Choose a block of your writing—past or present—and walk us through its revision journey. What worked? What didn’t? What did you learn in the process?
Well, my worst nightmare has come true—I’m sharing early drafts on the internet. But I think this is a really interesting prompt, so I’ll force myself to be vulnerable and share the goods. (Or…the bads, as it were.)
Not only is this a passage from a first draft, it’s the first draft of my first novel. So, please be kind as I share the evolution of the opening paragraphs of Chapter One from There’s No Murder Like Show Murder.
“It’s just too tight,” the man was saying. “I can barely move.”
Far be it for me to second-guess a Broadway darling like Burton Stephens, but it’s hard to hear a man complain about restrictive clothing. Especially when I knew his costar would be singing right beside him wearing a tight-laced evening gown and heels.
“I don’t know if I can go on like this,” he continued. “It just feels wrong in ways I can’t describe.”
The costume shop was crowded as members of the creative team, circled around Burton and his offending tailcoat. He frowned into the mirror, pulling at the lapels as reassuring voices came at him from every side.
“It looks fantastic,” the choreographer was saying.
“Perfect silhouette,” the costume designer chimed in.
“Burton,” came the languid voice of Arthur Winston, who hovered in the doorway of the shop, “you look fantastic. Like I promised you would.” As the Artistic Director of the Eastbridge Playhouse, part of Arthur’s job was massaging the egos of leading men and ladies, especially Broadway B-listers like Burton.
Not terribly compelling, is it? I’ll fight the urge to shit on my early work too much, since that’s what writers’ groups and therapists are for. Besides, the really vulnerable move at this point would be to identify a few things that are working.
First off, the bones of the conflict are present. Without spoiling anything, the insufferable leading man at the center of this scene will be dead by the end of Chapter Two. My instinct was always to open with his diva behavior and establish Tasha (the first-person POV character narrating) as an emotionally intelligent, canny observer of the colorful characters that surround her. The better to solve a mystery, my dear. I also always liked the quip about men complaining about tight clothes, although it’s a little buried in the above. And finally, the broader cast is coming into focus, but there’s still a long way to go to round out the zany, theatrical world of the Eastbrook Playhouse.
And now for the bad. Well, not the bad, but the needs improvement. I want to point out three big issues that I went on to address in later drafts: voice, event, and energy.
VOICE: I knew I wanted to write the story in first-person from Tasha’s POV, but you really don’t learn much about her from this passage. I mean, it reads more like a college essay than a piece of cozy crime fiction. The other characters show a bit more personality through their dialogue, but there’s something incredibly dry about my first pass.
EVENT: If you can’t tell, this section takes place during a fitting in the cramped costume shop of the Eastbrook Playhouse. This is an inherently low-stakes environment, a setting that does nothing to establish the urgency of technical rehearsals. I only have one chance to grab the reader with a high stakes setup, and the image of a Broadway blowhard complaining in front of a full-length mirror is not going to capture anyone’s attention. (Also, did you notice I described him as a “Broadway darling” and a “b-lister” on the same page? Rookie mistake.)
ENERGY: There’s nothing here that makes the reader want to keep going. There’s no suspense, no mystery. Maybe some of my readers would be gripped by the drama of a man in an ill-fitting coat, but that’s the extent of the intrigue. I’ll spare you the rest of the chapter, but this problem persists. The entire draft is heavy on cold detail and light on drama. Big problem.
So, three drafts later, I had arrived at this:
“I can barely move!” the man called out. “It’s just too tight!”
Music stopped. Movement all around him came to a standstill as he strained against his tailcoat. A voice from the darkness cried, “Hold!”
It was the second day of cue-to-cue rehearsals for Annie Get Your Gun at the Eastbrook Playhouse and nerves were fraying all around. Our leading man stood center stage, shading his eyes to peer at the work tables that had been mounted across Rows F through H. The creative team and crew had been there for what felt like a lifetime and the rest of the cast struggled to hide their irritation. I’m no mind reader, but I was pretty sure we all shared a single thought…
What’s the problem now, Kurt?
A few improvements, I have to admit. We’re in the theater now, in the middle of a cue-to-cue rehearsal, which imbues the scene with an energy it desperately needed. The first line establishes some suspense—plants some questions, at least—and I do a bit of a better job withholding information to keep the reader hooked. And we’re getting a little more of Tasha’s voice, though there’s still a long way to go where clarity, context, andcharacter are concerned.
CLARITY: Now that we’re out of the costume shop, it’s not immediately clear what is too tight and why the narrator is moved to action by this complaint. As someone well-versed in the process of putting on a show, I don’t do a great job painting a picture for readers who don’t come from theatre. There’s music playing, movement all around, and a man making trouble, but we don’t understand well enough to care.
CONTEXT: A related issue, and one that plagued this opening section through multiple drafts, was my tendency to pause the action to provide exposition. Sure, it’s important to ground the reader right away in a sense of place, but I wanted to find a way of doing so that felt more active and less explanatory.
CHARACTER: As I mentioned, we get a little more of Tasha’s voice, but this passage doesn’t really reveal anything about her. Sure, she’s irritated with Kurt (renamed from the original Burton), but so is everyone else. If I really want to make the most of my Page One real estate, I need to let Tasha shine and establish her as a protagonist to root for and follow.
So, a half dozen revisions later, I landed on this version right before we went to print:
“Stop! Please! I can barely breathe!”
Someone else might have ignored the voice. In fact, plenty of “someone elses” sitting near me did exactly that. But I was already on my feet, moving through the darkness to save the day.
“Will somebody help me?” the deep baritone roared over the orchestra. The music director’s head bobbed as he urged the musicians on, like the band on deck of the Titanic. Not that we were on a sinking ship. At least not yet…
“I’m dying up here!” The words were unmistakable now. “Either this tailcoat goes or I do.”
Heads were turning, eyes were rolling, and a voice from the darkened auditorium called: “Hold!”
It’s never cute to hear a man complain about tight clothes.
We were in the second day of cue-to-cue rehearsals for Annie Get Your Gun at the Eastbrook Playhouse and nerves were fraying all around. Our leading man stood center stage, blocking the spotlight from his eyes to peer at the worktables mounted across Rows F through H. The creative team and production crew, myself included, had been huddled there for what felt like forever. Tired cast members stepped out of character, and the run crew backstage gazed out from the shadowy wings. It was like we all shared a single thought….
What’s his problem this time?
Let’s start with that first line. It’s a bit of a fake-out, and it went through several iterations before I was satisfied, but it captures the dramatic attitude of our antagonist-turned-victim and sets up Tasha’s response.
Tasha’s reaction to this line tells us a lot about her character: she’s quick to act, she takes her work seriously, and she has a bit of a savior complex. Already, within the first few sentences, we know what kind of narrator we’re dealing with and can predict how she’ll react to an impending murder.
I also worked hard to pepper the essential expository details throughout the faux emergency that gives this opening section its momentum. Placing Tasha in the house and Kurt onstage provides the perfect opportunity to set the scene without making the reader feel like I’m overloading them with information. By creating a bit of a mystery at the outset—why can’t this man breathe? what is wrong? why is no one else helping?—I give myself room to establish setting while the reader is (hopefully) leaning in for further details.
And the line about men in tight clothes, which readers and editors all seemed to enjoy, is given the space and the highlight it deserves.
Even now, I look at the published version of this opening and wish I could make more tweaks. But I firmly believe that our writing is never done; it’s simply due. The process of writing There’s No Murder Like Show Murder was more than a typical revision cycle—it was the way I learned how to write a novel. In my case, that meant multiple drafts (I counted at least ten while I prepared this post) and a constant curiosity and desire to do the best work I could.
And that requires some serious vulnerability.
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