Editing - Novel 2

The scissors come out for the first time!

I took a quick pass through the first chapter and cut pretty ruthlessly. I did this with the plan of cutting the prologue entirely. Backstory - bah! I should be able to tell everything I need to as the story progresses. Besides, this lets me keep a few more mysteries for later in the story and let the protagonists figure them out as they go. Keeps things more interesting all around.

I do like this pattern, though - writing an expository prologue/intro, then going into the first few dozen pages, then going back and ripping out the exposition section. It makes things go right into more active settings, and gives me a reference background as I'm starting the story that holds more backstory detail than the outline.