Close reading
There are two parts of my editorial duties that I think might make useful exercises for writers; they provide an opportunity for looking at stories in ways that I don't normally see them.
First: when we do an author-focus week, I'm generally the one who types in the reprint story. I type fairly fast by some standards (though nowhere near as fast as Mary Anne or Susan), but there's still plenty of time for thinking as I'm typing. And copying out a published story provides me with lots of opportunities for looking at exactly how each sentence is constructed. Why did the author choose that word? Why that punctuation mark? Why these mountains? Why this sky? Is this dialogue realistic? Why call the character by first name, or by last name, or by nickname? The story is in a fixed form; unlike when I'm editing a story that hasn't been published before, I don't see the story as potentially malleable, as something that I'm allowed to provide suggestions for. The fact that it's already been published forces me to assume that every decision was intentional, which makes me think there's probably a good reason for the choices made even if that reason's not obvious. (That's usually true for stories I'm editing, too, mind you.)
I'm getting all bogged down in details. My point is: recopying a published story that you admire can give you an opportunity to look at tiny pieces of it that you might not have noticed, and to think a lot about why the author made certain choices. I wouldn't recommend recopying a lot of stories; you probably don't even need to retype an entire story to get most of the benefit, and if you're not a fast typist it may not be worth the time at all. But it's worth trying once in a while. I gather that a lot of visual artists spend time copying the great works of the canon; I think the benefits are probably less for writers, but I think they exist.
The second thing is that I choose the pull quotes for stories. And different bits of a story can give totally different ideas of what a story is about. My goal is to use a quote that will interest people enough to make them want to read the story, while not giving away the plot, and not being misleading.
For example, this week's story at SH, "Counterpoint," is about Mozart, a fact that's made clear in the first few paragraphs of the story. We could have used this as a pull quote:
Charlotte quickly pulls her coat and sweater off as soon as I close the door. Women's underclothes are so much simpler than they used to be—no lacings, no tiny buttons and hooks, no hoops and petticoats. It's almost disappointing.
It's titillating, it's probably intriguing, it might get people to read the story; but any reader who was pulled in by that quote would probably be annoyed by the fact that there isn't much sex in the story, and some people who might like a story about Mozart might not read the story if it weren't clear it was about him.
There usually isn't a brief quotation that embodies all of the themes or even all of the most interesting aspects of a story; it then becomes a question of which theme or idea you most want to emphasize. Whatever you pick is likely to shape reader expectations one way or another.
I usually cop out by providing Will, our excellent webmaster, with anywhere from four to a dozen options, and letting him pick one. But even picking a dozen brief quotations from a 5000-word story is tough, and provides interesting insights about what a brief phrase can tell you about a story. It might be an interesting exercise to take a story that you like and try to pick a pull quote for it, imagining that you're publishing it for an audience that knows nothing at all about it.