Charles Dickens and the Last Round of Revisions

by Sarah

It is a truth universally acknowledged that teachers cannot expect to teach anything the day before Christmas break.

So… this past December 21, I challenged the students in my math classes to pull out their smart phones and see if they could get points in a holiday scavenger hunt. Questions included: 

• Why do snowflakes never, ever have 4 or 8 sides? (Followed by a lesson in how to make proper, six-sided paper snowflakes.)
• What do Mary Shelley's masterpiece and How the Grinch Stole Christmas have in common? 
• What does the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" have to do with the second Star Trek* movie and/or the summer Olympics?

(December 15, 2016:
Dear students of mine who are Googling these questions, this is a blog post I wrote three years ago. It mentions the questions but NOT the answers. Keep searching. Good luck, Ms. McGuire :) )

Finally, I explained that I love Dickens' A Christmas Carol and that I read it almost every year. I challenged them to find the book online and read any two consecutive sentences to me. Then I'd tell them what was happening in that scene. 

Here's the crazy thing: about 80% of the time, I could. 

Granted, it helps that the book is novella length– and that I've read it for years and years. But what struck me was that Dickens made it so darn easy for me to orient myself in the story. His language is that distinct, even in the 'throwaway' portions of scenes (you know, where someone is moving across the room). 

Donald Maass, in his book Writing the Breakout Novel, suggested that we writers shuffle the pages of a manuscript. Then we're supposed to pick random pages and see if there's tension on each page. Excellent advice. 

However, I had an epiphany while I stood in my classroom, surrounded by students reading Dickens off their smart phones. I should also look at my pages and ask if the language is unique. Does it spark? Does the narration sing? Does it make each scene distinct from the others? (All without sounding pretentious, overblown, or as if I'm trying to be amazing.)

I've been thinking about A Christmas Carol as I continue to revise Valiant. I've got the overall story straight. Now it's time to go back and pay attention to the words. That means making sure my own voice is clear. It means never assuming that I can settle for flat language in a scene– or even a paragraph– because I'm getting to the good stuff.

And maybe, if I work really, really hard, I can give my readers a Dickens of a tale. 

*No, the YouTube video of Kirk and Spock singing the song does not count!