Editing - Novel 2

This first round of editing is tough stuff! I'm making progress - slowly - but getting good comments down.

I'm following someone's advice and have a printed copy that I'm reading to myself out loud and making notes with as I go. I'm about halfway through, then once I finish I'll need to update the "real" copy with all of the notes and comments. It's a real pain in the butt but it's very important; there's plenty of things that I'm finding need correction.

Probably my biggest single issue is repetition. I'll write two paragraphs and use the same word or expression in both, when I should really be going back to something different either the first or the second time. Many of these I'm just noting for now and will update when I put my editing comments back into the computer.

Writing - Novel 2

Aaaaaand... the first draft is finished! 95,947 words.

I'll do a pass of heavy revision and consistency editing, then it will be time to pass it off to F&F for first comments. It's a great feeling to be through the biggest chunk, though!

Writing - Novel 2

86,736 to 89,027 in about an hour. The big confrontation set up over the second half of the book has begun, and lots of exciting action is taking place. Explosions are soon to come, lots and lots of explosions. Hooray!

edit: ... and up to 95,087 over a couple more hours. That's it! There's a few more paragraphs to tie things up nicely, but the story is done. Phew! Time to start the real editing and backfilling next writing session.

And yes, there were plenty of explosions in the last few dozen pages.

Writing - Novel 2

85,671 to 86,736 this evening in a short 30 minute session. I realized that my protagonist really is going to need a certain skill by the end of the novel, and that he really had the opportunity to practice it during the course of the book... but I didn't have anything about it! So I went back through and poked here and there at the appropriate places... and voila, he can suddenly speak (albeit badly) a new language! Hooray!

Writing - Novel 2

82,298 to 84,373 in about an hour. The aforementioned twist seems to have worked out all right, adding a bit of tension and a good chance for our protagonist to show off some of the things he's learned during his journey. I am having to work a bit to keep red tape and bureaucracy from invading the pages, just based on where the story is right now. It's not exciting and engaging to hear about pages of debate and council meetings, even though it is what would happen in "real life" as it were. Instead, we'll be skipping past that crap and summing it up in a few paragraphs (if that) so we can keep going on to the more interesting bits. Time to get the concluding scenes started!

edit: Up to 85,671 after  another 40 minutes.

Writing - Novel 2

80,674 to 82,298 in about 45 minutes. The story has taken an unexpected twist near the end that I hadn't put into the outline, so I'm unsure how it will work out - but it seems to be going all right so far. If I end up keeping it - and I think I will by this point - I'll have to throw in some foreshadowing early on in the book so that it makes a bit more sense. It does allow our protagonist another way to show some growth over the course of his adventures, though, so I think it will be a good addition overall.

Writing - Novel 2

About an hour and a quarter or so of progress; 78,224 to 80,674.

Revision - Novel 2

Now that my life has settled down from the craziness of the last few months, I'm getting back into this novel and am determined to finish it. I did a full sweep from beginning to end of what's currently written, making minor revisions and wording changes along the way. Now it's time to start writing again and finish the third and final "act" of the novel, which is perhaps 20% done. The heroes of the story are nearing their final challenge, and there are only a few big scenes left before the story reaches its conclusion.

It's always interesting to see how a story evolves as you write it. The outline I originally wrote got progressively more vague as it reached towards the ending of the book, and there are plenty of places where the story was changed from the outline along the way. While you can still recognize the major structure, there are pretty big chunks that got cut out and some new side threads that got added along the way.

After revisions, the current word count is 78,224.

Writing - Novel 2

76,331 to 77,763 in about 45 minutes tonight. Continuing to march forward towards the final scenes of the book.

Hey, what happened to April?

Unfortunately, April was overflowing with other responsibilities and I had little time to write. As we get into May I will be trying to get this book finished up.

74,289 to 76,331 today.

70,939-74,289
4:10p-5:40p

Pacing

Something I've consciously chosen to try with this novel is to effect a very specific pacing. It's basically alternating dialogue/slow action chapters with high action/conflict chapters. There's some conflict in each chapter, of course, otherwise it gets boring quickly - "the trees were bright green" description for an entire chapter gets old fast - but with my outline this works out well.

Here's an example. Let's say our heroes are on a mission to find the mystical foobar. We'll start off by having them talk about why it's important to find the foobar, and set out on their mission. Then, they run into a nasty storm and have to fight their way through it in a gripping, life-or-death situation! After that, they get to a town and ask around for the location of the foobar, and some of the heroes show their flaws by (verbally) fighting with the group's leader. Next up, they move on to the location of the foobar, and encounter the foobar's guardian in a big showdown!

My hope is that this keeps readers interested and gives good opportunities for character development. We'll see how it works out, but so far it seems to be pretty good. I'm at 29 chapters right now; my expectation is that the book will end at about 38-40. It's not precisely alternating "one chapter slow, one chapter fast" but it's close enough that the pacing seems to work out.

What comes next?

I've been asked what comes next for this book, and what it means to say that I'm at "67000 words" (or whatever).

A novel is considered something over 75000 words, and once you get up to about 150000 or so it becomes an "epic" (aka a really big novel). I'm aiming for something like 100000 words; my first book was about 105000 when it was done. So if I say I'm at 67,000 words I'm about 67% of the way done on the first draft.

But the last half of the book usually seems to go faster than the first, for me. I've got the outline done; I know where things are going in my head, it's just getting them on paper. That speeds things up - for me, at least.

Once I'm done with the first draft, I'll do a first editing run on the computer. This is where I do major changes - pulling out entire scenes or chapters, rearranging events, ripping out unneeded exposition, backfilling details and clues to match up with later parts of the book.

Next I'll print out the whole manuscript and go over it on paper with a pen. Here, I'll look for issues with phrasing, tense, pacing, etc. that I didn't catch on the screen. Sentences will get rearranged or cut. Description will be added. Things like that.

After I do those edits, I'll be ready to send the manuscript out to people who have asked to be on the F&F review list. Hopefully they'll get comments back to me relatively quickly :) I won't agree with all of the feedback, of course, but they're good pointers as to what needs to be updated (and if several people tell me the same thing that I don't want to hear, I'll probably decide I need to listen to it anyways!).

At some point, I'll even pick a title!

Writing - Novel 2

65,471 - 68,646
11:40a - 1:02p

and... 68,646 - 70,939
11:29p - 12:18a

Writing - Novel 2

64083 - 65,471
4:20 pm - 5:10 pm

Did some editing as well on the way through, not just writing. The last couple of weeks have been very busy, but I hope to get some good days in over the next few weeks.

Writing - Novel 2

61564 - 64083
3:43pm - 4:50pm

Writing - Novel 2

59891-61565
3:53pm-4:40pm

Writing - Novel 2

56,268 after pulling out the outline/unneeded prologue/etc. Wrote from 11:45am to 1:11pm and got it back up to 59,891.

Writing - Novel 2

57949 to 59949, 1:07 pm to 1:57 pm. 2000 words exactly. How did I do this today and exactly 3000 the other day? I don't know! It's craaaaaaaaazy!

It's also about time for another editing pass. I think the time has come to rip out the background info, dropped scenes, and outline into its own document, which will give me a more realistic word count (probably dropping me back 3000 words or so, but that's not a bad thing), because I'm not referring back to them regularly any more - the story has its own momentum and I know what's left in the outline well enough that I just need to glance at it once every other writing session or so.

Writing - Novel 2

7:34 pm to 8:32 pm
55056 to 57949