Using my unreleased manuscript An Angel On Her Shoulder, I am showing you my techniques for reworking a story into a more readable, more enjoyable piece. It’s 45+ lessons in about 45 days. (To start at Chapter 1, click HERE.)

 

Then give me your thoughts in the comment section.

Do Overs

Often in a first draft, we are rambling, trying to figure out what we want to say as we’re writing. Writers like that need to trim stuff later.

Other times we know what we want to say, and say it too fast. Those writers usually need to go back and flesh things out.

I tend to ramble.

Oh, you knew that?

Here, in this chapter,

we’ll see the various iterations of a few paragraphs as I review them for brevity. It’s an art, not a science, but there are methods at work.

I want to convey my message in as few words as possible because I want Doug to get on his journey. You’ll see it through this chapter (and others) where relatively large sections are deleted from the original. It’s not that the original stuff wasn’t good…

Trimming is like having a second helping of Thanksgiving dinner. You definitely select only the best stuff

without the figurative bulimia.

Read on, and I’ll see you at the bottom.

 

---

Chapter 36 “FINAL”

When the phone rang, I felt like I’d just closed my eyes and laid down to go to sleep. I cracked open an eyelid and peered at the clock.

8am.

It didn’t look like 8am in the bedroom. Very little light crept in around the window shades. Not 8am’s worth.

The howling winds reminded me again. Clouds from the storm were keeping things dark.

I reached over and picked up the phone. Tyree’s number on the caller ID snapped me awake. I sat up and pressed the button. “Hey, Tyree, hang on one sec.”

Rolling out of bed, I slinked to the door. Mallory lay slumbering in our bed, with Sparkles on one side of her and Sophie on the other.

I sighed. Sophie still had one arm thrown over her sleeping mother. They’d hugged all night.

The rushing winds would wake everyone soon enough, but their long night didn’t need to be shortened by my phone conversation. I crept out of the room and down the stairs in search of a better place to talk. My office tended to bounce conversations right up the stairs, so that was out. The living room was obviously a bad choice for private conversation after last night, and the garage was too . . . garagey. And it’d be noisy in this wind.

I went into the pantry. With boxes of pasta protecting my back and an old cheese slicer in front of me, I had a quiet bunker where I could speak freely to Tyree—without being overheard and causing another situation like we’d had last night.

I put the phone to my ear. “Sorry for the delay. I didn’t want to wake everybody up.”

“No problem, Doug. I’ll get right to it. I have a question for you.”

“I need to ask you something first.” I had been thinking about the voodoo priestess, and what I should or shouldn’t tell Tyree about her. “I have a bill that’s coming due. I met with a voodoo priestess, and I need to pay her a favor or my luck will run bad. This would be a really bad time for that to happen.”

“No kidding. When the hell did you meet with a voodoo priestess, anyway?”

“Right after I met with you. The next day.”

“Okay. What do you owe her?”

“I don’t know. A favor. Something good.”

“That could be a lot of things.” Tyree was quiet for a moment. “I probably have something here you use.”

I shifted on my feet. “Whatever you have, it’s gotta be pretty good.”

“I’d say a relic cross fits that description. You can pick it up when you come over.”

“It’s a what?”

“A relic cross,” he repeated. “A cross with a holy relic in the middle of it. This one is a big, heavy sucker. White, with a glass bead in the center. That holds a small patch of cloth with a tiny little sliver on it.”

I knew about relics from the nuns. The patch of material came from a larger piece that touched a saint—alive or not. Creepy, to think of church elders rubbing old bones with a sheet. The sliver might be a part of a crucifixion cross or a shaving from a bone.

I slid to the pantry floor and sat on the cold tiles. “Where did you get something like that?”

“Don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answers to.”

“How much did you pay for it?” A twinge of nerves shot through me. “It’s not stolen, is it?”

“Calm down. It was a gift. You can’t buy these things, and you can’t sell them. But it might make a formidable tool for us to use against the dark angel.”

Tool?

I rubbed the back of my neck, my angst and frustration growing. “Speaking of . . . that, why is it waiting? Why doesn’t it just come do whatever it’s going to do?”

“You can’t look at this just from our perspective,” Tyree explained. “You have to view it differently. Time is relative. Think of yourself in a room. On one side, there’s one of those giant tortoises. It’s huge, like maybe four feet long. On the other side is a tiny little fruit fly that’s buzzing around.

“When you look at the tortoise, he seems like he’s moving very slowly. When you look at the fly, it’s moving very fast – compared to you.

I sat on the cold tile floor, the phone pressed to my ear, absorbing every word.

“Now, if the tortoise looks at you, he sees you moving really fast—like the way to fly looks to you. Meanwhile, the fly probably moves so fast, the tortoise can’t even perceive it.

“When the fly looks at you, he sees a tortoise. When the fly looks at tortoise, it moves so glacially slow, it might as well be a rock from the fly’s viewpoint. He probably can’t see that it moves at all. To the tortoise, the fly moves at the speed of light, if he can even fathom it at all.

“All three of you—the fly, you, and the tortoise—are in the same room at the same time. But obviously, time is very, very different to each of you. So what might count as just one day to the tortoise, might be a year to the fly. Get it?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I think so.” It was a lot to take in.

“That’s how it could work with these dark angels. What is a year to us might only be a day to them. You can’t expect things to happen on your time table. Things are working on their time table.” He paused, clearing his throat. “But I have a question for you. Last night, you mentioned dreams. Recurring dreams, I think you said.”

I stretched my legs out and leaned against the shelves. “Uh, yeah, that’s right.”

“What can you tell me about that?”

“Well.” I took a deep breath. “I had a nightmare about lions in the woods. One by one, three different lions walked past me and ripped at this package.  But it wasn’t a package. When the fourth lion showed up, the package . . . was a child. Sophie.” I swallowed hard. Just thinking about the dream again made me uneasy. “Needless to say, it was a terrible nightmare.”

“Needless to say.” Tyree quietly agreed.

“In the morning, I told Mallory about it. She’d been having the same dream.”

“Wow.”

“She said she didn’t tell it to me on purpose.”

“I bet. It caught my ear when you mentioned dreams last night, but I didn’t want to get into it then. A dream can be important, some kind of indicator. But if both of you are having the same dream, that’s no coincidence. That’s a sign.”

I wiped my hand across my forehead, my stomach tightening. “Of what?”

“There were three lions that didn’t really do much to . . . the package, right?”

“Right.” I put a hand on the cold tile and shifted my weight.

“And there were three tragedies, as you guys call them. Now, they were all bad, I’m not saying they weren’t. You got a good scare each time—but you walked away from them, right?”

“I guess so, yeah . . .” I huffed. “Where are you going with this?”

“It was the fourth lion that ripped up the package.” Tyree said. “A fourth tragedy.”

My pulse quickened. I sat up, pressing the phone to my ear.

“Another event is coming. We’ve got a hurricane going on. It’s starting to look like a coalescence of events. All that chaos—the severe weather—would make a good cover. Things have escalated with each tragedy.”

I leaned forward. “And?”

“And the next one will be bigger. It will be fatal.”

My mind was a blur, my pulse racing. There were a million reasons to get I the car and go to Atlanta right now, and there were a million reasons not to.

I sat on the floor, panting.

At least Atlanta didn’t have a hurricane, and in a few days we would—maybe in less than a few days. If that was the being’s cover, that could be eliminated from the equation. That might save us all.

“Okay, that’s it.” I took a deep breath, nodding. “We’re heading out tomorrow morning. First thing. Maybe sooner. To Atlanta.”

“I think that’s a really good idea.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and glanced at the time. “We should be on the road by, say 10am.”

“10am?” Tyree snorted. “That’s first thing?”

I frowned. “I have a wife and kid, so yeah, 10am. Then we’ll be traveling in broad daylight and on the highway before the roads get closed. That all sounds pretty good to me.” I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my forehead. “If everything goes well, we should be checking in to the Peachtree hotel in downtown Atlanta around 6pm.”

“And, you’re still coming to me at noon today at my office.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. See you then.”

I hung up. I had been in the pantry for quite a while. Now it was time to see who else was up and around. I needed to get things moving without creating a panic.

The living room was empty. Even Sparkles hadn’t come down yet. That meant everyone was still asleep and hadn’t heard any of what Tyree and I had discussed.

Good.

I grabbed the remote and turned on the weather channel. Maybe we should evacuate right now. I glanced at the time on the phone again. I had to meet Tyree in a few hours. Maybe I should pack everybody into the car and meet him, then keep on going to Atlanta.

---

Original Chapter 36, An Angel On Her Shoulder

 

I never sleep this late.

It took a long time to fall asleep, but I finally did. When the phone rang at 8am, it felt like I’d just closed my eyes.

8am. That’s late, for me.

But if you toss and turn until 4am, 8am comes pretty early. Normally, if I was having trouble sleeping, I’d go down to the couch and watch TV until I got tired again and fell asleep. But I’d been doing that too much lately, and it seemed better to stay upstairs in bed with Michele, even if I was just staring at the ceiling. I felt like she would sleep better if she knew I was there, and that was as important as anything right now.

It didn’t look like morning, though. There was very little light creeping in around the bedroom window shades. Not 8am’s worth. The rain clouds and from the storm made it stay dark out. That’s probably why I slept so late.

Good. I needed it.

Since it wasn’t bright out, that meant Savvy would probably sleep late, too – if I didn’t wake her by letting the phone ring too many times, or talk too loudly after I answered it.

It was Tyree. I was still drowsy, but seeing his number on the caller ID brought me around quickly. Maybe he found something useful during his research last night. I grabbed the phone.

 

“Hey, Tyree,” I said quickly. “Hang on while I get to someplace where I can talk.”

I eased down the stairs. Michele would just roll over and go back to sleep after I answered the phone. She could probably have slept right through the conversation if I’d stayed there in bed chatting with Tyree. Savvy was a different story. If she heard Michele or me talking, she would instantly wake up – she always wants to be part of the action. So I needed to find someplace that was virtually soundproof.

My office was directly under Savvy’s bedroom; talking in there would wake her faster than anything. Talking outside was usually the best bet. I walked to the front door. It was raining out, and the wind was blowing water everywhere; I’d get wet, and I wouldn’t be able to hear. But there was one place in the house that was pretty soundproof.

So I went into the pantry.

With boxes of pasta protecting my back, and an old cheese slicer in front of me, I had a quiet enough bunker where I could speak freely.

“Tyree, sorry for the delay. I wanted to find a place to talk and not wake up everybody in the house.”

“No problem, Dan” he said. “I’ll get right to it. I have a question for you.”

I interrupted him. “I need to ask you something first, Tyree,”

I had been thinking about the voodoo priestess. I hadn’t paid her with a favor yet, and I wondered if maybe things were getting worse because of it. Funny how you can go all your life not thinking about voodoo, and then you meet a practitioner and now it’s forefront in your mind.

“I have a favor that’s coming due, Tyree,” I said. “I met with a voodoo priestess, and she needs a favor paid to her by me or my luck will run bad. This would be a really bad time for that to happen.”

“No kidding,” Tyree said. “I don’t pretend to know how all of that works, but most religions have a lot of overlap. Look at the similarities, not the differences. That gets me in hot water at work sometimes, but it’s the right way to view things. Whatever luck you think you’ve been having, you need as much good luck as you can get right now. When the hell did you meet with a voodoo priestess, anyway?”

“Right after I met with you. The next day.”

“What do you owe her?”

“I don’t know. A favor. Something good.”

“That could be a lot of things,” Tyree said. He thought for a minute. “I probably have something here at my office that you can use to pay her with.” He looked at a big white cross on his desk. It was made of wood and it had a glass bead in the center. Inside the bead there was a small patch of cloth, and a tiny sliver of something.

“Whatever you have, it’s gotta be pretty good.” I said.

Tyree picked up the large white cross. “This is pretty good. It’s a relic cross. You can pick it up when you come over here at noon.”

“It’s a what?” I asked.

“A relic cross,” he repeated. “A cross with a holy relic in the middle of it.”

“Where did you get something like that?” I asked.

“Don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answers to,” Tyree joked, setting the cross back down on his desk.

“How much did you pay for it?” I asked. “It’s not stolen, is it?”

“Calm down,” he said. “You can’t buy these things, and you can’t sell them. It was a gift. But it might make a formidable tool for us to use against the dark angel.”

 

He had avoided calling it a weapon, but there was no doubt that a fight was looming on the horizon.

“Speaking of that, why is it waiting? Why not just do it now?” I was frustrated. “Why wait for the birthday, or close to it?”

“You can’t look at this just from our perspective,” Tyree explained. “You have to view it differently. Time is relative.”

“Think of yourself in a room,” he continued. “On one side, there’s one of those giant tortoises. It’s huge, like maybe four feet long. On the other side is a tiny little fruit fly that’s buzzing around.

“When you look at the tortoise, he seems like he’s moving very slowly. When you look at the fly, it’s moving very fast – compared to you.

“Now, if the tortoise looks at you, he sees you moving really fast; like the way to fly looks to you. Meanwhile, the fly probably moves so fast, the tortoise can’t even perceive it.

“When the fly looks at you, he sees a tortoise. When the fly looks at tortoise, it moves so glacially slow, it might as well be a rock from the fly’s viewpoint. He probably can’t see that it moves at all. To the tortoise, the fly moves at the speed of light, if he can even fathom it at all.

“All three of you; the fly, you, and the tortoise, are in the same room on the same day at the same time. But obviously, time is very, very different to each of you. So what might count as just one day to the tortoise, might be a years to the fly.

“That’s how it could work with these dark angels. What is a year to us might only be a day to them.

“You can’t expect things to happen on your time table. Things are working on their time table.

“But I have a question for you. Last night, you mentioned dreams. Recurring dreams, I think you said.”

I thought for a moment. “Uh, yeah, that’s right.”

“What can you tell me about that?” Tyree asked.

“Well,” I began, taking a deep breath. “I had a dream, a nightmare, about lions walking past me in the woods. One by one, three different lions walked past me and went over to this package. One would rip at it a little, then the next one would come and push it away, and then it would start ripping at the package.  But it wasn’t a package. In the dream, it looked like a package, but then a fourth lion showed up, and when he ripped into the package, I could see what it was.”

“It was a child, not a package,” I took another big breath “It was our daughter the lions were ripping at. Savvy. I could hear her screaming in the dream…” Just thinking about the dream again made me uneasy. “Needless to say, it was a terrible nightmare.”

“Needless to say,” Tyree quietly agreed.

“Then in the morning, I told Michele about it. About the dream.”

“How’d she take it?”

“She had been having the same dream.” I said, shifting my weight on the cold tile floor. “She kind of freaked out, a little.”

“Wow, I bet. I’d have freaked out more than a little.” Tyree offered.

“The strange thing was, I thought that Michele must have told me about it, because she said she had been having the same dream for a while. So I figured she must have told it to me, and that’s why I had the dream. But she didn’t.”

“She didn’t?” Tyree reiterated.

“No. She said she had purposely kept it from me” I said. “So I was kind of shocked to learn that we were both having the same dream. That was bizarre, you know? An eye opener.”

“I can imagine,” agreed Tyree. “In fact, it caught my ear when you mentioned dreams last night. I didn’t want to get into it then, but it’s part of why I’m calling. Dreams are a pretty good indicator, sometimes. Especially if both of you are having the same dream. That’s no coincidence. I think it’s like a sign.”

“A sign?” I asked. “Of what?”

Tyree hesitated. “There were three lions that didn’t really do much to… the package, right?”

“Right…” I answered cautiously. I shifting my weight from one bare foot to the other.

“There were three tragedies, as you guys call them,” Tyree went on. “The winery wreck, the car fire, the doctor’s diagnosis of the heart condition. You got a good scare each time, but you walked away from them, right?”

“I guess so, yeah…” I said. “Where are you going with this?”

“It was the fourth lion that ripped up the package.” Tyree said. “A fourth tragedy, Dan.”

Tyree cleared his throat. “Another event is coming,” he continued. “And I think it’s coming soon. Your daughter’s birthday is coming up; that’s when you told me that these things start to happen. Meanwhile, we’ve got a hurricane going on; it’s starting to look like a coalescence of events.” Then he summed it up. “I think you guys are running out of time!”

That was a blow. I felt sick to my stomach. It was all adding up too quickly for me. “So what the hell do we do?”

“I think you’re already doing some of it,” Tyree said. “But you need to shorten your schedule.”

“Good grief…” I said, overwhelmed. The wheels were turning so quickly. “I, I’m not ready. I need to do something!”

“Now stay with me for a minute,” Tyree advised. “You’re doing the right things. You’re making preparations and you’re getting information. Those are important steps. What we do now, between now and whenever they come for you, will make a big difference.”

Crap, I needed to be in full tilt mode.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Tyree cautioned, “but we do have some time.”

“How much do you think we have?”

“I’d guess that the attack will come with the hurricane or close to her birthday. In all that chaos, the severe weather, that would make a good cover. That’s what I’d do. But that’s just a guess. The prior attacks have come around the birthday right? And each year it’s gotten worse, so you need to think about that and prepare yourself.”

“I’m not saying this to scare you, okay?” Tyree went on. “The dark angel wanted to take you out, back at the winery. It was a fluke that it didn’t happen, but in either case the next attack will happen. Things escalated each time, from a hospital, to a car fire that you barely escaped, to sending a car across a parking lot to smash into you. You would have been killed then. So this next one, whatever it is, it will be bigger and it’s going to be fatal.”

“Are you guys planning on evacuating?” Tyree asked.

“We’re going to be heading out tomorrow,” I said. “First thing. Maybe sooner. To Atlanta.”

“Okay. That’s probably a good idea.”

“Atlanta has always been our planned rendezvous spot if there was some sort of disaster. So tomorrow, I’ll get everybody up and out. We should be on the road by, say 10am.”

Tyree laughed. “That’s first thing? 10am?”

“For us, yeah. I’ll be ready at 6am, but I have a wife and kid, so 10am. We should be checking in to the Peachtree hotel in downtown Atlanta by 6pm, depending on the weather.

“And, I’m still meeting you at noon today at your office,” I added.

“Okay.”

I hung up. I had been standing I the pantry for quite a while, talking on my cell phone. Now it was time to see who else was up and around. I needed to get things moving without creating a panic. Michele hadn’t been completely convinced to evacuate, but after hearing what Tyree said about the lion dream, she would be on board.

I’d have time after meeting with Tyree to load the gas cans and suitcases into the car, and a small cooler full of sodas and bottled water for the trip. If we ate first, we could make a fast food stop on the road and eat dinner in Atlanta.

Weather permitting.

I turned on the weather channel to see what the latest update on the hurricane was.

But in the back of my head echoed Tyree’s warning:

I think you guys are running out of time.

---

ANALYSIS

I want a grabby opening and this one just isn’t super grabby. Granted, a phone call is a little interesting – we will want to know who it is; waking up is pretty dull, really, but

1. We can change the opening of the chapter later if we think of something better.
2. Maybe the MC bolts awake from the phone ringing.

Either way, we HAVE to get up and running asap in this – and every – chapter, just as we usually want to end each one with a cliffhanger.

but

It’s not necessary to have a grabber or cliffhanger every time!

It may not even be desirable to open every chapter with a grabber or close every chapter with a cliffhanger. Sometimes it’s not possible. But do it when you can, which is most of the time, realizing that if EVERY one has them, it might actually start to lessen the effect.

Roller coaster. Gotta have a valley here and there.

Okay.

Below are some passages that I redid, showing the times I reviewed it. Usually I give a section one real “do-over,” but occasionally I need to tighten something up. The action scenes and drama scenes work pretty well. A scene that transitions, or sets something else up, those have to be as tight – brief without appearing rough – as possible.

These will be a little dull to read, but I tried to show a few examples to highlight what I was changing and why.

I thought the opening lacked punch, so I took out the narrative and started in with the best question I could: why was it hard to sleep? Not great, but good enough. I mean, Doug was sleeping. Not a lot you can do with that.

What’s the point of the chapter?

To have Tyree give Doug some information, and if he is calling first thing in the morning, it might be important. Remember, Tyree said he was going home to do some research. Book readers could turn a page and remember that, so it might play a little differently for them.

Here are the changes:

1. I never sleep this late. It took a long time to fall asleep, but I finally did. When the phone rang at 8am, it felt like I’d just closed my eyes.

2. It took a long time to fall asleep, but I finally did. When the phone rang at 8am, it felt like I’d just closed my eyes.

3. When the phone rang at 8am, I felt like I’d just closed my eyes. I reached for the phone and cracked open one eye and peered at the window.
4. When the phone rang at 8am, I felt like I’d just closed my eyes. Reaching for the phone, I cracked open one eye and peered at the window.

 

It’s “early” and he doesn’t want to wake anybody else, so he has to answer quickly but also notice what’s around him: the wind (minor, but you’d notice if it was howling when you first woke up) and who’s still asleep – and still in bed with him.

In the original, Sophie wasn’t in the master bedroom, but it seemed like Mallory might let their daughter sleep with the parents that night, so that’s where they all are – and that’s why Doug wants to answer quickly and get out of the room, so as not to wake them.

That’s another subtle way to say things are off. At four years old, Sophie wouldn’t normally be in their bed. Therefore, Mallory is still unnerved.

Another Example:

“A relic cross,” he repeated. “A cross with a holy relic in the middle of it. This one is a big white sucker, made of wood and with a glass bead in the center. Inside that bead is a small patch of cloth with a tiny little sliver on it.”

I knew about relics from the nuns. The patch of cloth would have been cut from a larger piece that was known to have touched the body of one of the saints—in life or in death. Creepy, to think of people prying open caskets and rubbing old bones with a sheet, but they used to. The sliver might be a part of the cross St. Peter was crucified on or possibly a shaving from a bone. Allegedly.

I didn’t want to know. “Where did you get something like that?”

becomes

“A relic cross,” he repeated. “A cross with a holy relic in the middle of it. This one is a big white sucker, made of wood and with a glass bead in the center. Inside that bead is a small patch of cloth with a tiny little sliver on it.”

I knew about relics from the nuns. The patch of material (eliminates cloth echo) came from (shorter) a larger piece that touched a saint—alive or not. Creepy, to think of church elders (makes it more legit sounding) rubbing old bones with a sheet. The sliver might be a part of a crucifixion cross or a shaving from a bone.

(brevity:) “Where did you get something like that?”

and that becomes

“A relic cross,” he repeated. “A cross with a holy relic in the middle of it. This one is a big, heavy sucker. White, with a glass bead in the center. That holds a small patch of cloth with a tiny little sliver on it.” (tightened, to convey the information in as few words as possible)

I knew about relics from the nuns. The patch of material (eliminates cloth echo) came from (shorter) a larger piece that touched a saint—alive or not. Creepy, to think of church elders (makes it more legit sounding) rubbing old bones with a sheet. The sliver might be a part of a crucifixion cross or a shaving from a bone.

(brevity) “Where did you get something like that?”

(This is stuff you might recommend to a critique partner when you are reviewing their story.)

ANOTHER example, trimmed for brevity

(We all know the dream; Doug needs to tell it to Tyree in as few words as possible because otherwise it’s boring to readers.)

“Well.” I took a deep breath. “I had a nightmare about lions in the woods. One by one, three different lions walked past me and ripped at this package.  But it wasn’t a package. When the fourth lion showed up, it . . . was a child. Sophie.” Just thinking about the dream again made me uneasy. “Needless to say, it was a terrible nightmare.”

That’s pretty good. It tells Tyree the basics and readers will be grateful for not going through it all again.

Also, you could do this:

I related the lion dream to him.

That works, too.

Oh, and if you’re scoring along at home, I’m trying to make the chapters in this section of the book shorter to add to the fast pace I want the reader to feel now. These are closer to 2000 words; in other sections of the book, the chapters were closer to 3000.

Now:

Let me have your comments. The next chapters will post tomorrow but they will ALL come down shortly after February 15, so don’t dawdle!

You are readers, too. Your input will shape the final product. Be honest.

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Dan Alatorre is the author of several bestsellers and the amazingly great sci fi action thriller “The Navigators.” Click HERE to get your copy of The Navigators – $2.99 or FREE on Kindle Unlimited!

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