Yesterday I talked a little about how I’m approaching this revision process, the tweaks I’m making. I woke up this morning with a really bad sore throat–red, swollen, and hurts to swallow. It’s my only symptom, besides feeling like crap. But as I had most of this post finished anyway I thought I’d post it.
Parts of the “what” I need to rewrite feels very tenuous and out there, and I’m just not sure how to hack it down more. I’ve categorized everything in one place. But it still feels very unwieldy.
I made a list of all the categories of things that I need to rewrite, trying to achieve more of a focus. My thinking is that I only have to improve one area at a time. I don’t have to try to rewrite everything at the same time. I can instead follow themes or threads through all three.
- Write missing scenes
- Character arc edit
- Witch edit
- World/technology edit
- Magic/harp edit
- Prologues/Epilogues
- God edit
- Travel edit
- Summary edit
- Timeline edit
- Scene edit
- Polish
I have some scenes that I know are missing that I need to add
Now that I know the full arc of every character, I need to make those arcs arch more, shift the starting state of one character to the side a bit, then push all of them to further extremes.
The Witches changed some, during the course of the three novels. The seeds of their final characteristics are already there, but some of them need to bloom sooner.
Some things about the world weren’t discovered until the final novel, and they need to be woven back into the start
I started with a pretty good idea of how the magic and the harps worked. They changed a little toward the end. I need to decide if the change stays (and gets woven in) or if I rewrite to remove. Plus verifying that I did, indeed, follow my own rules all the way through.
Currently, all three books have prologues, and if you call the last chapter in the last book an epilogue (which it kind of is) they all have epilogues as well. Are they necessary? How much do they add? They all need a lot of work if I keep them.
As I think I posted — there’s a lot about hell, nothing about heaven. Need to add that. And other god like things.
Sometimes it only takes days to go from A to B. Other times it takes months. I need to figure out more concrete distances, as well as travel times. It might make more sense for the Six Kingdoms to be smaller, but people don’t travel for other reasons (see world edit, above.)
Find all those places where I summarized and expand. (Primarily a problem in novels 2 & 3.)
I frequently have 2-3 story lines going at the same time. Need to make sure that if Derik and Jorg spend 3 weeks doing X, that when Peri meets up with them, she’s also spent 3 weeks doing something. This is all fixed in the first novel, not so much in novels 2 & 3.
This one’s the bitch. Going through every single scene and verifying that it’s doing what I want it to do. Looking at every scene and saying, what’s the character want, what’s opposing him or her, what’s the resolution? This is the edit that can potentially take months, all on its own.
After I finish all of the above, print every chapter and read it out loud. My ear will catch a bunch of things my eye will miss.
So that’s my list. As I said, the scene edit is the biggest portion of what I need to do — and may cause the most changes to the novels. It will also tighten everything very effectively.
Do you try and do all of the edits in one pass – or do you do one pass per bulleted item?
I’m going to end up doing a bunch of passes. Perhaps one pass per bulletted item. But some items aren’t as wide spread as others. So while it will require a “pass” through all three novels, I’ll only have to really focus on a few parts in those novels.
That all looks like a crapton of work. Eeesh.
Yeah. There’s a reason why though I’m supposed to start tonight, I’m still procrastinating a little. Well, long enough to glance through my reading list on LJ, make some tea and then. . .start.