V. Editing

“Sometimes, I think editing is my favourite part,” Yongsun said, crunching down on a potato chip. She chewed, her mind rushing through all the things she wanted to say, but threw another chip in instead. She craned her neck around from her seat on the floor, and threw her arm over Byulyi’s knee beside her as she lifted the bag up. “Want one?”

The bag crinkled above her head. “What is this?” Byulyi asked, crinkling her nose.

Yongsun turned the bag around so Byulyi could read it. “Honey butter chips,” Yongsun said happily. “They’re amazing. They changed my life.”

“Woah!”

“It’s good, right? Hyejin recommended them to me.”

“That girl has good taste,” Byulyi replied in awe, digging into the offered bag for another chip.

“Mmhmm, I think Wheein would agree.”

Byulyi chuckled and lowered herself onto the floor, tucking her legs under the coffee table and pressing against Yongsun’s side. To be closer to the chips, she reasoned. “Anyway,” she said, “editing sounds boring.”

“It’s just misunderstood,” Yongsun said, waving her free hand around. “I think a lot of people think of editing as just checking for grammar mistakes, but I think it’s so much more than that.”

She reached over and plucked the potato chip out from between Byulyi’s eager fingers, and smirked when Byulyi turned to her with a pout. “Unnie! There are so many in the bag!” Byulyi whined.

Yongsun ignored her. “It's like this chip,” she said. “Growing the potato and cutting it up doesn't make it special. People don't eat these chips because they think, ‘Ah, this potato tastes different than other potatoes.’” She turned to look right into Byulyi’s eyes, her expression serious. Byulyi squirmed under the intensity of her gaze. “Aren't you going to ask?”

“Ask what?”

“What makes these chips great. Ask me.”

Byulyi blinked. “Okay...what makes these chips great, unnie?”

Yongsun grinned broadly, holding her chip out like she had a monologue at the ready. “The seasoning!”

Byulyi shook her head at the dramatic flair, but she could not suppress the smile tugging at her lips.

“It's the flavour,” Yongsun went on. “A potato is just a potato until you add these flavours. Someone had to think about the flavour profile, experiment with it, and add it to these potatoes, and that's how you get chips that are so good.”

“What if it's just potato flavour? People like their chips with just salt sometimes.”

“That's an artistic choice,” Yongsun chuckled. “The chip creator person made a deliberate choice by keeping it simple, and there's nothing wrong with that. It depends on the kind of chip you want to make, or the kind of chip you think other people will enjoy.”

Byulyi stared at the yellow crisp in her hand for a while, turning it over in deliberation for a moment before biting down with a crunch. “These are really good, unnie, but are we still talking about writing?”

Yongsun grinned. “Of course! You don't like my chip metaphor?”

Byulyi ran her clean hand through her bangs. “Well, I was just thinking...the potato metaphor...it seems so straightforward. Grow potatoes, cut, fry, season. But I don't know, I don't always edit after I finish growing the potato when I write songs...do you know what I mean?”

“Ah.” Yongsun nodded sagely. “You're right. I tend to edit as I go. Sometimes when I get stuck, I'd go back and edit what I already have. It really depends on your process. I like to do it throughout, but it's important at the end to make sure things are consistent. Once you have the whole thing laid out, it's much easier to expand or rework your ideas too! So even though you might season throughout, you want to season at the very end too. Make sure your flavours actually make sense.” She paused to read the bag once more. “Maybe make sense isn't the right term. Who would think to put butter and honey together on a potato?”

“Lots of people.”

“Well, the important thing is that they go well together.”

Byulyi nodded. “Maybe sometimes...two things might not...make sense...when you put them together. But they just fit somehow.” She could feel Yongsun’s wide eyes boring into the side of her face, but she blushed and averted her eyes.

“Y-yeah.” Yongsun cleared . “That's why...editing is important.”

They sat in silence for a while, with only the sounds of muffled crunching between them. When the bag emptied, Yongsun got up to throw it away, then resumed her seat beside Byulyi. Byulyi smiled at the welcome contact.

“Earlier,” Byulyi said, breaking the comfortable quiet, “you said that editing is your favourite part. But it sounds kind of boring. Sometimes I spend hours staring at the same lines and it can be so frustrating. How can you like it?”

Yongsun looked down at Byulyi’s open palm on her knee. “I guess,” she said absentmindedly, “it’s like discovering your story all over again.” She tore her gaze away when she felt Byulyi’s quizzical eyes on her. “You can...take a step back and look at the full picture, or you can dive into the scenes one at a time and explore every path. Don't you think that sounds fun?” She said quietly. “It's like getting to know someone all over again and seeing how they've changed and rediscovering why you loved them in the first place. Or even...discovering that you love them more.”

Yongsun looked up and into Byulyi’s eyes. She was far closer than either had expected. Byulyi swallowed, torn between moving forward or ducking back.

“Y-yeah. I get it,” Byulyi mumbled into the narrow space between them. She raised a shaking hand to Yongsun’s pink cheeks, unable to tear her gaze away from the glazed look in Yongsun’s eyes. Her fingertips brushed the soft skin. Yongsun jolted, and flinched away.

“S-so...editing is important,” she continued, nervously tucking her hair behind her ears.

Byulyi blinked at the sudden gulf between them and sighed. When did her heart get so heavy?

“I think I got it,” Byulyi said, running her hand through her bangs. She slowly blew out a puff of air when the silence stretched into discomfort. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a curtain of pink shifting around. Byulyi picked up Yongsun’s notebook and pencil from the coffee table, and began to scribble.

She felt Yongsun close in behind her, and turned to shield the notebook with an open palm. “No peeking,” she said with a conspiratorial grin.

Yongsun puffed her cheeks and leaned back. “You're no fun.”

Ten minutes later, Byulyi shoved the notebook into Yongsun’s lap. Yongsun raised a brow at the way she immediately hugged her knees, eyes averted, but said nothing as she began to read.

There was once a barbarian named Hyejin. She looked strong, and had the muscles to prove it. She was not a complex person, and she always did things in a straightforward way.

Many girls in the village loved Hyejin. She was strong, reliable, and beautiful to boot. But even though there were many beautiful girls in that village, no one caught her interest. All she loved was her bear, Seulgi, and drinking and swinging from the trees. Her dream was to meet someone to accept and love who she is and the bear that came with her.

One day, Seulgi let out a loud cry. Hyejin rushed to her from the treetops, but when she got there, she saw someone else. An elf stood several meters away, with her bow drawn at Seulgi, whose hind legs were tangled between a bolas.

“No!” Hyejin shouted. The elf looked up and an arrow whizzed by, narrowly missing Hyejin’s left ear.

Hyejin growled and leapt down to land in front of the elf. “Don't you dare touch Seulgi.”

The elf girl blinked, too shocked for words. Then her cheeks pinked.

The girl was shy, and very cute, and Hyejin could not help but lower her guard despite Seulgi’s waning moans in the background. The girl also lowered her bow as she backed away slowly.

Hyejin cleared and mustered the strongest voice she had. “Why did you hurt my friend?” she cried.

The girl winced. “It charged at me,” she said quietly. The corner of her lip tugged back nervously, revealing a deep dimple.

Hyejin’s heart hammered furiously. She her dry lips, and stalked closer to the girl, who backed away with each step. “No one hurts my friend,” Hyejin said. “Now you have to be my wife.”

Yongsun dropped the notebook into her lap. “Wow,” she mumbled, staring up at Byulyi with wide eyes. “That was unexpected. I’m impressed by how much you wrote in ten minutes.” She let out a breath of air through rounded lips. “Hyejin sure is something.”

Byulyi chuckled sheepishly. “It’s a first draft right? Just getting a feeling of everything and stuff,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. “I guess we can...edit it...together?”

Yongsun picked up the notebook again. “Yeah.”

Byulyi scooted closer to peer over at her own work. “Where do we start? From the beginning?”

Yongsun hummed. “Sometimes. For me, I look at all the problem areas first. If nothing stands out, then I’ll start from the beginning.”

“Hm...Problem areas…” Byulyi leaned even closer, until Yongsun could smell the slight fragrance of her lotion from hours ago. Torn between burying her face in Byulyi’s skin and making it awkward for everyone or running away from this feeling in her chest, she simply stared straight ahead. “Do you see any, unnie?” Yongsun felt a puff of warm air against neck and shivered.

“You...it's your story, Byul. And you're too close,” she said, shoving the book into Byul’s hands with a blush. Byulyi stumbled with the unexpected motion, falling back with the notebook juggled to the floor.

“Unnie!” She cried. “Aish, no need for violence.” She pushed up from the floor with the notebook and dropped herself on the couch with a sigh. She smoothed out the wrinkled page and squinted at the words. “And I”—she rifled through the pages—“don't know what to look for.”

Yongsun stayed on the floor, pulling at the edge of her rug as she spoke. “Normally, we should wait at least twenty-four hours before getting into it. Because you just wrote it, you're still stuck in that world. Once you've refreshed your brain, you might start to look at things differently to see how things can be improved. You have to ask yourself questions—what would the reader think? Is every scene consistent? Has every scene been thoroughly explored? Have you successfully expressed what you want to express? And what about the technical parts? Are your sentences bogged down by unnecessary words? Are your sentences too rambly? Do you use the same writing structures or patterns over and over? Did you ‘tell’ too much? How can you ‘show’ more?”

Byulyi asked for the pencil on the floor, and Yongsun picked it up and pressed it into her outstretched fingers. “I don't know if I know what you mean by telling and showing, but,” —she tapped the pencil on the notebook— “how about this…”

She was strong, reliable, and beautiful to boot.

She never turned down a person in need, and did everything from mending roofs to carting the harvest. The village girls would swoon at the way her muscles flexed and her skin glisten with sweat when she walked by with fifty pounds of flour on her shoulder.

Yongsun chuckled at the new paragraph. “Well, this certainly has more character to it,” she said.

“It's cheesy, right?” Byulyi said with a lopsided grin.

“Just a bit. Don't worry, this is just your first edit.”

“What? There's more?”

“Well, on average writers will write nine to twelve drafts. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Ah, don't look at me like that. This is just practice, right? Besides, Wheeinie would love this. But why is she carrying flour? Don't people use horses for that?”

Byulyi shrugged. “It’s y.”

Yongsun fell into a peal of laughter, clapping along with each barking syllable. “Moving flour is y? So that's the kind of person you're into huh? Bakers?” She said, wiping a tear, “And I thought she didn't care what other people think.”

“Hey, she can still enjoy the effect she has on people!” Byulyi said, coolly ignoring Yongsun’s teasing as the heat rose to her face.

When the giggles subsided, Yongsun retrieved the notebook to take a glance through the revised sentence. “It really is better. You showed a bit more about your definition of strength and other characters’ reaction to it. If I want to go further because I think it might be important to understand protagonist, I might show examples of Hyejin refusing to turn someone down. Maybe there was a storm, but an old lady had asked her to help repair the roof, so she...I don't know...screamed at the storm and went about her work. I might also establish routines and go through bits and pieces of her daily life and how people treat her.” Yongsun took a breath. “The possibilities are endless. By the way, what's a bolas?”

“One of those weapons you see in movies and games and things like that. You've probably seen it,” Byulyi replied with abstract hand motions. “It's like a long rope with weights at the end. They use this to trip people, I guess. Should I explain that in the story?”

Yongsun shook her head. “You don't have to. Sometimes if you spend too long explaining things like that, the reader can get bored. It's implied that the object trapped the bear in some way already. I think context is usually enough information. One technique is to just drop hints about the object's appearance.”

Byulyi nodded slowly as her mind churned. “Maybe something like...the weights flew, and the ropes dance along with them.”

“Very poetic!” Yongsun said with a grin. “Just make sure your voice is consistent though. It's very strange when writers are very elegant once in a while, especially in first person.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she averted her eyes and continued picking at the carpet, “I admit I'm not very good at this myself...it's just that when you're writing, you have a voice. Even if you're writing in third person, your narrator has a personality. It's hard to take something seriously when your voice switches around all the time. Imagine if you wrote, ‘The weights flew, and the ropes danced along with them,’ then added ‘Seulgi fwumped over and Hyejin got pissed.’”

“Fwumped....?” Byulyi teased, nudging at Yongsun’s shoulder with a socked foot.

Yongsun blushed and was thankful that Byulyi was on the couch and couldn't see her face. “Aish! You know what I mean!”

“Yeah, yeah. Don't worry, unnie,” she snickered, “it's cute.”

Yongsun rolled her eyes. “If you’re done teasing me, maybe we can move on,” she said.

Byulyi peered over and grinned when she caught a peek of Yongsun’s smile. “What else is there to talk about?” She said, reaching forward to gently tug at the ends of her pink hair. Yongsun waved off her pestering fingers absentmindedly as she scanned the notebook.

“Maybe you should look over it and edit it yourself,” Yongsun said. “Try to show instead of tell, and try to expand on the important things and cut down on the fluff. I guess that's all there really is to it. Try the last part with the action.”

Byulyi received the notebook and once again curled up in the corner with her pencil. The clock ticked as the pencil alternated between tapping and scratching at the page. Yongsun waited patiently with her phone in hand, periodically laughing or squealing at the glowing screen, but despite the distraction, Byulyi remained intensely focused on the paper before her.

Several times Yongsun glanced up and admired the furrowed brows and pinched nose—a far cooler version of the playful idiot she was so accustomed to.

Half an hour later, Byulyi presented a web of crossed out sentences, floating words, and indecipherable symbols pressed into the very edge of the margins. “I'll read it out,” she said, grinning at Yongsun’s bewildered expression. She cleared .

“Hyejin growled and leapt down to land in front of the elf. The elf drew her bow reflexively, but the fury in this strange woman’s eyes did not waver. “Don't you dare touch Seulgi,” Hyejin said, her voice rumbling like thunder—”

“Wait,” Yongsun said. “Byul-ah, did you change perspectives in the same paragraph?”

“Uh, maybe? Is that bad…?”

Yongsun ripped out a new piece of notepaper and began scribbling furiously. A few minutes later, she handed Byulyi the sheet. “It's just a suggestion,” she said, sheepishly pulling at the her shirt’s loose threads.

Byulyi read.

Hyejin growled and leapt down with a graceful thud before the strange elf. A dust of clouds wafted up into the air and settled back down to frame the pointed bow that threatened both her and her friend.

The elf, bewildered, had drawn her bow on instinct at the stranger, whose unwavering fury boiling in those dark pupils tightened her grip on her weapon.  

‘No one hurts Seulgi.’”

“This way it's clearer,” Yongsun explained, nervously. “You're not throwing the reader onto two minds at the same time. This gives readers some time, I think, to know who they're processing.”

Byulyi nodded and continued.

The elf girl blinked, too shocked for words. Then, upon seeing the wild mane and sunkissed skin of the fearless woman before her, her cheeks pinked.

Hyejin lowered her guard at the sight of the girl’s puffed pink cheeks. Seulgi’s waning moans were a blur in the background. The girl also lowered her bow as she backed away slowly.

“Why is it important to mention Seulgi here?” Yongsun asked. “Doesn't it seem kind of out of place?”

Byulyi hummed. “I figured it was just a way of building the setting like you said. I didn't want people forgetting she was still there.”

Yongsun clambered up onto the couch to peer over at the mess of black lines in the notebook. Byulyi frowned. “You don't like it, unnie? Should I take it out?”

Yongsun shook her head. “No, that's really clever. I hadn't thought of it.” She leaned back to sit on her heels. “Since this is third person, but also Hyejin’s point of view, I think it's a good idea to leave it. Realistically, this Hyejin, untameable as she is, wouldn't forget her friend, and this one sentence can describe so much. I'm really impressed, Byul!”

Byulyi beamed. “Praise me more, unnie,” she said, puffing out her chest. “I'm going to be the next Shakespeare if you do.”

Yongsun rolled her eyes. “Just keep reading.”

The girl winced. “It charged at me,” she stuttered. The corner of her lip tugged back nervously in a half-smile, revealing a deep dimple.

Hyejin’s heart hammered furiously at the sight. She her dry lips, and stalked closer to the girl, who backed away with each step. “No one hurts my friend,” Hyejin said. “Now you have to be my wife.”

Byulyi closed her notebook. “Yeah, I gave up at the end,” she sighed.

Yongsun watched Byulyi’s fingers run along the cover of the notebook, her thumb flipping the pages, her gaze focused entirely on the space before her. She waited for Byulyi to find the  words.

“I guess,” Byulyi said finally, “I don’t know. Maybe the ending is a bit strong, but I kinda like it. Hyejin would be really bold, and I guess I kinda wish I could say things like that. I guess this is what you mean by putting yourself in the story. Maybe these stories are all just ways of...I don’t know...creating better versions of ourselves? Aish, maybe I should soften it up with ‘I like you’ instead. That’s...brave enough already.”

“Byul-ah, stop biting your thumb.” Yongsun tucked her hair behind her ears, and stared at the space between them. “If you want to say ‘I like you,’ you should just say it.”

“Hm.” Byulyi’s eyes flicked up to catch Yongsun’s for a brief moment. “What if the other person doesn't feel the same?”

“Hyejin doesn’t seem like someone who would give up before she tries,” Yongsun whispered.

Byulyi opened , then clamped it shut when the words in her mind didn't seem to be enough.

“I’ll be back.”

She shot up from the couch and slipped through the front door faster than Yongsun could follow her with her eyes. Yongsun blinked at the empty spot where Byul occupied. Her notebook and pencil were gone. She wondered if she should go to bed.

She stretched out across the couch cushions and laid her head on the armrest with her phone above her. The clock ticked and her keyboard tapped away at empty conversations as she wondered if Byulyi was coming back.

She nearly dropped her phone when Wheein sent her a preliminary sketch of Hyejin’s loincloth barbarian look. Her laughter bounced off her empty walls as she wondered if Byulyi was going to confess tonight.

At nearly two in the morning, Yongsun had just slid into her blankets when someone rang her doorbell. Five times in succession, accompanied by more knocks than she could quantify in her sleep-addled state.

“Who is it?” she mumbled. She rubbed her eyes as she unlocked the door.

Byulyi stood with the notebook clutched in her hands, a crooked smile doing its best to hide the nervous energy rushing through her. “Unnie.”

“Byul-ah, what—”

Byulyi cleared and began to read to the rhythm of her heart.

There once was a girl, wild as a warrior, her name was Hyejin.

She had a friend she loved, her whole world, a girl named Wheein

She tried to be cool, the fool, tried to be cute, tried to fit in.

But with Wheein she should’ve known

There’s no point in fronting, no point in hunting

For that perfect something, ‘cause there’s nothing to prove and nothing to lose.

When did she stop seeing her as her best friend since thirteen,

The girl who’s always been there, as clear as her own mirror?

When did she start wearing these binds, when did she turn a blind eye?

Just open your eyes, take off the blinds—

Just drive.

Into the sunset

Into their happy end

But the two had a friend

An idiot Moon, a cowering fool—

Indecisive, insecure, inundated in love

And Hyejin kicked her, lashed her with her own words

God! If you could’ve seen the look on her face in that two-inch space

Between past mistakes and death’s embrace!

So the idiot Moon hid under her schemes…

You wanna write a book, Hyejin scoffed, to confess to the girl of your dreams

You wanna waste her time and waste your rhymes on a plan so grand

You’ll forget why you began, you’ll forget you had plans

Or you’ll choose to forget while your head’s buried in the sand.

And that's what she said, plain and simple, yet heavy as lead

She looked over my shoulder, said my story was

Don’t break the edges off the square to make it fit

So I threw it out and wrote these words,

A mess of strings from my heart to yours

The truth is that I've been hiding all this time in these imperfect rhymes,

I'm tired of being an idiot Moon, eclipsed by fear and doubt and uncertainty too

I'm tired of running, hiding, lying 

I’m tired of denying the truth:

That I’ll never tire of loving you

An eternity must’ve passed before Yongsun realized how still she stood and how chaotic she felt. Byulyi watched her expectantly as she lowered the notebook, her eyes imploring her own for an answer. It was an answer she knew, yet all words escaped in favour of knots and nerves.

“M-maybe,” she stammered, “you should come in first.”

“Kim Yongsun.”

“Byul-ah, can’t you come in first?”

But Byulyi stood at her door, eyes cast down at her shuffling foot as doubt began to creep in. “I just...I want to know how you feel,” she mumbled. “It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way, but I...wanna know.”

“Aish, you’re so annoying sometimes.”

A hand wrapped itself around Byulyi’s wrist and tugged her inside. Before she could protest, she felt the warmth of Yongsun against her and the chill of the door against her back. Her eyes widened, but Yongsun’s face was so close that she could barely take it all in. She in a breath that was quickly stolen away by the press of Yongsun’s lips. It was a brief kiss, one look at Yongsun’s flushed face told her that it was only the first of many.

She grinned  like a fool.

“You...made me go through all that just to tell me?” Yongsun said.

She stopped smiling. “I...well…”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? I thought it was obvious I felt the same way.”

“O-obvious?”

“Okay, well...you make me really nervous sometimes, so maybe it’s not that obvious.”

Yongsun sighed and pulled her back on the couch. It was as if they never left when they sat facing each other from opposite ends. Byulyi wanted nothing more than to cross the couch cushion between them and close the distance, just like she did hours ago, but her burst of courage was short-lived. Yongsun watched her with an undecipherable expression, but it was her who finally broke the silence: “Do you still want to write a book?”

“I…” She shook her head. “I wanted to write you a story, so I could convey my feelings properly, but the more we talked about it, the more abstract it felt. I...I don’t want my feelings to be abstract, unnie. I want to be straightforward, at least about this.” She met her eyes for a brief moment before settling them back on the fabric of the couch. “I really like you, unnie.”

The couch dipped, and when she looked up again, Yongsun was inches away, her warm hand burning against her knee. She sighed into the second kiss reflexively, and pulled her closer and closer until she could feel the weight of the older woman on her lap.

“I have to say,” Yongsun said breathlessly, resting a hand on Byulyi’s shoulder, “Barbarian Hyejin is probably the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen. Way more than any symphony you could’ve written me. You should finish that story.”

“Oh? I thought you’d like Idiot Moon.”

“But Barbarian Hyejin is so wild.”

“Unnie!” Byulyi cried, playfully slapping her across the shoulder.

Yongsun laughed, and pressed her palms against Byulyi’s to fend off her blows. “Aigo, I’m kidding.” She pushed her hands out of the way and leaned in. “I guess Idiot Moon is pretty cute too.”

END  

---

Thank you for joining me on this three-month endeavour! This was such a wild and weird idea that I never would've imagined that I'd be able to finish it. I'd almost dropped the project altogether halfway through because I felt it was far too arrogant. Who am I to try and tell you how to write? A conversation with a friend actually blew up over the differences between readership and writership, and I was almost determined to never pick this up again, though by then I'd already written about 25 pages. In the end, I thought that I had to do it for myself, if no one else. If I wanted to understand my own stories and become a better writer, I needed to break down my process and find the pieces I needed to create better stories. 

And so this story is rather special to me in a very different way from all of my other stories. I wish it was more polished, but I can now breathe knowing I've overcome the hurdles that came with this story. It's a victory, I hope! For me and anyone else who finds this modest piece useful in some way, whether it's thinking about your own creative pursuits or studying for an English test. Cheers to better storytelling!

In other news, I'd hoped to finish the chapter of Freedom-Bound this summer, but if you are familiar with the story, you may have noticed that I have a habit of one-upping myself each chapter. This new world is so big and beautiful that it's currently as long as this fic and only about a quarter finished. Unfortunately, real life will be calling me back in September, so it will have to be delayed again. I hope you will stay with me until then! 

Hopefully, we'll see each other again before the summer ends :)