I've finally finished my first round of aditing on You, Me and Him. In the process I removed the epilogue and added over 7k to the main book. I changed around the order of events in the last two chapters so they made more sense and strengthened the ending. I layered in more emotion and upped the stakes in some key scenes. I smoothed some transitions and enlarged on the dialogue sequences.
My next round now is to seek and destroy the words I love a little too much and make sure the story is hanging together well. This bit is like sanding the whole thing down to get rid of any splinters or snags that might snare an unwary reader.
4 comments:
Nell, I would like to know how many days/hours it took you to do all that? I struggle days, sometimes weeks on a go through edit. If I have to add something to beef up a scene it's a struggle.
Thanks
Hi John, this is a 90-100k book and it took me about 40 hours to do this first round of aditing. I am very thorough and picky but on the plus side I rarely get revisions or only very small revisions later down the line. I've spent another 6 hours today polishing and taking out words I love too much (theres a list of those in the craft section on my website) and then I'll do my backwards edit where I work paragraph by paragraph from the end of the book to the start making sure the last third of the story is really strong and that I'm not repeating myself or being boring.
Nell, I went aboard your website and found it helpful. You are a productive writer and if I could get a third done you have here in this post I would be happy. My first novel, Timekeeper, took 7 years to complete. Now my heart is set on romantic comedy and each day I try to improve my skill by working on my new book, American Fat. That's been going on for 5 years.
Thanks for sharing your skills.
I'm so glad it helped you, John, good luck with your writing.
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