Mine For Extra Meaning
Hi everyone,
Today I revised 5 pages for micro-tension out of 30 manuscript pages and cut 213 words to make room for these new additions.
I had an epiphany today. It’s a realisation that’s been growing on me day by day, page by page.
This is it: Mine your page for meaning. Hack away at the words, the action and the descriptions to uncover the hidden gem underneath—the conflict buried under the stone of the story.
Let me explain. As an author, we must really hurt our brains when attempting to come up with micro-tension to discover what internal struggle the POV character is going through. We must think: what struggle haven’t I put on the page?
The struggle is there. The author shouldn’t just make it up. We must mine below the words, below the scene and find it. It is there, it’s just hidden. Buried beneath the words. Hidden under the need to get the words on the page quickly during the first draft and behind the stress of getting the story details right in subsequent drafts.
Line by line editing—which is what a micro-tension draft is about—is honing the tension in each line, on each and every page—done page by page, not scene by scene. It’s not plot tension. Hopefully, that’s already there from previous revisions.
Getting to the heart of a character’s struggle is about going behind the scenes. What is my POV character thinking at this moment?
As humans, we’re always conflicted. Should I eat now or work longer? Should I watch tv or exercise? Should I eat that slice of cake or eat an apple instead? Should I go to bed now or read more of my novel and risk being exhausted tomorrow?
If we want to make our characters real, make them 3D and not 2D flat black and white words on the page, then we must show that they suffer from this internal conflict, too. It’s what it means to be human. It’s what it means to be real and not made up.
But what is it?
That’s what I mean by, mining for extra meaning—getting UNDER the skin of the character, getting INSIDE their head and digging around. Sounds gross, actually. But what it is in reality, is difficult and painful and TIME CONSUMING. And rewarding. Well, this is my experience of it so far.
When I’m trying to figure out what micro-tension is on the page but not yet written, I stare at the page, I read the relevant words over and over and think: “What are you thinking here, Ellodie?” What’s bothering you?” “What are you questioning yourself about?” “What whispering, niggling words are you saying to yourself that you’re too afraid to voice in anything larger than a whispered whisper?”
That’s what I, as the author, have to find. I have to find the thought that she (my POV character) won’t tell anyone else, the thought that she’s too afraid to say to herself.
Find that thought, that scary conflict and I find a gem.
This is what readers longs for. The internal conflict that makes us human. The secret, truthful, inner thoughts that we all have but don’t always share.
Human Beings are not telepathic, except when we’re reading. Then we’re powerful telepaths.
When we’re reading, we hear the thoughts of the POV character on the page. We have this enormous intimate connection with them. We, as readers, are reading to hear the thoughts no one voices and to feel the emotions they create.
Anyway, in doing this painful exercise of digging around my POV character’s brain, I found a page where my main character experiences fear over her reaction to another character. This reaction and the feelings it gives rise to, scare her. And these thoughts, this fear, directly links to what she does later. I just never put any of these thoughts on the page here. I did put similar-ish thoughts on a later page.
But mining for the meaning here, I discovered that this page, this occasion, is the first time her reaction scares her—mostly because the reaction to this character has slowly grown without her awareness.
This page is the inciting incident of her behavior later. Behavior that will make much more sense now that I’ve put this micro-tension on the page.
During my first 7 drafts, I missed it. I didn’t see that what happens here is the cause of what happens later. But because I had to really think about the micro-tension that was missing, yet lurking under the action, under the descriptions, under the words, I found it. A gem that could be polished and inserted.
So my advice to you, is to spend time with each page in your manuscript and search for the meaning buried under the layers and layers of carefully crafted stone. Dig it up. Polish it to a shine and put it on the page.
When I was spending so much on this one page, it felt fruitless and like I was wasting my time. But I wasn’t. My entire story is better because I uncovered this gem. I’m happy I spent the time hacking away at the stone of my story to see what my POV character was too afraid to admit, even to herself.
I hope that makes sense.
That’s all for now.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Happy writing,
Joanne.
Micro-revision draft: 55 pages
