Learning to self-edit - by Harini Nagendra

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? 

Perhaps the most important thing I've learnt over the 4 books that constitute my fiction-writing journey, is how to self-edit out my tendency to insert large infodumps of history, culture and setting into my books. Instead, I now slice the historical and setting details into chunks, and try to find places where I can insert them into different parts of the story in a way that seems natural, and helps to advance the plot, or illustrate something about my main characters - so that my readers imbibe information without feeling bored, or like they're in a classroom listening to a lecture. 

The best illustration I can think of is this passage below, from the original draft of The Bangalore Detectives Club. Here's a paragraph from the original version I sold, which my editors then took up 

Uma aunty’s home reminded Kaveri of her maternal home in Mysore. Much smaller than Ramu’s, it was set in a smaller plot, fifty feet by ninety feet. In contrast, Ramu’s home – her home now, as Kaveri reminded herself – was set in a one acre plot. A cream and white masonry building with red accents around the windows and at the border of the doors, the home was framed by an elegant bungalow, with bay windows framed with monkey tops that enabled a view of the garden. The short curved driveway ended in a portico, bordering a lush garden, where Bhargavi assiduously nurtured roses, lilies and orchids. At the back, a large kitchen garden with curry leaves, tomato, green chillies and turmeric was surrounded by fruit trees of over twenty varieties, including jackfruit, mango, jamun, tamarind, figs, guava, custard apple, coconut and banana, as well as some “English” fruit trees like avocado and breadfruit that Ramu’s father had convinced his mother to plant. A gardener came in every day for a couple of hours, chivvied around by her mother-in-law, for whom the garden was a prized possession, as dear as another child of her own. Kaveri did not know much about gardening – her home, like Uma aunty’s, was small and had space for only a tiny kitchen garden, with the obligatory tulasi, jasmine, Nandi battalu and karubevu plants that most Hindu homes contained. She liked the sprawling garden, despite the monkeys it attracted, and was slowly getting to learn the intricacies of the care each of the various varieties of trees and plants required. 

As you can see, this is an - ahem - overly ecological paragraph, inserted right in the middle of a mystery. My editor very rightly pointed this out to me, saying

Wow – this is a stunning description of the local wildlife, but sadly I do think this is one of those overly long descriptive sections that could do with being cut down slightly.

She was absolutely correct. I wanted to weave in the descriptions of garden plants into the story, but needed to find another way to do this - rather than a massive ecological infodump. 

I reworked the entire book rather extensively, changing the plot and the murderer - and ended up deleting the paragraph entirely. But I found other scenes where I could weave in descriptions of greenery, such as the one below. In this, I situate an interaction between my main protagonists in the garden to illustrate the growing closeness between Kaveri, and her husband from an arranged marriage, Ramu.

Kaveri was resting her sore feet in a bucket of hot water, when she heard the gate open. Ramu had come home early. She tried to jump out, but her sari got caught in the bucket. By the time she disentangled herself from the bucket, and stepped out, Ramu was in the compound, alighting from the car. He turned to her, impassive as ever, though she saw the sides of his mouth twitching. Kaveri murmured a hasty apology as she fled to the garden, with the bucket in tow. Just as she reached the papaya plant, Ramu called “Careful, Kaveri. Don’t cook the papaya plant. The water must be hot.”

She could definitely see his face twitching. Kaveri gave up, and began to laugh, wringing the moisture from the folds of her sari at her feet. Ramu smiled back, asking her “Did you sprain your leg?”

“It’s a long story” replied Kaveri. “Let me get you your coffee and then I can tell you the details.”

Ramu sniffed as he entered the house. The drawing room was filled with the aroma of rich, roasted curry leaves. “Have you been cooking?” he asked. “Yes. Rajamma told me how to make a different kind of rice pudi. The powder that your mother made, for us to eat with ghee and rice, is almost over and I wanted to try something different. We picked curry leaves and leaves of the lemon plant from our garden, and made a pudi with roasted togaribele.” 

I also inserted this section later in the book, to describe Narsamma and Mala's garden - using it to illustrate the caste divides that were a sadly common feature of society.

Narsamma got up and gestured to them. They followed her to the back of the house, past a dark corridor, and entered the back garden. The kitchen garden at the back was very different from the sumptuous, lush bower in the front. Here, the layout was prosaic, as befitting a frugal housewife. Banana and papaya plants, weighed down with fruit, neatly lined the compound wall. In the corner, a drumstick tree stood tall, pods hanging from it. A vegetable patch was in a corner, next to a karabevu tree.

Mala hailed them as they left. She passed over a bundle of drumstick pods, neatly tied with twine, to each woman.

“From my garden”, she said shyly. And hesitated.

“Plants have no caste or community. I hope you can accept this.”

By the time I got to writing book 4 in the series, Into the Leopard's Den, I had become more comfortable with using this approach. This book is the most ecological of my mysteries, and the history of forests, coffee and wildlife in Coorg is too fascinating for me to leave out - but I've learnt how to do this without brandishing a textbook in my readers' faces!