It’s all covered in red, red, red. Track changes has been on for a week now and I haven’t accepted any of them. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I have a huge rewrite ahead of me.
Basically, it’s gone like this:
- I wrote four drafts of the novel. (outline, writing, editing)
- I found the courage to have three people read it.
- They enjoyed it but got hopelessly lost in some of the locations/people/plot twists. (It is an epic fantasy, afterall.)
- I rewrote the beginning and the end to make the whole thing tighter.
- I edited the start of the middle.
- Then I choked.
Why did I choke?
Because there was no sense between the start of the middle and the end.
So, the last week I’ve been buried in re-visioning my book. Same characters, same story, only better. It’s really intense to take something you’ve done, a story you told and say, “What if it didn’t happen like that? What if it happened some other way that you don’t know about?” And then, open mind up to letting that other way show itself to you. I sit quietly and let it play and replay and replay in my head as it reveals itself.
What it has resulted in is:
- Four (yes, FOUR!) more characters have been cut (moved to book 2).
- One character has been promoted. (I always loved Nurse Tilda.)
- One location has been cut (moved to book 2).
- The protagonist’s goal has shifted in Act II to be more in line with Act I & III. (Yeah, I write prose in screenwriter speak.)
- The cutting of about 100 pages. (Making it a total cutting of about 200 pages from Draft 4 and writing 300 new pages for Draft 5.)
So now my previous Draft 4 manuscript is seriously bleeding. I have just this morning stitched together the gaping wounds with all the bullet points I’ve been meditating on.
Let the rewrite begin (again).
Ah, now this is true writing bravery… revisioning and making big but important changes. I wish you the best with it and hope it goes quickly and smoothly for you. I’m not far enough in my novel yet to be where you are right now, but I suspect I’ll get there soon. Thanks for following me on Twitter. If you get a chance, stop by my blog anytime. And nice to meet you!
Thanks for stopping by! It’s been a little traumatic this week, which I’m about to blog about – however, I have faith that one day this manuscript will be polished and ready to publish.
AH, Let the blood lettting begin! I have 200 pages in a “cut” file. I remember the days when I though I’d never ba able to write 200 pages… and now I’ve cut that many. Good luck!
Thanks! I think what frightens me most is that over the years I’m great at cutting and rewriting – I do it a lot – but what is coming up for me next is the fine, small work…
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I so hear you with this….My manuscript has been bleeding for the last few weeks as well. But you know what, one thing that helped me was that I realised I had listened to people too much (however well-intentioned) and I had overanalyzed and over-edited to the point that I fell out of love with my story. It had morphed into something I did not recognise. So as crazy as it was: I stopped. Went back to my first draft and then edited while keeping to the heart of my story. I also had a story that confused a few of my first readers so I tightened that up and brought some clarity in but on the whole I have stuck with the heart of what I first wrote. I am now coming to the end bit of this final edit and I am back in love with my story.
I wish you much luck with your rewrites but don’t be too hard on yourself…I know I was too hard on my story. Sometimes the writer is just too close to the story to see the trees for the forest.