I finished Nancy Kress's "Beginnings, Middles and Ends". The end chapters had some of the most useful advice for me: to combine scenes and write lean. It's advice I used to know well. Back in the 90's, when I was first writing, I had a printed page above my computer that said, "Terse". It's something I'm going to need to relearn.
Right now, I create a lot of compound sentences. I'm getting better at trimming away the fat, adverbs, but I have a ways to go, still. I've always thought in parenthetical sentences. It's just the way my mind works. One thing will remind me of another and I'll sandwich in the new thought. I need to start breaking those sentences up in my second draft of Angel Odyssey. I think. I don't really know, though. Maybe the compound sentences work. I haven't gotten a lot of negative feedback on my writing style, so far. But I do think writing lean is a better way to go.
Then there's trimming. I won't deny it, I have a hard time cutting things and knowing what to cut. In my second or third draft of Angel Odyssey, I'll need to be looking for ways to compressing scenes. Or, maybe not. Again, I think with novels, giving the reader room to breathe and see the world isn't a bad thing. It's all about immersion. But there's immersive text and then there's fat. I need to cut the fat but leave enough to give it flavor.
I do intend to write this leaner but it will be a bigger struggle, I feel, than writing the story in the first place. Wish me luck.
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