A couple more chapters edited last night. Reading aloud is useful but tiring, I’m finding. If I keep at it, I’m sure I’ll get better. It does help me catch phrasing problems and typos. It is slow going. Part of the problem with editing for me is that it requires a lot of thinking and deciding. When I’m writing, it’s all coming out on the fly. I may go back and change something here and there as I write but I’m just keeping things flowing. Editing is a much more intellectually involved process. I need to decide if this sentence looks right, if this section is necessary to the plot, if this dialog works, etc…
I have been cutting anything that makes me wince. Occasionally, if it’s plot-important, I’ll re-write wincers but on the whole, cutting seems to be the better choice. I am seeing the story with fairly fresh eyes and it needs trimming almost as much as my back yard. (Almost). I’m killing as many adverbs as I can, stomping out semi-colons and just trying to keep it interesting and realistic. Of course, lurking behind all this is the suspicion that my first draft was more interesting and more true. But in the end, readers have to decide.
I’ve also been thinking some about the climax of the book. Right now I have a physical climax and an emotional climax. I’m trying to think about how I can get the two in the same scene. I may not be able to. So much of what I wanted to write about is the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, so I have all these small peaks throughout the story. More thinking is required…which is why the editing takes so bloody long.
I have been cutting anything that makes me wince. Occasionally, if it’s plot-important, I’ll re-write wincers but on the whole, cutting seems to be the better choice. I am seeing the story with fairly fresh eyes and it needs trimming almost as much as my back yard. (Almost). I’m killing as many adverbs as I can, stomping out semi-colons and just trying to keep it interesting and realistic. Of course, lurking behind all this is the suspicion that my first draft was more interesting and more true. But in the end, readers have to decide.
I’ve also been thinking some about the climax of the book. Right now I have a physical climax and an emotional climax. I’m trying to think about how I can get the two in the same scene. I may not be able to. So much of what I wanted to write about is the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, so I have all these small peaks throughout the story. More thinking is required…which is why the editing takes so bloody long.
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