Saturday, July 17, 2010

Aditing

Sigh, so I axed the ending of the book. It wasn't the true ending, at least not for me and subconciously I think it was colouring the whole story. I chopped the last 1.5K and popped it into a separate file for now and I'll look at it again when I reach that point. I then started over with my revisions process at the beginning and now it's all flying again. The story is making sense and I think Kate and Steve's relationship is better, stronger and more believable. Even with losing 1.5k I'm still almost 1k up on where I started and I'm only on chapter seven. I should easily hit my target word count. I always adit rather than edit my work as I write really quite sparingly when I do the first draft. All the colour and emotion gets added later as I gradually layer in what I want. For me the process is like making a watercolour - you make a sketch then add softer colours and hues washing them in until you build a picture.For other writers I know it's more like working in oils where they build the first draft with a palette knife and then take off the layers of paint to reveal the details. Both ways work but I'm an aditer, a water colourist. Which one are you?

4 comments:

Lizzie Lamb said...

this is a test from Lizzie

Lizzie Lamb said...

this is a test, Nell as I've been unable to leave comments . . .

Nell Dixon said...

Yay, Lizzie! I can see you!

Judy Jarvie said...

Wow Nell! Brilliant post (I'm so interested in this!) Especially at the moment as in working on revisions with an editor I've realised I'm the opposite. I'm the oily one. Thank heaven someone's finally pointed it out and made it okay to go back and re-do!