The discussion of revising and, particularly, of ‘middles’ seems to have struck a chord.

Why am I not surprised?

So I thought I would touch on the notion of the ripple effect which anyone who writes surely must be aware of. And if you’re not, you need to be.

Ripples are what happen when you toss a rock in the water, yes? No rock, no ripples resulting. But the minute a rock lands — or you make a change in a manuscript — everything thereafter (and sometimes everything before) has to change as well.

Why?

Because everything is connected. Everything tends to result from something else and lead to something else.

Example: Anne Gracie said to me last week, “I’d rather see Demetrios convince Anny to come with him rather than have her just turn up on the boat.”

Simple, yes. A new scene in which she turns up on the dock, says what she’s come to say, then turns and leaves.

Why? Where’s she going? Why?

And then he goes after her.

Why? (He must be out of his mind).

He convinces her.

Why?

He has his reasons.

Why?

Because of something that happened in his backstory.

Why did it happen?

Because that’s the kind of guy he is, has always been.

And then presuming he succeeds, what then?

She didn’t expect to be on a boat.

Now what?

And of course none of the ‘now what‘ falls into what I’ve already written in chapters 5 and 6. So they have to be completely rewritten with new stuff that follows from the simple change in one scene.

So does the earlier stuff — before the boat scene — because otherwise it wouldn’t have occurred to him to convince her. In fact, he isn’t at all sure this is a good idea.

Sadly, I can’t just simply write down, “Because Anne told me to.”

If ripples aren’t your thing, think about Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In that book he talks about making small changes.

He says that if you just change a rocket’s trajectory by one degree at lift-off, it will be thousands of miles away from where it would have been if you’d kept the original trajectory. For good or ill, one small change effects everything that comes after.

Yet another way of saying, “One thing leads to another.” There’s just no getting around it — even in books.

So I’m off now to deal with my ripples. I have, however, had a bit of good news to go with it.

My editor is off to France for the week so I have now got until the 22nd to deal with all the ripples and make sense of this thing.

And how are your middles doing today?