What We're Writing: Hank Solves the Case of the Missing Bug

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: 

The House Guest is arriving in February! And she’s almost ready to read. I’m calling it Gaslight meets Thelma and Louise. What do you think about that?   (I hope you are saying "oooh!")

But what I’m writing… is copy edits. It’s one of my favorite parts of the writing process, No, truly it is. Copy editing.

 I had not looked at my book for a month, while the copy editor had it, so looking at it again, after four whole weeks, made me see it in a different way. I love that. 

Of course, there are going to be the obligatory battles about hyphens. Is it face up or faceup or face-up? They insisted on faceup, which I say is NOT a word, so I just cut it altogether. How about pre-nup? They insisted it was prenup, which I say is NOT a word,  no matter what any style manual tries to force me to do, and I stetted.  Thirty-something or thirtysomething? They insisted no hyphen, and I reluctantly relented.

And of course, happily, copy editing brings some hilarious realizations of the words we use, lazily and without thinking. I had used the word “something” 37 times. And it was quite the exercise in specificity as I took them out. Wonderful and book-changing in every way. And I am writing a blog about that which you will see someday.

The other thing you catch, if you’re lucky, are the problems with continuity. Not just that someone has a maroon tie in paragraph one and a navy tie in paragraph 10. Those things are inevitable, and fun to find. Like a treasure hunt. Even that I had spelled my main character's last name two different ways. Fix fix fix.  

But sometimes I find jaw-dropping mistakes. Shocking mistakes.

Here is a cautionary tale.

In the first version of the book, the main character is driving home, and begins to suspect, (and it all makes sense), that someone has put a bug in her car. And that someone is following her, and that the bug is transmitting to that person’s car. So she does some things, which you will have to read about, to find out if that’s true. And it seems to be true. 

Then she goes home, and new "friends" come to dinner, and many things are discussed. But. Not the bug in the car! She never mentions the bug in the car. Not to her mysterious dinner guests, not to her lawyer, not to anyone. Not even to herself.  

The next day, she and the two friends get into the same car and drive to her summer house. She never thinks about the bug. She never does anything about the bug. The bug is never mentioned again. Until the very last chapter, when somebody admits something about it.

But she’s been driving around with the stupid maybe-bug! Talking! Saying things! I sat and stared at my screen, wondering if I had completely lost my mind. How could I have dropped that thread?

And more important, how do I fix it? There was no time for her to have her car checked for a bug, and she has no idea what a bug looks like, and there’s no one to ask, and there’s no time to do anything, and what would she do if she knew, anyway?  I thought and thought and thought. And then the solution appeared! She just…takes her other car! Which could not have a bug in it. Brilliant brilliant brilliant, Hank, I thought, patting myself on the back, you are so smart.  

(If that solution seems obvious to you, good for you. It took me a good fifteen frantic minutes.)

But then, the dominoes started to fall. Earlier in the book, she talks about how her garage is half empty, now that her husband’s car is gone. Oops. Now there has to be room in the garage for the “other” car! Okay, now her garage is "emptier," without her husband's car. 

But, yikes, this "other" car is an SUV. So it doesn’t have a trunk. Okay! I will fix that.

And the “other” car does not have the same stuff in the glove compartment that the first car did. Okay! I will fix that, too.  But here's the thing. This all made me so happy. 

Because as long as it all gets fixed before the book goes to print, that's all part of the process. And I love the process.

So Reds and readers, let's vote on hyphens, okay? Pre-nup or prenup? (Did she have a pre-nup?) Faceup or face up or face-up? (It was face up on the drainboard.)  Thirty-something or thirtysomething? (She was the only thirtysomething in the room.) 

I'm sure there's some sort of rule about this.

And Reds and writers, have you ever found a gasp-worthy continuity problem in a manuscript?