Editing Series: Writing is Four Function Math, Part 2

Over the next few weeks, I want to take you through the editing process. We’ve started with big picture items like conceptual work. Eventually, we’ll make our way into syntax and style.

We’re still talking about math, specifically, basic math: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. Recall whether you think of your writing as an algebraic equation where you solve for X. You may understand your work as a calculus problem set where you are seeking knowledge about change. You could think in terms of geometry, where you contemplate the relationships between points, lines, and shapes. Still, there is the option of trigonometry where you are curious about angles and their relationships to each other. Maybe you’ve rethought your relationship to your work from last week. Perhaps you’re thinking of your writing as some combination from above.

You’re right. Conceptually speaking, your work either uses or has much in common with mathematics. But, recall that your editing will bring you back to basics: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Last week, we covered addition and subtraction.

A little refresher: when editing, you want to start with your concepts. For academic writers, this is largely the argument. For non-fiction writers, this can be somewhat looser like the main point or the major concept you’re introducing. For fiction writers, this tends to be things like plot line or character development. You start here because these are the bare bones of the manuscript. Without these, you have no manuscript.

Unlike actual math though, there isn’t a precise order of operations to this. For those of you having negative flashbacks to PEMDAS, please breathe. However, I do recommend reading the manuscript from beginning to end, so that you imagine your ideal (most knowledgeable) and implied (most likely) reader.

Multiplication: In math (as in writing), multiplication is meant to simplify repeated addition. You have two (or more) factors that combine (are multiplied) to form a product. I see a few specific ways to multiply. First, during the climax of a story or argument, we often have to remind people of all the factors that add up to the conclusion. Some of you may remember the Amy Heckerling remake of Jane Austen’s Emma in the 1990s. It was called Clueless and it featured Alicia Silverstone (among others). Near the end of the movie, the main character is thinking and she begins to compile evidence about who she likes romantically. The viewer sees a montage of images of her and her love interest (played by Paul Rudd): the rapidly added (or multiplied) evidence (along with Celine Dion’s “All By Myself” playing in the background) that clarifies she’s “majorly, totally, butt-crazy in love with Josh!” Sometimes, we need a paragraph or scene that serves as a montage – rapidly adding evidence – to move our implied and ideal readers along to our way of thinking.

On a less cinematic note, multiplication in writing can occur when we think of the relationship between two ideas. For my academic and non-fiction writers, you’ll find that one piece of evidence weighs more than another. For my fiction writers, you’ll want one scene to be more pivotal than another. When you multiply in these cases, you heighten the stakes, create tension. This could result in different transitional phrases: “in addition to” is less tense than “furthermore” or “moreover” or, my least favorite, “thus.” You want transitional words or phrases that indicate your argument is augmented, building, rapidly adding to the point before. For fiction writers, this can result in changing the environment (public or private), shifting the audience (family, friends, enemies), raising the stakes (is this the event folks have been waiting for?), et cetera.

Division: In math (as in writing), division is the opposite of multiplication. Rather than repeated addition, division is repeated subtraction. It is the breaking down of a large entity into smaller (usually equal) ones. In my academic and non-fiction writing, I often divide when trying to explain a difficult concept. For instance, one of the major tenets of Disability Studies is that there is a difference between what happens in the bodymind and how people understand those happenings socially. There are a variety of ways to explain this concept. Some people start by discussing the social model of disability and then define what happens in the bodymind as “impairment” and how people perceive those happenings as “disability.” Some people begin with an example: a wheelchair user might be impaired because they have been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, but they become disabled when they encounter stairs or a too-small elevator. You can understand from this example how the larger concept (“social model of disability”) gets divided into smaller pieces (“impairment” and “disability”).

We also divide by picking and choosing evidence, differentiating between a critic and ourselves, and cleaving the argument of one paper from that of a different one. I find the third example rather difficult since it requires knowing the scope of your work.

My favorite kind of division in fiction is a subplot. I love a subplot! Subplots allow you to usefully divide your readers’ attention. In a lot of romance novels, the main character’s best friend has a romance going on. That second romance may duplicate the first. It can also create narrative foils where the differences between one romance and the other help to clarify the characters’ opinions, desires, or concerns. Subplots can also be more subtle, as in The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. The protagonist in Jeffers’s novel is Ailey Pearl Garfield, but the other characters’ extensive stories allow you to imagine all that Ailey is inheriting, all that she is unaware of, all that she repeats, and all that she changes. Far from pulling a reader’s attention in too many directions, the subplot can allow the ideas, images, and general concerns of a text to come forward without browbeating the reader. This is especially important if you want to show a full experience of one historically marginalized group without making your fiction more of a case-study.

Next week, we’re onto thinking about structures and organization.