Grave Robbing
I admit it. I rob graves.Last week, I showed a friend of mine two chapters of a book I might want to work on. He loved one of my lines. But it was too literary for the character. It PAINED me no end to admit he was right. PAINED ME. It's a GREAT line. But it's got to go if I'm being true and honest with the writing.
"Save it," my friend said. "Use it in another book. Just not this one."
Yesterday, Zoe commented here that she's grave robbing from an old work in progress for a new one. And I realized I rob the graves of old manuscripts and unfinished stories ALL THE TIME.
One entire chapter of Invisible Girl was lifted from a book I never finished. The first line of The Roofer was written when I was 16 or 17 and I trotted it through several books and ideas until I found a place for it. I have dozens and dozens of nothing more than ideas in files, half-done scenes. I rob from them all the time.
I wonder if non-writers know that we authors do this. That we borrow bits and pieces from here and there, words we love but know aren't right for the book we're working on. Words we love, bury, then go to the grave and exhume them again, hoping this time there is life in them.
Thoughts?
Labels: word choices
posted by Erica Orloff at 2:40 PM
19 Comments:
I have definitely robbed from expelled scenes but it's necessary to be very careful that they mesh with the rest of the story. I have had a comment before about a particular passage that the tone had changed and indeed I had lifted it from somewhere else and dropped it in. It was only the description of a room but obviously my voice for that ms wasn't the same.
I've done this; but, like Suzanne mentioned, the trick is to make it seamless. My grave robbing is usually limited to a phrase or maybe a sentence.
Hi Suzanne:
Definitely. The voice has to be there. Which was actually the issue with the few lines I have to excise. The voice was so eloquent and my character is a teen . . . and not from a world where she would have this rather lyrical voice in quite that way.
E
Jude:
I usually mine sentences or thoughts but sometimes a character. I still think sometimes of taking my Lewis LeBarge character and making a series about HIM.
E
Lewis Lebarge would make a great series!
I've often thought Clete Purcell from James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux books would spin-off well into his own series, but Jim says the two complement each other in a way that he wouldn't want to separate. That is, together they rather make up a complete personality. A Yin and Yang kind of thing. So I guess it's tricky sometimes, harvesting characters.
I don't think non writers give much thought to all the things that go into making a story move along.
Jude:
Lewis and Billie are a good match in that way, I think. I originally was going to have them be lovers or former lovers, but then Lewis got progressively odder as I wrote him . . . and somehow it never gelled that way in my head.
E
Travis:
I agree. And I suppose good writing means you SHOULDN'T notice what the writer does. You should just be lost in the work.
E
The first chapter of The Devil's Pitchfork was "stolen" from two separate unsuccessful manuscripts. I'm glad it finally found a home.
Mark:
That is amazing. But it also shows that when you have this nagging voice like, "I know I have something here . . . ." KEEP your old stuff.
E
Oh, yes! Sometimes a single line will INSIST on its own story. Suddenly characters and plot just start unfolding ... I love it when that happens.
Spy:
Love those insistent little lines!
E
My current wip is incorporating a lot of detail about Mexico that I couldn't (read: didn't want to) include in my memoir. An early reader was disappointed that I didn't have it in there, but those weren't details that mattered in MY story. This new one is built upon those details.
Yes!!!
But I need to start organizing those lines into something coherent.....
:-)
Melanie:
90% of the time when I don't use something it's that it doesn't "fit." It might be REALLY good stuff. Just doesn't fit.
E
Hi Chris:
Well . . . get going. :-)
E
ZOMG you stole'd my words. :P
Zoe:
Once a thief . . . always one. ;-)
E
I've grave robbed plots, characters, and scenes from my first book. It's not much of a hardship since it was a contemporary romance saga with both paranormal and suspenseful elements. I figured the whole manuscript will never see the light of day, but that doesn't mean the book will go to waste.
Glad to know I'm not the only one.
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