REVIEW: Revising Fiction by David Madden

This was written in 1988, and I had read it not long after that. I just finished reading it again, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Revising Fiction: A Handbook for Writers by David Madden, is more like a masterclass on the technical nuts-and-bolts on writing and editing fiction than it is a general book on editing. It consists of 185 short, practical essays on various aspects of fiction, such as

• “Is the plot adequately developed?”
• “Should a scene now rendered mostly in dialog be changed to have a more narrative emphasis?”
• “Have you failed to prepare early for a later event or effect?”
• “Have you imaged obvious, overt, or literary symbols?”
• “Is your style overloaded with inappropriately formal phrases?”

Each brief essay contains a description of the issue, how to rewrite or avoid it, bad examples, good examples, and references to fiction that employs (or fails to employ) the advice. As you cn see, it really is more about how to edit your story or novel once it is written, rather than simply writing this way. Yet it is true that, as a writer become more conversant and efficient in these issue, they can take place in first drafts.

The 185 essays are divide into eight chapters. It begins with an introduction that argues that revision is “an act of technical imagination,” exploring where ideas come from, what a first draft should accomplish, and what stages a revision should follow. Then, the eight chapters are:

1. Point of View
2. Style
3. Characters
4. Narrative
5. Dialog
6. Description
7. Devices
8. General Considerations

The following chapter is a case study, using the short story “The Day the Flowers Came,” written by the author. He describes the process of the idea, the pondering, and the writing of the first draft. Then, in a paragraph by paragraph annotated study, he shows how to implement many of the subjects he has discussed in the book.

Here are a couple of passages to give the flavor of the writing and content:

Relying on implication can enable you to cut many minor elements that render your style stultifying. For instance, why ever say “she thought to her self”? To whom else could she think? It is absurd to state what is so clearly implied “she could see the birds in the trees.” If what? Did she didn’t she? She did. So “she saw the birds in the trees” says it.

Page 54

“The main reason for re-writing,“ said Saul Bellow, “ is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.” In the early revisions of tinder is the night, Fitzgerald have discovered the inner truth of dick diver, but technical miscalculations gave his reader a distorted were unfocused impression of the truth.

Page 114

Madden then goes on to describe the early revisions of Fitzgerald’s’ piece, and the later renditions of edits, and the final version which addressed the problems.

The book is technical, and not for the casual writer or editor. It delves deep into the techniques of good fiction, with plenty of examples and resources. The last chapter is an excellent practical example. As such, it is not an easy book to ready, perhaps more suited for a textbook in a course where each little essay could be examined, discussed, and practiced. I adopted the following method of reading: one or two of the essays a morning, with the rest of the day to ponder and think about them. This meant it took many months to finish the book, but well worth it.

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