another editing update
A month ago I posted that I'd finished editing part 1 of The Overworld. I said at the time that I was going to spend a week making some additional changes before moving on to part 2. Well, in fact I've spent the past month in that pursuit, but now I finally have a beginning that's better, stronger, faster. *
The first edit was really a rewrite. I made a bunch of big changes to the characters and events, which turned the first section of the novel into what I really wanted it to be. It was a better written and thought-out beginning, but it didn't end up much shorter. On this second pass through, I was really editing, scrutinizing every sentence. I'm getting a clearer and clearer sense of how this editing thing works, and I've been cutting out a lot of unnecessary words.
I already want to make even more changes to the first few chapters, but I'm resisting that urge and really moving forward now. Part 2 is the most bloated section, with a lot more events than the structure of the story can reasonably support. My next step is to pull out the index cards again and take a good, hard look at part 2, because I realize now that I didn't cut enough in my initial planning. I hope that my work so far has given me a a good understanding of how much can fit into each chapter, so that this time I can get it right before rewriting.
* Bonus points if you completed that sentence with "The King! Of! Spain!" (Don't mention Lisa!)
The first edit was really a rewrite. I made a bunch of big changes to the characters and events, which turned the first section of the novel into what I really wanted it to be. It was a better written and thought-out beginning, but it didn't end up much shorter. On this second pass through, I was really editing, scrutinizing every sentence. I'm getting a clearer and clearer sense of how this editing thing works, and I've been cutting out a lot of unnecessary words.
I already want to make even more changes to the first few chapters, but I'm resisting that urge and really moving forward now. Part 2 is the most bloated section, with a lot more events than the structure of the story can reasonably support. My next step is to pull out the index cards again and take a good, hard look at part 2, because I realize now that I didn't cut enough in my initial planning. I hope that my work so far has given me a a good understanding of how much can fit into each chapter, so that this time I can get it right before rewriting.
* Bonus points if you completed that sentence with "The King! Of! Spain!" (Don't mention Lisa!)