The Word Cloud

First, many thanks to Steve for letting himself in for this. I'm going to kick off with a detailed inspection, and Debi will be along in a bit to join in the fun. And Steve, I hope it's okay if other Cloudies then join in...

Just to explain the context, in the Self-Editing Your Novel course Debi and I are starting on 25th February, this is what we do to your writing in Week Five. Up to this point we've been working on the best ways to tell your story, exploring structure, character, voice and psychic distance. Then in Week Five we get down to the nitty-gritty of what you might call fine-toothed-comb editing if that wasn't mixing the metaphor: interrogating every word and phrase to see if it's earning its keep, or whether another phrase might make things more expressive, more vivid, better to read, and so on.

I should say, too, that although Steve's book isn't fiction, it is life writing, which is essentially non-fiction narrative which uses the techniques of fiction. So we're concerned with the same issues - structure, character, voice and so on - and it needs to work in the same sort of ways.

On the real course, by now Debi and I and the whole group would know a good deal more about everyone's project than we do here. So I asked Steve to give us a three-sentence description of the story, for information, not probing. But actually it's good stuff; it conveys very well what is going to power the story: the business of coping in a new and strange world, with all his usual props given away. This is the kind of thing we discuss in Week One of the course, and I often talk about it as the "instability" which needs to be be there at the beginning of the story: the thing which means that the reader knows that something is going to happen... and keep happening.

What I've done is posted Steve's piece un-interfered with first, so you can read it as it stands and get a sense of it. I've then posted my microscoped version. My additions are in bold, my deletions are crossed out, and my comments are in [italics in square brackets].

Three Sentence Description

If I Hadn’t Seen Such Riches... is a non-fiction travel book about one man’s journey around Australia. He terminates his corporate career, turns his back on consumer living, and sells up his entire material life in Surrey. Whittling down his worldly possessions to the barest essentials that will fit into one rucksack, Steve Basnett travels to the other side of the planet, acquires a rusty old van and begins a new life down under living in his vehicle.

Extract

1. Sydney

Stood motionless amidst the fluidity of central Sydney street, I had a choice; a choice that would determine the outcome of my life. Looking back after the event, I am certain that my life played out very differently as a result of what I chose. The intriguing thing is that I knew right at the critical moment this seemingly simple choice would have such an impact. What I couldn’t be sure of then – or even now – was whether it would be better or worse. That this book was written at all suggests that the outcome and the journey to it are unlikely to have been much better.

As many world travellers are, I was on a meagre budget that afforded me the options of The Maze hostel on one side of the street, and Footprints, West End on the other. I’d just blagged the last bed available at The Maze, which I considered to be my safety net, and I crossed the road to establish whether or not I was a mug and being charged too much, or whether I was missing out on palatial quality at the same price. As I walked in to Footprints, there was nothing palatial about the place whatsoever, but something felt inexplicably ‘right’ in my gut. I strode up to the curving reception desk, and addressed the casual young fella standing hunched behind it.

‘I know that you’ll be packed to bursting tonight, but I thought I’d come in and get your prices anyway.’

‘Actually, we have got a couple of beds left tonight. Here are the prices,’ responded the uber-friendly Australian chap with self-assured panache, whisking a price sheet under my nose from behind the counter. ‘There’s one in a four-bed dorm, and one in the church.’

‘What’s the church?’ I enquired with intrigue that was no doubt expected.

‘That’s our 26-bed dorm, and it’s $18 a night. The four-bed dorm’s $22, but we’re missing a key for that at the moment, so we can let you have it for the same price. The four-bed is what most people would prefer, do you want that one?’

‘Nah,’ I replied, ‘I’m a sociable bloke, stick me in the church.’


1. Sydney

Stood ["stood" is incorrect for formal English - it should be "standing" - although of course it might be just right for the voice. But because we don't yet have the subject of "stood" and this is the opening sentence, this non-standard verb does rather wrong-foot the reader ] motionless amidst the fluidity ["fluidity" is very vague - distant enough from the original metaphor of people being like water that it doesn't evoke the actual bodies of human strangers very strongly. This is particularly important when we're only just getting into the story. You need to evoke the physical sensation of this immediate - life-changing - moment, stock still as everything/one rushes by. This is where it all starts, and we need to feel it vividly] of a central Sydney street, I had a choice ; : [what comes after a semi-colon needs to be a complete sentence] a choice that would determine the outcome of my life [It's usually a bad idea to Tell us what the outcome of the whole story is - that life changed - rather than starting with the instability and then through the narrative Showing us what and how it happened. Character-Steve is our representative in this story, and you need to think twice before you let Narrator-Steve tells us things Character-Steve hasn't yet experienced. Especially when what he's Telling is a) the end of the story and b) very bland and generalised. Indeed, you cut the whole thing down terribly, by saying that the only thing you didn't know is whether the outcome was going to be better or worse. That isn't really something to keep us reading!] . Looking back after the event, I am certain that my life played out very differently as a result of what I chose. The intriguing thing is that I knew right at the critical moment this seemingly simple choice would have such an impact. What I couldn’t be sure of then – or even now – was whether it would be better or worse. That this book was written at all suggests that the outcome and the journey to it are unlikely to have been much better.[this last sentence, in particular, is very vague: "unlikely to have been much better" takes a bit of de-coding, for a start. But there's a more general problem with all this, from "I had a choice" onwards. We've already lost touch with Steve standing stock still in a Sydney street with (I guess - you don't tell us) his scruffy backpack with his worldy goods weighing on his shoulders, wondering why the hell he's gone and done this, while the suited and booted Aussies whisk and bustle past him on their way to work. Also, if the choice being described is actually merely the one between the two hostels, we've rather lost sight of that, too, and all this philosophising seems rather over-stated. More generally, I think this paragraph is actually more about you clarifying your thinking about this story, than stuff the reader should be offered: it's what I call scaffolding and you can take it down once it's served its purpose]

As many world travellers are [this is a bland, general point which doesn't add anything at the moment. The time to evoke this for us would be, e.g. when Steve hunkers down in the hostel and finds out how he's in good company], I was on a meagre budget that afforded me the options of ["budget that afforded me the options" sounds like information in a finance committe report. You need to evoke the reality of it for us, by making it concrete and particular. How many dollars? What would it be in pounds? Or the fact that the budget for living is the equivalent of a couple of Starbucks coffees and a lunchtime pint back in the old London days? Something that the reader can actually feel and sense, in other words]. The Maze hostel on one side of the street, and Footprints, West End on the other. I’d just blagged [this is what I call a zig-zag: you've just established where we are, and then you press the pause button to explain what's already happened - presumably before even the beginning of the story although it's not entirely clear. The sentence as a whole is a bit of a muddle, in we're Told about the various things Steve has thought, not Shown the thinking as each bit happened; the latter is the way to keep the narrative drive going even during a piece of thinking: stay with the thinking as the character's action in the moment.] the last bed available at The Maze, which I considered to be my safety net, and I crossed the road to establish whether or not I was a mug and being charged too much, or whether I was missing out on palatial quality at the same price. As I walked in to Footprints, there was nothing palatial about the place [okay, but what was there? Can you evoke it with one or two physical things?] whatsoever, but something felt inexplicably ‘right’ in my gut [don't need all three of 'inexplicably' and 'right' and 'gut']. I strode up to the curving [this detail is interesting, but it doesn't seem to be doing much here, as it's not part of a stronger evocation of the physical setting] reception desk, and addressed the casual young fella standing hunched ["hunched" is great - it's concrete, physical, particular. This fella has suddenly come alive to me, as he didn't with "casual", because the latter is so general and it doesn't bring an image or sense-impression to my mind: was he chewing gum? wearing sneakers? feet on the desk?]behind it.

[No greeting? No, 'excuse me' or 'hello'?]‘I know that you’ll be packed to bursting tonight, but I thought I’d come in and get your prices anyway.’

‘Actually, we have got a couple of beds left tonight. Here are the prices,’ responded [to be brutal, this bit of dialogue sounds like a rather clunky radio play - the sort where characters say things like "this gun I have here in my left hand is loaded". ] the u über-friendly ["über" seems a bit over-stated for the impression of a single sentence. It's also a particular kind of voice (21st century urban losing-its-mojo colloquial) which isn't like Narrator-Steve's voice elsewhere. Also, the phrase is very Tell-y. It's true that we pick up friendliness through tiny signals we're hardly aware of, but for the reader who doesn't have this fella yet in their imagination, we could do with something more concrete, so that he's evoked for us] Australian chap with self-assured panache ["self-assured panache" doesn't actually evoke anything, and the two words are basically doubling up on the same job. But "whisking" does - good verb], whisking a price sheet under my nose from behind the counter. ‘There’s one in a four-bed dorm, and one in the church.’

‘What’s the church?’ I enquired with intrigue curiosity that was no doubt expected. ["that was no doubt expected" is a good example of where a passive voice verb means the narrative loses touch with the people involved: the man has vanished from this sentence. "That he no doubt expected" or even something like "I got the feeling he always said this, just to get visitors intrigued" would draw us closer in to the interaction of the two blokes, and evoke Steve's actual experience of the moment and the thought.]

‘That’s our 26-bed dorm, and it’s $18 a night. The four-bed dorm’s $22, but we’re missing a key for that at the moment, [this is a great example of an apparently small, particular detail which actually evokes quite a lot about this hostelly kind of life. Particular detail is incredibly powerful, and we could do with more of it.] so we can let you have it for the same price. The four-bed is what most people would prefer, : do you want that one?’ [At the moment I'm not hearing the man as Australian at all. That may be my Pommie deafness, but given how fast and hard you need to establish setting at the beginning of a story, I'd suggest making his vocabulary more Aussie even if it wasn't in real life - and even perhaps one or two variant spellings to evoke his accent. For a start, wouldn't he say "G'day"?]

‘Nah,’ I replied, . ‘I’m a sociable bloke, . Stick me in the church.’ [great closing line! I know it isn't the final line in the full piece, but Character-Steve has just come alive to me, because there's some character Showing in this phrase. How would the person who can say “Nah, I’m a sociable bloke – stick me in the church” narrate this piece? Could you write it like that? Would it make it more alive?]

General comments:

Steve, contrary to the impression you may have thanks to all my nit-pickery, I enjoyed this opening; there's energy built into the situation of having to dive in to the dorm. At the moment, the prose is under-selling the situation, by not giving it full physical and emotional value. That's not to say that we want you in bewildered tears on the pavement. What you need to be doing it using just enough concrete, particular detail of the moment - sights, smells, feelings, sounds - that the world and the moment are evoked for us. We'll then feel, along with Steve, both the bewilderment and the promise of this new, unstable situation.

On the Self-Editing course I often use my blog posts as extra teaching material, and I'm going to point you (and anyone reading this) to my post on Showing and Telling; you'll see that I spend a lot of time calling Showing "evoking" and Telling "informing", which won't surprise you if you've read this far. I also blogged about scaffolding here. Another very relevant post in the context of this piece is about How To Tell, And Still Show. Often you do need to cover the ground, so you can't spend ages evoking the setting you're whizzing through on the train, but you do need to make that quick, ground-covering narrative really vivid and evocative of the snatches you see. An example in this piece would be how to get Narrator-Steve to conjure up the Sydney street for us so we really feel we're there, smelling/feeling/hearing it, while also getting briskly on with the action of Character-Steve trying to chose between the hostels, and committing himself on a whim which doesn't feel like a whim but something more important, so that we're dying to know What Will Happen Next... because clearly something is going to happen.

I hope that makes sense - do post any queries, and I'll pop back in later to pick up on them. Debi should be along soon to give you a bit of feedback as well.

EVERYONE OUGHT TO READ THIS. It's excellent stuff. A real object lesson in the art of writing. Thanks to Steve for allowing his excerpt to go under the spotlight, and I hope he doesn't feel too exposed as a result. I'm sure most of us can see echos of what we have written ourselves, in this piece, and will benefit as much as Steve from Emma's close scrutiny. He has done us all a great sevice. Thanks, mate.

And, of course, thank you to Emma, and in anticipation, to Debi and to the Writers' Workshop for arranging this. All this insight, Emma, as to what works and what doesn't, and why, will be inavluable to the rest of us as we apply it to our own wips. Thank you so much.

Outstanding stuff, Emma. I've learned more in this detailed deconstruction/potential reconstruction of an actual piece of writing than I have in years of reading general tips and advice.

To others who might wish to post here, I want to make it perfectly clear that my feelings cannot be hurt. Some writers say this and don't actually mean it. I most certainly do mean it. Call it how you see it and don't hold back if you want to pass comment. I believe that negative criticism is the key to genuine self-improvement.

Oh, what fun! I can't wait to get my claws into this. Unfortunately, I'm out all day today with a family emergency. I'll be back Cloudside this evening, by which time I hope more people will have commented. Glad to hear you have a thick skin, Steve. I'm rubbing my hands in anticipation.

'Actually, we have got a couple of beds left tonight. Here are the prices,’

I wonder, Steve, if you considered using a bit of Aussie slang? If this guy is uber-friendly, and catering to backpackers, this is likely, IMO.
As it stands, I don't get any sense of Aussie-ness.

This probe is fascinating! I love the forensics of it.

Fascinating!

That was an eye opening breakdown, my head is whirling! Steve, have to say I enjoyed that little snippet even before your probe :D

Bump. Thump. Gasp. I'm here! *waves wildly at Steve et al*

In advance, I had a concern about Steve being the person we're shredding here. 'But he can write!' was my first thought. And indeed you can. Not only that, but it sounds like you have a good story to tell. That's a lot to have going for you.

Nevertheless, nothing has been written that can't be improved on and that's clear from the amount of feedback Emma has given you on this short extract. This is the kind of polishing that needs to be done on every word - even every space - in your MS before you can consider you have produced a final, polished draft. As your writing skills improve, you'll find you get closer in your first drafts of subsequent books, but you'll still need to critique your writing in this way as part of your final edit.

Yep, it's that hard and it really does take that much time, energy and patience. You didn't think it would be easy, did you? Personally, I think the world would be a better place if more people spent time writing, so I'm dedicated to encouraging people to do so and to hone their skills and keep improving. But if you want your writing to be as good as it can possibly be in the hope of achieving recognition in the form of a deal, then you've got to put in the sweat and the long hours. There are no short cuts in this journey.

Emma's done the detailed stuff so I'll just add some general points. On the course, we take it in turns to lead each week, with the other chipping in with less detail. For the prose microscope in particular, this makes sense, because in other areas, we occasionally disagree with each other. Not often and never by much. When you deconstruct it, it's usually a slightly different angle rather than an outright difference of opinion. But I don't recall us ever not agreeing 100% when it comes to this particular exercise.

Having said that, I'm not convinced you need a greeting before your first line of dialogue as Emma's suggested. I want to make the general point that when you include dialogue it's not essential to have every 'hello' and 'goodbye' etc. But I can see why she's said it in this instance. It does feel like we're launched into the conversation without any sense of build-up. The reason you don't usually need something like a greeting is because we can sense it without hearing the spoken words, but that's not the case here. I suspect that if you take the advice on board relating to conveying the scene, you might end up not needing a greeting after all.

Quite often when you have a decision like this to make, the answer is to think laterally. In other words, not to get bogged down in 'should I include a greeting or not?' but 'what else could I do which would make the question redundant?' If you agree with what's been said here about needing more to show us the fella, and especially to convey his Australian-ness, you could have him calling 'G'day' to you when you walk in. That would sort two problems with just a couple of words in the right place; we'd have a greater sense of the fella and the scene would flow better, with us feeling more like we're there, experiencing it with you.

Overall in this extract, it feels to me like the main thing holding you back is voice. It's not quite there yet, even though this is Steve's voice, telling Steve's story. Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? I think the issue is that you're not quite sure who you're telling the story to. One minute it's like your reader is a mate in the pub, the next it's rather self-conscious and formal, more like a voice you might use in an interview.

At this point in the course, we would already have had the session on voice. Taking that together with the other tutorials and exercises, most people will re-write their extract for the prose microscope on the basis of what they've learnt in previous weeks. You haven't had the benefit of that, so it's brave of you to lay yourself open to this kind of public scrutiny. Voice is the hardest thing to nail if it's not already in place. That's why agents place so much emphasis on it, because most other things can be fixed far more easily. And, believe me, an experienced editor or agent can tell within a glance at a first page whether the voice is in place or not.

I'm sure you know the importance of your opening page, so let's just deconstruct yours a bit with a blunter instrument than Emma's fine tooth comb. She's written lots just about your first sentence. The rest of this opening para is introspection and (sorry!) rather waffly. There's nothing happening here to grab us by the scruff of the neck and ensure we feel compelled to keep reading. That's OK for a first draft; it's far from unusual to over write at the beginning. Think of it as the equivalent of warm-up exercises before a run. (Not that I ever run anywhere, but you get my drift.) Those words were essential for you as the author in order to get yourself going, but they're superfluous for the reader.

You're there with the next para. This is where your story begins. We have the scene (or will have when you fully convey it following Emma's advice) and the decision. We may also have the sense of a pivotal moment, though not as you have done it in the first para, with the punchline being the decision to take the church, which the reader will find surprising. That's the hook that will make us want to read on. Perhaps you could add something before the final line about having the feeling that this was a life-changing decision - without foreshadowing it as you have done. In other words, not looking back with hindsight but evoking the feeling you had at the time that this moment was pivotal.

Hope that's been helpful. Thanks to you, Steve, for agreeing to be savaged in this way. I hope your skin is as thick as you say. And thanks too, to the other people who have commented. Workshopping in this way is very much a part of the success of the course and, as should be obvious, it can be as useful for everyone else as it is for the author.

Well Steve, your extract was put under the microscope, and some illuminating observations were made.

(Maybe it's me, but I did get the impression it was critiquing by numbers [or from a standard template]. Sorry ladies, that's not a criticism per se, but that's how it came across to me. And it's not to say I found the comments any less valuable as an insight - they were exceptional - but critique should also allow Steve more freedom to express himself in the way he tells the story. Now I'm going to get some stick, aren't I? )

Steve, I felt the setting and build up to be perfectly valid - okay you can add in a little more flavour of the place, and get the Aussie guy to drop in an outback comment - but not G'day, please, it's so contrived.

I do support 100% that the dialogue exchange is stilted to the point of not coming across as being natural - it could be a lot less formal, like your last sentence. I agree that was a great line. And well done for submitting your extract; it was entertaining.

Thank you for this. I am going to set aside time later to study in greater detail. :)

"It does feel like we're launched into the conversation without any sense of build-up."

That's why doing this kind of self-editing takes so bloomin' long - because that's what I was getting at, but just provided one solution - a greeting - rather than exploring the problem more widely - thanks for clarifying, Debi.

And it just shows the difference, in any critiquing of your own work or others, between highlighting the problem, and providing a/the solution. The good thing about the online course is that there's time and space and trust (because the forum is private to the group) to explore the problem properly, so each writer can come up with their own solution.

Critiquing by numbers? I don't think so. Not really. The truth is that good writing is astonishing in its variety - so good critiquing needs to tease out all potential for that variety. But then of course you do find that some techniques and approaches work. Others don't. So inevitably - and rightly - all editorial approaches end up with a lot in common.

The work I'm writing today (slightly weird crime) is very different from the rather old-fashioned stuff I wrote before, so the voice feels very different. But the way I think about it editorially? Pretty much the same.

Harry:
But then of course you do find that some techniques and approaches work. Others don't. So inevitably - and rightly - all editorial approaches end up with a lot in common.

This seems to contradict itself. And I can't understand a word of it. An explanation in simple language would be most useful.

It seems to me that Emma wasn't critiquing Steve's writing. She was editing it, to show him how to self-edit. (As indicated by the title of this post - 'Self-editing your novel'.) She was doing what any professional copy editor would do when presented with a manuscript - go through it sentence by sentence, to see if each sentence earns its keep, makes sense, is relevant, continues the mood of the piece or takes us out of it, etc. Copy editing is a dissection of a piece of writing.

Now that there is input from Emma, Debi and several of you, I am going to re-write the opening. My intention is to incorporate as much as possible of what has been put forward with a starting point of it being everything. I will re-post the outcome here, and when I say re-write, I mean my humble fumble of an effort.

Steve

Footprints…I ran the activities there – beach barbecues, Bondi coastal tours, quizzes, wine and cheese, movie marathons, bar crawls in the Cross – for six months (July 2007 – January 2008). I landed the role at almost the exact time the name changed to West End. So I hope I can be of use…

Market – when I read your blurb, my first thought was: male version of Eat Pray Love. I may be way off. I may also be way off in saying I think publishers would adore this concept. As Debi says, sounds like a good story – a splendid change from 90% of travel books which, as you must know, are either penned by illiterate celebs or cruise onto shelves thanks to ‘wacky’ hooks e.g. pogo jumping across Cairo to escape stoned carnivorous camels who have the munchies or backstroking across the Atlantic after a gallon of absinthe and slashing hammerheads’ throats with snorkels so you can roast and devour them upon arriving at NYC's Hard Rock Café. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if Bryson or Paul Theroux started today, they might not even get published…I hope I am wrong.

Emma’s right – evoke the unstable situation. And ‘unstable’ is the right word – most hostels are pure filth, pure chaos, roaches and bed bugs. For most young grads and backpackers, Sydney isn’t a two-week Club 18 to 30 trip of cinnamon After Shocks or moonlit ocean sex – instead, one-year work-visa licences rock-star rebels to plunge into Sambuca-fuelled fuck-fests, each day blends into the next. Most, except courteous Asians, screw shamelessly in six-bed dorms. Details reflect this bubble of hedonism – the shrivelled joint butts wreathing the hostel doorstep; the fact that across the street, between a Thai deli and locksmith, was a popular brothel – The Wild Orchid ($120 for full service/herpes, $90 for a massage/handjob combo). Almost every day, spliff-sucking, latex-miniskirted Korean hookers posed in the doorway, shrieking prices at homeless Aussies – in frayed jeans, torn Yankees caps – sipping Victoria Bitter by a shelter. The splintered door of the Penthouse (my staff bedroom) was marked ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE MUST ABANDON CONDOMS, and inside, wrinkled pages of a special-edition, Concorde-themed porno – CHICKS IN TIES GET FUCKED IN THE SKIES – covered most of the windows.

Too far, maybe – but that’s how I’d tackle it.

Last thing: if you want to represent hostels faithfully, don’t Oz it up too much, but definitely give a flavour. As you must know, at least 85% of backpackers in Sydney hostels are English or Irish – this often includes hostel staff. Rest are mostly Yanks, Canadians, Europeans. Hope that helps.

Ah CM, now we're getting to the crux of realism. Steve should tell it as it is and stop faffing around with politeness that won't offend anyone. It may not attract agents because publishers are scared stiff to rock the PC boat - but there's always the self-publishing route.

I was a man with a plan, and the plan was a van. Not blessed with the fortune of Mr. Luckypants, who might have some crusty dude offer him a van in desperate exchange for a piddly packet of airline peanuts, I had an immediate and more conventional pre-plan.

22,814 miles from my bed in Surrey, and I was, well, prowling for another bed. Practical base camp establishment first, sleepless adventure second. Ideally, it would be one as welcoming and comfortable as the bed that had served me so well for years, but more likely it would be a creaky one with lumps and suspect yellow staining.

The quantity of Australian dollars stashed somewhere in my rucksack dictated my location. My location was at least a mile away in any direction from anything that could be described as a posh bit of downtown Sydney. Local shop windows displayed ranks of slowly rotating chickens and, possibly, roasted ducks. Plastic-porcelain cats waved mechanical paws at me from beneath signs reading things like Cheap-Cheap Masage Palror. But the questionable authenticity was interspersed with doorways wafting out a head-whirling mix of stale Guinness from the night before and sterilising bleach from cleaners’ mop buckets. That’s right, I was in Chirish Town.

Within vomiting distance of pubs with names like Scruffy Murphy’s and Paddy O’Connor’s, was The Maze Hostel. Directly opposite was Footprints, West End. Both lacked the palatial facade of establishments that could boast stars after their names, but I was in some kind of warped heaven. This was more me than polished silver wear and room service with a bowtie. Before the street got so packed I’d be wedged tight in thirty-degree heat all day, I dived for cover into Footprints.

‘G’day. Howya goin’?’ welcomed the young fella standing hunched behind a long, curving reception desk.

‘Think I’m in the wrong country,’ I joshed, nodding to the Hawaiian beach scene featured on his T-shirt. ‘I know you’ll be packed to bursting tonight, but I thought I’d come in and get your prices anyway.’

‘Actually, we have got a couple of beds left. Here’s what it’ll cost ya.’ He whisked a faded photocopy onto the counter, and pinpointed two table-rows with the gnarly end of a Biro. ‘There’s one in a four-bed dorm, and one in the church.’

I got the feeling he always said this, just to get visitors intrigued. ‘What’s the church?’ I enquired, playing along.

‘That’s our 26-bed dorm, and it’s $18 a night. The four-bed dorm’s $22, but we’re missing a key for that at the mo, so I guess we can let yer have it for the same price. The four-bed is what most’d prefer: do you want that one?’

‘Nah,’ I replied. ‘I’m a sociable bloke. Stick me in the church.’

OK, quickly rushed-out more for the sake of timely continuity, above is an attempt to follow all of the steering detailed up until that point. I actively encourage slatings of greater venom.

Captain Morgan - you have done precisely the same job at precisely the same place. Ents Man. at Footprints. I still have and wear the 'CREW' T-shirt. I was there and back again for short bursts between March 2006 and an unknown month in 2008. We will know some of the same characters, for sure. You've nailed it in your description.

I'm also compelled to add that Bryson's 'In a sunburned Country' was in every back-packers sack down under. As it were. Much as I appreciate other works of his and hold him in the highest regard, that particular book was so far off the mark that it was the actual inspiration for me to write this - my first effort at a book - to fill the gaping void that existed in that vast market for appropriate literature.

Steve, that's really jumping off the page, now, and it's so different. (And you've found a research partner!). I'm so glad people have found this illuminating, and most of all that Steve has taken the things I've said and run so far with them so quickly. And thank you too, Steve, for bothering to do that, to demonstrate what a close self-edit can lead to. You've really taken my points and worked out your own answers.

But as Spangles and Harry have suggested, the point of an exercise like this isn't really to try to improve a particular piece - if it were, our Self-Editing course would only be improving the pieces that were actually posted on the forum. It's a demo of the kind of close work that will train your eye/ear/mind to get it more right more often, to spot more quickly when it's not working, and to know better and more quickly what to do about it.

It won't just help you learn to do a necessary stage of the process, it will make you a better writer overall. Of course it's useful to get feedback from fellow writers, tutors, perhaps even an editorial report, but anyone who consistently depends on someone else to work at this level of detail on their writing isn't ever going to become a better writer.

That's why the Self-Editing course is structured as it is: we start by sorting out the big stuff, and only then get close in to see how the big stuff plays out at the level of words and sentences. So I was working with what Steve had put on the page, and making suggestions of how it could be stronger and more vivid, drawing the reader in more quickly into a setting which is establishing itself. But look what's happened here! Sometimes a close edit will throw up a big question: here, it's about how much Narrator-Steve should or shouldn't step back from the voice and experience of Character-Steve through the book as a whole. This is perhaps THE central question in life-writing (though it's relevant to fiction too: the relationship of narrator to characters), and I'm very interested that your re-worked piece has come out so very different, Steve.

I blogged about the question of the different kinds of work which come under the heading of revising-and-editing, which might interest people, and this question of small stuff leading back to big stuff came up in the comments.

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/03/revising-and-editing-building-the-orient-express.html

Steve - this rework definitely has a 'voice' of its own...I saw where you were and who you were much more clearly. Well done for taking the suggestions on board and turning out something so effective. (And thanks for letting us all see the process...)

Wow! Bravo, Steve. This version is packed with sensory detail to carry us on this journey with you. Lots more 'showing' and a clear voice both enable us to feel the experience in the same way that it felt for you at the time. Nice added touch that you and Cap'n have so few degrees of separation too.

My favorite bit: Within vomiting distance of pubs with names like Scruffy Murphy’s and Paddy O’Connor’s, was The Maze Hostel. Fabulous word economy, using few words to convey so much.

So now I have a question for you. How do you feel about this version, compared to the one we ripped to shreds gave constructive feedback on?

Steve, that's great. I used to read a lot of travel lit. and longed for writing as immediate as your revision. Sad to say much of what I read was boring, and I usually ended up abandoning the book.
I just have one suggestion: if it was mine, I wouldn't use the word 'quantity' as in dollars. Quantity hints at a substantial amount; I would use a word like 'paucity'.

Overall, I think Emma's comment about eye/ear/mind training is crucial, and the constructive shredding you've had here has been great for everyone. I certainly appreciated it.