Editing a Story You’ve Already Lived Once at the Table
One of the hardest parts of writing stories is the editing process. I had difficulties with it as a student (it’s fine enough for a good grade, right? Why would I want to put more time and energy into it?) and even as an adult I struggle to edit, but rather it's the opposite problem now where I keep wanting to make improvements when really it's best for me to just stop playing with it and let it be.
The best advice I was ever able to give my students when I taught writing was to “kill your darlings,” though I would use the term “kill your babies” because teens today don’t tend to use the word “darling” all that much. They would give me a horrified look until I explained the concept of the editing tool. Killing one’s darlings, or babies, means that there are some wonderful ideas you may have that are brilliant and wonderful and are your brain child that you value over all else… and are not fit for what you’re trying to do right now so just get rid of it. Write it down in a notebook, save it in a doc, whatever, but get it out of your current piece because it's nothing but dead weight. To you as the writer, you’re being forced to kill something beautiful, but to the reader, you’ve trimmed the fat.
Your ideas, much like real babies, may be the most perfect and beautiful ever created to you, but to other people, it’s just another idea. Best to reveal it in a place where it will shine rather than be shunned.
The hardest part with that for me is that it's not just my darlings that need to be killed. There are four to five people at my table at a given time, and each of them has their own ideas, thoughts, plans, ideals, moments, and character that’s darling to them and each needs to be given the opportunity to shine. Finding a way to balance their darlings while killing off the bits that don’t fit becomes an act of spinning plates that could create a great deal of issues for me as a writer and them as players. By now, I hope that I’ve developed an understanding of what each character values and their perspectives, but I still refer back to my players to really understand what each of them is thinking and feeling in character to understand what moments are key to them, and where I can begin to… trim the fat.
There’s an upcoming moment that not a single one of you is going to read because I’m not going to write it, where the players were burning off steam and trying to prevent another player from doing something, eventually going to extreme measures to keep that event from occurring. That player was frustrated, and didn’t want the moment to appear in the book, and based on that request, it won’t. That is an example of an easy cut.
However, there are other moments, small things, where players are contributing to a scene where there are many voices all interacting and exchanging ideas and information. This is often good in a larger cast because you want to make sure that everyone can contribute and be seen as valuable to the story. However, when I want to build intensity between two characters, sometimes having three others contributing to the conversation becomes messy and problematic. While I normally ask the players if it’s alright, I would usually take some of the dialogue that the entire group contributed to and attribute more of it to that one character. The same information is shared with the audience, though the spotlight will focus in on one character rather than the group.
Crediting one character with the words and actions of another isn’t anything new. We see this in adaptations of books to movies all the time, or even have entire characters combined into one person (I loved the movie October Sky as a kid, and eventually read the book it was based on, Rocket Boys, and learned that in the movie two women from the real life memoirs were combined into a single character for the sake of the film). One of the easier edits for me is filling in dialogue from characters that were present while their players aren’t. Some of us have jobs that work us late into the night, or schedule us weirdly. Timm works in lighting and sound, Luis is a project manager, and Smithers works in IT. Morgan and I had the more stable schedules since we were both working in education, though now she works in an office and I am learning home renovation work. Sometimes life and work happen and keep us away, and while if I’m missing the game needs to get postponed, we do have a rule at the table that if we’re only missing one person, we’ll play on. This means that sometimes we’ll have a character who is present for the session (conversation happening around them or even a fight) where the player isn’t there to provide commentary on their doings and sayings.
For these moments, I can always steal a line someone else said and attribute it to them, or create filler dialogue for them to toss in and have the other characters react before moving on with the plot, but the action is really where things get difficult. See, for those who don’t know, D&D is turn-based combat, meaning that everyone gets to say what their character is doing in an order based on a die roll. If someone isn’t there to do that, either that character gets sidelined (we had a game where we just shoved their character in a barrel and moved on with our day, in this game normally we have them sleeping something off or having a private moment elsewhere that we can roleplay and include later) or we just kind of forget they’re supposed to be there and just play on. For that first one, we’re able to come up with story beats to keep them involved, though for battle scenes I need to get creative. Often I’ll throw them in fighting an additional target that wasn’t present during the game itself, or if they’re fighting one large creature I have them getting their licks in while keeping the rest of the combat flowing around them as it happened. This allows them to be present while keeping the spotlight on the ones who were able to bring the beast down.
Revisiting these moments allows for another fun aspect that has nothing to do with balancing the game with the book or vice versa. Writing these moments allows me to relive them in a way that you don’t really get to experience as a regular DM. Yes we all keep our notes, and I have the added bonus of being able to refer to Nicole’s notes, but rewriting them also grants me a wonderful opportunity to relive the experience and recall the dangers, emotions, and desires in that moment. Is there a character that they loved or hated that came up here that I can revisit in an upcoming session? Was there a foe that gave them particular trouble that they can get a rematch against now that they’re more powerful? What was that emotional beat that really struck a chord with them that we can pluck a second or third time? Memories can fade, but by reliving them we’re able to create something entirely new and find inspiration even in the worst cases of writer’s block. There have been times when I was writing up a chapter, saw something I’d completely forgotten about because it had been years since it happened in real life, and got inspired for a new story or adventure to send them on because now it was fresh in my mind.
Editing a story is simply reliving it, and reliving moments grants us clarity on them. This is one of the reasons I’ll reread certain books, especially The Great Gatsby, one of my absolute favorites, because young me felt for Gatsby, me in my twenties felt for Nick, and current day me feels they’re all terrible people and none of them should be liked. Except George, poor George… But I digress! Editing isn’t just there to help you find plot holes and spelling errors, but also to grant you both clarity and creation. It isn’t a waste of time or a trap to get stuck in, it is a time for reflection and reminders. Relive your adventures, because knowing where you’ve been can help you get where you want to go.
