Oh, Now I Made it Worse: When Editing Goes Astray

Last week I talked about ambiguous pronouns, and there was a comment about one of my examples. In trying to fix that ambiguity, I made the whole passage awkward. This is the perfect example to help illustrate what I call revision smudge. The icky stuff that can get left behind when we edit one thing and it changes something else.

Here’s the original text:
Bob and Gary ran for the house, zombies crashing through the woods behind them.

"Get to the car!" Bob screamed, reloading the shotgun while Gary dug into his pockets for the keys. Bob tripped and went flying, slamming against the dirt with a grunt.

The comment was that “his pockets” could refer to Gary or Bob. Which it technically could, so I edited the example to read like this:

Bob and Gary ran for the house, zombies crashing through the woods behind them.

"Get to the car!" Bob screamed, reloading the shotgun.

Gary dug into his pockets for the keys, hands shaking. Bob stumbled and went flying, slamming against the dirt with a grunt.

Moving Gary to his own line fixes the pronoun, but now the "Bob stumbled" part feels tacked on there at the end. Originally, it was part of Bob’s passage, so it made sense that Bob tripped as he was reloading the shotgun. Now, it reads awkwardly.

Something like this can easily be missed when we’re editing. There was nothing “wrong’ with it, so to us it reads fine unless we’re really looking at it.

Now that I’ve seen it, it’s time to rework the passage yet again to fix that smudge. Since the problem occurred because I moved it away from Bob, sending it back there seems to be the easiest fix. But then it reads like this:

Bob and Gary ran for the house, zombies crashing through the woods behind them.

"Get to the car!" Bob screamed, reloading the shotgun. He stumbled and went flying, slamming against the dirt with a grunt.

Gary dug into his pockets for the keys, hands shaking.

Simply moving it isn’t fixing the problem. It’s better, as Bob now stumbles in the right spot. But now Gary’s looking for his keys like Bob hasn’t just taken a dirt nap. It feels unconnected.

What I need to do, is put the trip in the right spot (after Gary goes for his keys), and have it feel like it belongs there. So let’s take a step back and look at what we’re trying to accomplish with this passage. Bob tripping is clearly a problem that makes the situation worse. He’s easy pickings for the zombies on their tail. So if this is a complication, why not add a small success for this event to mess up? Or even better—a way to make it worse.

Bob and Gary ran for the house, zombies crashing through the woods behind them.

"Get to the car!" Bob screamed, reloading the shotgun.

Gary dug into his pockets for the keys, hands shaking. Breath spray, matchbooks—keys, where are the damn keys! He emptied his pockets, tossing the useless crap to the ground.

Bob backed away from the zombies, firing. The tube of breath spray rolled toward him and slipped under his foot. He went flying, slamming against the dirt with a grunt.

More interesting I think.

Sometimes when you have revisions smudge, it’s a good idea to look at what you were trying to do and not so much at the words written. It’s not always about finding a spot for it, but making it fit the scene with whatever new changes caused the problem in the first place.

Often, a quick tweak is all you need to fix a problem. Change a few words, move a line or two, and find a more interesting way to show what you wanted to show all along.

Do you find revision smudge when you edit? How do you handle the leftover bits that clog up otherwise good prose?