No, it’s not a mash-up where Whorf mar­ries Saskia Brandt and Data downs­izes to a com­puter the size of a credit card. This post com­prises a thought or two on the pro­cess behind what falls under the label ‘Coming to America’ — or, more accur­ately, work­ing with my American agent on the edi­tion of Déjà Vu that we’ll sub­mit to pub­lish­ers over the next few months.

Non-writers — and a few writers at the begin­ning of their career — tend to feel that their work is in final draft early on. Most exper­i­enced writers will agree that the edit­ing pro­cess rep­res­ents as much work, if not more, as those early drafts that seemed fin­ished. The pro­cess is a enjoy­able one because the changes take the book, inch by inch, towards the best it can be.

So, des­pite the flat­ter­ing Amazon reviews, I’m keen to take another look at Déjà Vu and tweak it inline with the com­ments given to me by my agent, Katherine.

I often think of the writ­ing pro­cess as being like pro­du­cing a film, which is odd given that I have no exper­i­ence of film pro­duc­tion. But the first draft is like a rough cut: the mater­ial exists in ugly, clumsy but sub­stant­ive form. Later drafts are like film edits: boil­ing down the bulk, com­press­ing and adding mean­ing. The com­ments of the agent are akin to those of a pro­du­cer — ‘Should this dis­solve be a jump cut?’ — and intel­li­gib­il­ity — ‘Why not insert a brief scene where Bob reveals a per­sonal secret to Jane?’

As you might expect, Katherine made clear that I’m free to ignore all her com­ments, but I haven’t because they are good ones. In this new draft, I’ve made Saskia’s hybrid mind clearer to the reader; filled in some plot blanks that read­ers often don’t under­stand on their own; and, with min­imal touches, I’ve tried to stop the reader boun­cing out of the story on account of unne­ces­sary com­plex­ity or unex­plained happenings.

The trick, of course, is to leave the good stuff untouched and improve the bits that are just about working.

Here’s one example. In the cur­rent draft, Saskia’s phys­ical appear­ance is not described expli­citly. Katherine thought that a phys­ical descrip­tion early on in the book was needed. Why didn’t I include one? Well, I hate authory bits where the reader is told about a char­ac­ter. I want these descrip­tions to serve the story too.

Excerpt from the cur­rent edi­tion of Déjà Vu:

Ghost-touched by the air con­di­tion­ing, her sweat dried cold. She entered the lift, which rose on a pis­ton and opened high in the build­ing. Her office was one among dozens on the floor. Its plaque read: Frau Kommissarin Brandt. She licked her thumb and squeaked away a plastic shav­ing from the newly carved B.

Excerpt from the unpub­lished, newer draft:

…She licked her thumb and squeaked away a plastic shav­ing from the newly carved B. There was a pic­ture along­side the name. It showed a ser­i­ous, beau­ti­ful woman in her late twen­ties. No make-up. No ear­ring in the exposed, left ear. Many pho­to­graphs had been taken and Saskia liked this one the least. As always, she scowled at her­self before open­ing the door.

I’m fairly happy with this descrip­tion. It is plaus­ible that Saskia would see this pic­ture; it’s still vague, but gives enough for the reader to ima­gine her appear­ance; and it con­tains her reac­tion to it, which tells the reader some­thing about her char­ac­ter. With luck, I’ve avoided this kind of thing [from Dan Brown’s angels and Demons]:

Although not overly hand­some in a clas­sical sense, the forty-five-year-old Langdon had what his female referred to as an ‘eru­dite’ appeal …Langdon still had the body o a swim­mer, a toned, six-foot physique that he vigil­antly main­tained with fifty laps a day in the uni­ver­sity pool.

If I ever write like this, shoot me. Shoot me vigilantly.