Jason Penney's thoughts on writing, life, and other stuff
Reached the end of Chapter 5 (not that the existing chapter breaks are going to mean much of anything). I’m surprised how easy it is to brutally remove entire scenes, ones I loved when I wrote them, and replace them with a single line somewhere else. Some of the POV adjustments are a bit more time consuming.
I hope to get back to this today, but I’ve got a lot of other stuff to get done, so no promises.
Quick post today. I have to go grill, but I wanted to update my progress.
Nothing went at all to plan today, but I got a bit more done.
Chapters 3 and 4 have a number of POV characters. I didn’t head hop within scenes, but I did change characters at scene breaks. I don’t think it’s at all confusing. I had considered rewriting each chapter as a single POV, but I’m not sure I can unless I want to have some very short chapters, or I can come up with some very interesting new material. Chapter 2 was the same way, but I was able to easily reassign the scenes to other characters and make an even split between two of them.
I’m going to push on and hope for the best. I’ll keep trying for single POV per chapter and if it works out everywhere else I’ll have to come back to this stuff. I’ll just make a note in the notebook for now.
Had a really busy weekend, but I finally was able to get some time in tonight… err.. this morning. Fairly heavy rewrites. Changed the point of view on a number of scenes. I removed a few scenes and was able to replace them with only a sentence or two in a later scene. I like some of the stuff I cut, but it really didn’t fit anymore. I wrote a few new scenes as well. I’ll need to review them before moving on, but I’m too tired to do that right now.
I’m going to try and post progress any time I work on the revision. I’ll also put the current page count. I only had a bit of time, but I made some more progress on Chapter 2 today. I had to stop to get other stuff done, but I need to roll some potential changes around in my head.
There’s a great cliffhanger in the middle of Chapter 2. Chapter 2 is too long. It doesn’t have enough material to be split as is (especially since I’m cutting left and right), but I think I see an opportunity to flesh out another important character sooner rather than later.
I doubt I’ll get back to it until at least Sunday, but it’ll be bouncing around my head until then. I’m actually excited about the story again, which is great.
Amazingly I managed to get started today even though many things conspired against me.
I completed the discovery section of the One Pass Revision with little issue. I had pretty much done all that stuff before starting the story, and some of it even still applied. I worry that it may have been too easy. Maybe I did something wrong? We’ll see.
So I started the slog. I managed to be brutal. I hacked the entire first chapter right out of the book. It was a tough choice, but I think it was the right one. I’m holding on to it, because it could easily be expanded into a short story on it’s own, but the book doesn’t need it. Do I think the book is better without it? I’m not sure, but it’s not the solid start I want, so it had to go.
Chapter 2 Scene 1 didn’t need too much work. Chapter 2 Scene 2 wasn’t bad, but I rewrote most of it. Chapter 2 is light on dialog. Chapter 1 wasn’t. Since it’s gone, I needed to get some more dialog into the book earlier. This removed a bit of infodumping, and allowed me to improve some weak characterization.
Not a bad hour and half’s worth of work. Special thanks to the kids for letting me get it done.
Ok. I think I’m ready to start on the revisions. Let me just check the supply list
Denise took the children out shopping after dinner, so I was able to spend some time on the desk before heading out to training for the night. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to use now.
As usual, I’m pretty busy, but my goal is to have the revision done by the end of July.
I feel compelled to recommend 2YN: The Two-Year Novel Course, Year One, by Lazette Gifford to anyone who has even considered writing a novel. I haven’t yet read the book, but I did take the class on which the book is based. In fact, I’m taking it again for my next novel.
Having gone through the process, and I can tell you that it works. Pick up a copy now. It is currently available as a downloadable PDF, so you can get started right away. What are you waiting for?
It’s time to get back to editing my first novel. I’m going to start over. I read lots of articles on editing when I started, and one of them really stuck out: Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Manuscript Revision. I recently re-read the article, and it makes a lot more sense now. Right from the opening it grabbed me and said, “Just start over and try this.”
The first draft of your novel is finished. Now, according to the recommendations of any number of writing books, pundits, and writers who go through this themselves, you’re in for five or ten or more rounds of revision, in which you’ll polish your work until it is a gleaming, perfect pearl … and in which process you’ll dither for months or years.
You can do that if you want. But you don’t have to.
I believed that when I read it the first time, but I didn’t have the confidence to try it. Instead I tried something which can only be called “my way.” I can tell you with great confidence that “my way” sucks big time. Maybe I needed to fail on my own before trusting someone else on this. Who knows.
So I need to start with the Supplies section, and the thing that sticks out right now is:
A table where you have room to stack your manuscript into three piles and have the spiral-bound notebook open at the same time.
Yeah. I have that. It’s the rear section of my desk. Problem is it currently looks like this:
So that’ll be step one for me. Clean the desk!
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