesn’t work, what needs additional dramatization or what isn’t contributing something vital. You should begin to see the weaknesses, as well as the strengths, in the work and to develop a much clearer idea of what you need to do to make it better. If you insert notes on the pages, you are helping your writing brain knuckle down to make thoughtful revisions when you rewrite.

Refine and Rewrite Scenes

Once you’ve made your global edits and inserted notes as a road map to rewrite, it’s time to focus in on scenes. Strong scenes are crucial to the novel’s (screenplay’s, play’s, etc.) success. To double-check and make sure each scene establishes a particular situation (plot point or scene), ask yourself the following questions:

1. Who are the characters involved in the situation?
2. When and where does this event happen?
3. What does each want and how does it support or clash with what the other person wants?
4. What is the (inner or outer) conflict that takes place during the situation?
5. What is the source of tension between the protagonist and antagonist?
6. What happens as a result of this conflict?
7. Why does this event need to happen?

While the first six will help you set the parameters for scenes, create new scenes, expand existing scenes, and create stronger characters, the last one—Why?—is most important. Why is important because each scene has to justify its existence. When you review scenes, ask yourself these questions:

• Is there a reason for this scene to exist?
• Does it reveal crucial information about the characters or the plot?
• Does something meaningful happen?
• Does it propel the plot forward?
• Does the action challenge your central characters?
• Does it include conflict and rising tension?
• Does it have consequences that determine what comes next?

Scenes can be very short, but they should be structured: with a beginning (an inciting incident), a middle (conflict and rising tension), and an ending (a consequence that leads to what comes next). Keeping scenes around three to five pages is a good idea, unless there’s so much potent activity and dialogue that a longer scene is justified. Concentrate on keeping them focused on what’s most important, and that will help you pare them down when needed.

Also, in general, it’s rarely a good idea to leisurely lead your reader into a scene; it’s much more effective to jump right into scenes. Start with the “inciting incident.” The best way to jump into a scene is to use potent dialogue or action. Scenes don’t have to end with resolution, but they do need to either resolve the immediate situation or stop at a place that creates a logical transition to the next scene (or have a transition at the beginning of the next scene to indicate a new time and place). Remember that it’s good to surprise your reader occasionally.

Why Rising Tension Matters

Scientists have also found that rising tension in the storyline is essential to brain participation. Just as with any form of brain engagement, the brain needs ongoing stimulation to continually focus its attention on what’s happening. If the brain is bored, it’s far more likely to disengage. Also, the points when the heroine is at peril are the points where primal brain responses cause us to care about the character, to essentially feel her pain. If you make your reader feel the pain your character is experiencing, she will also feel relief and pleasure when all turns out well. It’s this fulfilling experience, which may happen unconsciously, that fuels the market for new stories, surprising stories, triumphant stories, and so on.

While you want tension in your story, feeling tension creates cortisol, the brain chemical associated with stress. Fortunately cortisol alerts your brain to pay close attention, as if the events are actually happening and you need to take real action. Cortisol baths can be unsettling, of course, but once the character is out of peril (due to the heroic actions he takes to overcome the obstacle), the feeling of relief releases oxytocin to counteract the cortisol, and all balances out again—and the reader experiences a sense of relief and camaraderie with the character.

If the story has a happy ending, it lights up our limbic system, which produces the very pleasurable chemical dopamine that restores our sense of justice, beauty, and harmony. Happy endings make us, well, happy—and optimistic, which is good for your brain.

Why Character Identification Matters

Scientists have found that character-driven stories tend to create more oxytocin in the brain. They theorize that the pleasing “chemical bath” both reflects and generates a sense of identification—she’s just like me!—and thereby engages empathetic feelings. Oxytocin also creates a sense of bonding—both in real life, between parents and children, and romantic partners—as well as with fictional characters. If there is oxytocin, there is a sense of emotional connection. We begin to care deeply about what happens to the characters, and if the story is gripping enough, we’ll read long into the cold, dark night, worried about their fate and hoping for their triumph—or their demise, in the case of dastardly villains.

On the flip side, some studies have found that oxytocin also serves us in identifying and remembering enemies, by triggering an important signaling molecule, known as extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK). Once activated, ERK lights up your brain for six hours and appears to stimulate the brain’s fear pathways, many of which pass through the lateral septum, a region of the brain that processes emotional and stress responses. In these cases, oxytocin seems to intensify fear and to imprint memory of the event (or person) that caused the pain.

So what does this mean for your writing? It means that when you need to amp up the scenes involving love, you could increase your oxytocin levels by watching romantic movies; and when you need to fire up action scenes, in which the hero’s life is in danger, you could boost your “vigilant” oxytocin by watching movies in which villains wreak havoc.

Refine and Rewrite Dialogue

Dialogue is a crucial element of any novel, screenplay, or play. Dialogue should always be interesting, revealing, potent, focused, and, occasionally, at least somewhat unique to your character. It’s one of the most potent tools you’ll use to reveal crucial information. You can almost always strike out any pleasantries (greetings, farewells) or everyday, ordinary conversations about nothing of importance (like what someone is ordering for dinner).

You’ve probably heard that dialogue needs to be “realistic,” but that’s not precisely true because most of what people say in real life isn’t sharply focused or dramatic (except on rare occasions). It’s the author’s task to craft dialogue, focusing on what’s important within the conversation, choosing an interesting, revealing, or confrontational way for the characters to say it, and deleting whatever feels ordinary or boring. In other words, it should be realistic—but exceptional—specific to story or character development.

A lot of the underpinnings regarding conflict and the particularities regarding character are revealed in dialogue. As a reminder, dialogue should do at least one of four things (and preferably more than one of these things at the same time):

1. Reveal character
2. Convey important information
3. Create, sustain, escalate, or resolve tension between characters
4. Move the plot forward

Make sure your dialogue is not too pedantic. Work on making it more potent, more revealing, and more individualistic. While steadfast rules don’t exist in creative writing, here are a few tips that will help you refine dialogue:

• Avoid introductions: Cut right to the essential information.
• Avoid standard greetings: No hellos and goodbyes, unless something exceptional occurs.
• Avoid ordinary exchanges: Dialogue needs to be potent and focused, as noted above (chitchat about weather or anything that isn’t important to the plot or character).
• Avoid dialect and shortened words. Clipped words or dialect can be used in dialogue, but keep them minimal and necessary.

As you edit and rewrite, focusing intently on scenes and dialogue will help you craft your best work possible.

Using Proven Neuroscience to Review, Refine, and Rewrite

A French research team found that action words (kicked, stomped, raced) fired up the motor cortex, which governs how the body moves. Even more specific, describing body parts, such as an arm or leg, activated the part of the brain that controls arm and leg movement. Using evocative language also woke up the hippocampus, which would in turn activate long-term memories and play a significant role in how a reader’s mind turned language into meaningful experience. These are the kinds of effects those who write novels, memoirs, screenplays, plays, songs, and so on wish to have on their readers. The primary goal is to establish identification, achieve a textural layering, and evoke emotion.

So how do you use this knowledge? As you review, refine, and rewrite, be sure to accomplish the following:

• Create Fully Envisioned Scenes: Draw readers into the setting, establishing a mood, and using sensual (sight, smell, sound, taste, touch) descriptions that will engage the sensory and motor processing areas of the reader’s brain. If you craft the scene vividly enough, the reader will feel like he’s there—and that’s what you want to happen.
• Create Memorable Characters: Creating characters that are unique (unforgettable) and also familiar (someone your readers might know) increases the appeal of your story because reading about them will stimulate empathy and all the feel-good brain chemicals—like oxytocin and dopamine—that come along with feeling sympathetically toward someone else. You want someone your reader will either love or hate, someone they’ll root for or against, someone they’d long to be or be thankful they aren’t. If you write about someone who is boring (unless you do so cleverly), your reader is likely to lose interest early on and stop reading. Make your characters a lightning rod for positive or negative feelings; someone your reader wants to follow around and can’t stop watching.
• Give Them Lots of Complications: To sustain interest, your main characters should be challenged throughout the story. No one wants to read about a character who never does anything interesting. To keep your readers’ brains engaged, throw a curveball at your characters every chance you get. Make it a habit to ask: How can I make this even harder for her? Make your characters fight for what they want or need, and make the path littered with all sorts of complications. And then make sure the resolution comes from within the protagonist (or antagonist) and never from coincidence (or deus ex machina) or the simple passage of time. Your hero needs to be a conqueror.
• Make Details Specific: When describing a character, a setting, or an event, the more specific the details, the more your reader can picture it in her brain. If you just say, “Spain’s premier race car driver sped a white Porsche through its paces,” it’s not likely to awaken a reader’s brain the same way the following will: “Spain’s premier race car driver throttled a brand-new white Porsche with scary aplomb, at speeds that left it careening around curves, the red and purple stripes blurring, reminding onlookers of his recent near-death experience.” See how the use of details creates a visual for readers and thereby perks up their brains?
• Use Active Verbs that Create Vivid Images: This is a common writing suggestion, and neuroscience is proving that it’s sound advice. Passive writing and nondescript, static verbs put your reader’s brain to sleep. If you want your reader’s cortex to light up (and you do), use power-packed, precise action verbs. Studies have shown that imagining you are doing something triggers the same neuronal responses that are triggered when you actually do that thing, and the same goes for readers. Give their brains vivid images of events unfolding, as they happen, and their brains will respond in kind.
• Use Sensual Words: Using the five senses, plus variant senses such as hunger, thirst, itch, muscle tension, equilibrium, heat, and pain, draws the reader deeper into the story. As we’ve discussed, smell is one of the senses writers may not think about as much, but it’s one of the most powerful of faculties when it comes to evoking memories and thereby encouraging empathy for your characters.
• Give Them a Satisfying Ending: Readers want to feel something at the end of a novel (play, screenplay). The ending is the emotional payoff, and whether it’s happy or sad or somewhere in between, it should feel satisfying. Contrivances tend to offend readers, while well-thought, appropriate endings tend to lure readers into reading your next book.

Once you’ve fine-tuned your manuscript and made editing notes for your writing brain to follow, it’s time to rewrite.

Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite

“Books aren't written—they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it,” says best-selling author Michael Crichton.

As an author, editor, and a book doctor, I often offer this quote as a reality check for novice writers, many of whom don’t see the point in heavily rewriting or rewriting more than once. But writing genius often comes long after the original writer has labored over rewrites and then benefited from the help of a publishing house editor to rewrite again.

Now that you’ve programmed your brain to become a writing genius, produced a complete manuscript, and mapped out an editing plan for your brain, you are ready to be the first highly skilled editor of your work. All you have to do is put those same methods to work in rewriting—and keep slogging forward until you feel that you’ve done the best work possible. That’s when you solicit agents and editors—not before. In a market in which standards and competition are higher than ever, agents and editors expect writers to submit exceptional work—to be writing geniuses. Once you get through those doors, they will help you refine your manuscript further, but they’ll never unlatch the door if you don’t offer truly professional, stunning manuscripts. Don’t worry, you are fully capable of doing so. Program, nourish, and take full advantage of your brain to develop the writing genius that will get you to the top of an agent’s submissions pile.

Gear Up for Marketing

Now, as you prepare to transition from editing to promoting your book, it can be helpful to utilize everything we’ve discussed in this book—particularly in regards to this specific work. One way to get absolutely clear that you’ve written the best version of your story (and to prep for selling and promoting) is to have a conversation with your creative genius.

Writers on Craft

“Well, my wife took a look at the first version of something I was doing not long ago and said, ‘Goddamn it, Thurber, that’s high school stuff.’ I have to tell her to wait until the seventh draft, it’ll work out all right. I don’t know why that should be so, that the first or second draft of everything I write reads as if it was turned out by a charwoman.”

—James Thurber

“There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.”

—Elie Wiesel

“There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.”

—John Kenneth Galbraith

“My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of War and Peace—and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she's a midwife rather than a surgeon.”

—Julia Glass

“Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists.”

—Sarah Kay

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

—Robert Charles Benchley