On the good side, my novel has shrunk down to about 126,500 words. It’s finally in the ballpark of being where I want it to be and down 27,000 words from the last revision.

I’m planning on trying to get my novel done by the end of the year so the busy isn’t likely to end soon. Also, I’m trying to figure out what to blog. There’s only so much talking about editing one can do.

I’ve also had a short chance to play with an iPad and while it’s a bit heavy, it seems nice enough for reading as well. I haven’t had a chance to try some of the others, but since I wanted that ability to make notes with a stylus there wasn’t a lot of competition for me. I would think the Kindle, Nook, Kobo Readers, and other E-ink readers would give a similar experience. Also, I don’t think the iPod Touch and iPhone can be ignored, they are pretty handy devices for reading on the go.

I can’t see the e-reader replacing the paper book anytime real soon, from a psychological aspect I really feel like I own something when I have a book to put on the shelf as opposed to a file on my device. It’s easy to lend that book to someone else, I can donate to a library, or I could sell it for a pittance at a used book store. But there are millions of E-readers out there so it seems like it has to have an effect. I think that’s another blog post in the making.

If I take good scenes out, I’ll still have them available to me and I do think I’ll put them back in there for my own purposes. Is being pragmatic worth potentially doing damage to my creation? I think it’s a difficult question, but I’ve decided to go with being pragmatic. I’d like to share this thing I’ve created and getting published would be the best path to doing that. A PDF on my website likely won’t get noticed. Of course, the odds of getting published aren’t very good, but I don’t think I should make it that much harder by exceeding the length that publishers want.

Maybe E-publishing will help loosen up those sizes a little since it will factor out the cost of printing the bigger book, but there is still the cost of editing those extra words. I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s going to change things very dramatically for awhile yet.

The reason I’m going through the effort is twofold.

First, it’s good to go through and remove whatever seems unneeded. Maybe it’s a bit of dialogue that is serving no purpose, maybe it’s a description of a character that appears in all of one paragraph, maybe it’s an action sequence that’s only there because I feel like it’s been awhile since since there’s been action, but some stuff just has to go.

Second, there’s the getting published aspect. Publishers aren’t interested in long books from unknown authors. It’s understandable really, they’re betting the production costs of the book that it’ll make money. With a first-time author the bet is probably not going to pay off, so why risk more money?

Now a lot of popular fantasy books are big, fat ones that you see eating up space on the bookshelf. But these books are from established authors or were published back when the rules where a bit different. When I started working on a book, I didn’t research any of this, so it never occurred to me that I couldn’t write a 180,000 word book and realistically submit it. The fantasy I grew up on had longer books than that, and if they weren’t, often it was book one of a series and didn’t really come to an end in that first book.

Anyhow, I know better now, and I’m shooting for 120,000 words. I’m just under 140,000 words now and dropping more words all the time.

Why do I need to get rid of so many words? This is a case of pragmatism. From my research it seems like 120,000 words is about as big a book as agents and publishers will consider for a first time author. If it gets bigger than that, then the odds increase that it won’t even be looked at.

When I started the book, I didn’t know a lot, I just wrote and the Fantasy books on my shelf tended to be longer than 120k–some much longer–so it never occurred to me that my book would be too long. It’s been a bit depressing at times trying to figure out how I can cut it down that much, but my rough draft was 178k so I’m closing in. Getting another 23k out is a lot less daunting than 58k.

The other factor is that I’m not doing the most interesting part of the process. I’m trying to dump words and there isn’t a lot of excitement with the process.

There are several places that adverbs stick out like weeds.

One is the dialogue attributions, where the pattern is “X said [adverb]” such as:

"Maybe they have a point," he said reasonably

The problem with the adverb here is pretty easy to spot, the dialogue itself is reasonable, and if it’s not, then it needs to be be made reasonable. Either way, the adverb is unnecessary.

Another is the verb-adverb pair, where a verb teams up with an adverb.

She walked quickly to the door

The problem with this one is that a single verb will work better. In this case, it could be “She hurried to the door”. The single verb, if one can be found, is always better. Sometimes there really isn’t a verb that will work, but it’s always worth considering.

A third case is really a special case of the verb-adverb pair. It’s a single adverb, ‘suddenly’. I don’t know how many times I’ve come across the word ‘suddenly’ where it isn’t needed.

He suddenly popped out of his chair

In most cases ‘He popped out of his chair’ would be sufficient. Sometimes suddenly really is suddenly, but in my opinion it gets overused in a very serious way.

The other case I can think of is the adverb used to modify an adjective that is generic.

She moved very fast.

This uses the adverb ‘very’ when picking stronger language would be better, ‘She moved like lightening’.

Hopefully I can hunt down all the bad ones, but it’s easier said than done.

Well, maybe it’s not that exciting. I have a list of books or series that I’ve read or started reading and I recommend, don’t recommend , or something in between.

As I have time, I’ll add the reasons for my rankings, and more books as I either read new ones or manage to recall other books I’ve read. A few have already appeared on the blog, but many others haven’t.

Right now I’m trying to squeeze as many words as I can out of “The Dead Mountain”. Partly, that’s because the longer a book is, the harder it’ll be to get published. However, it also makes for a better book period. I can see the flow improving as I chop out the dead wood.

The downside of removing words is trying to work in details of the setting and characters. In the big fantasy tomes there’s plenty of space to start the story slow, and build up the history of the character and spend time in the setting. But this isn’t going to be a 250k chunk of paper that can be used to bludgeon someone into submission. I’m going to have to be lean on the details to get through the plot. I really like the plot and the idea of quick moving book feels appealing.

Physical descriptions of characters seems like an area of contention. I’ve seen advice to both describe in detail and not to describe at all. Necessity demands I take the minimal detail approach, but I can also the reasoning. If the reader forms an image in his or her mind, then they’re probably going to ignore the writer’s carefully written physical details. Worse, adding some physical characteristic after the character is introduced might be jarring when it’s at odds with the existing mental image. So the characters will have a light touch on physical details, enough to give the reader a guideline, but not trying to fill it all in.

The setting is trickier, it’s a fantasy book so the world can’t be ignored, the reader has to know things about it. Here is where I’m going to have to feel my way along and hope I can do an adequate job. I’m thinking about adding quotes from a fictional book written by a character in the story at the beginning of every chapter. Maybe that can help fill some things in without having to add exposition or scenes unnecessary to the plot in the story.

My goal is to have a story that doesn’t bog down but has just enough detail to keep the reader in the world. Time will tell if I can pull it off.

Aimee twisted around, surveying the field for the little boy. She didn't see him anywhere. “Where'd he go?”

The problem here is that the I’m stating the obvious. The action and the dialogue indicate that Aimee can’t see the little boy, so I don’t need to tell the reader this. The paragraph can be shortened to:

Aimee twisted around, surveying the field for the little boy. “Where'd he go?”

There, I’ve lost five words and no meaning. I think this falls under the general category of “telling”, but that’s such a broad term that I prefer to call this “stating the obvious”.

Back to more cutting.

Gnarled branches looked like broken fingers reaching for the sky. The sight gave Aimee the uneasy feeling that the trees were writhing in pain.

First, I got rid of “looked like” because it’s weak, I removed “reaching for the sky” because I didn’t think it was necessary. The second sentence seemed a bit too much like telling. The description should stand by itself to give the impression that the POV character feels uneasy.

Gnarled branches stuck out like broken fingers, writhing in pain.

I’m not sure about that comma, I think it might read better without the pause.

Onward to another sentence.

She put a hand to the rough bark, it felt jagged and her hand came away sticky, sap bleeding through rents in the trunk.

This sentence sounds sort of choppy and awkward. Also, rough and jagged are repetitive adjectives. I just shortened it a bit and removed a comma. I wonder if I should take out that “and” as well.

She put a hand to a trunk, and it came away sticky from sap bleeding through rents in the jagged bark.

Moving on, the next sentence also has a couple of problems.

They smelled wrong as well, a moldy, unhealthy smell that made her want to take small breaths.

The opening of the sentence stinks, “They smell wrong as well” is awkward and redundant with rest of the sentence. Instead, I put in an action that expresses the idea “Her nostrils twitched . . .”. The word “unhealthy” is mostly redundant with moldy so that adjective can go. Finally, making her want to hold her breath I think connects better than wanting to take small breaths. With those changes the sentence changes to:

Her nostrils twitched from a moldy scent that made her want to hold her breath.

The final sentence I replaced with a thought. Here, the sentence didn’t say a lot.

She pitied the trees.

Whatever. I think the thought is better since it gives a better idea where the POV character is mentally.

Is this how the trees are in the Wild?

I think the “the” might be unnecessary.

Anyhow, that’s how I managed to cut away 25 words out of 113. In the process, I think it made things read a bit better.

The first sentences of my changes in Post 99 went like this:

"It's so beautiful." Aimee managed to tear her gaze away from the sight.

My first change was to get rid of the word “beautiful”. That reason requires context, I had just used the word “beautiful” before this paragraph. Repeated words stick out like a sore thumb. The next change is to get rid of the “managed to tear”. By adding the “managed to” I’ve weakened the verb and made the action wordy. With those changes the sentences become:

"It's incredible." Aimee tore herself away from the sight.

Now on to the third sentence.

For the first time, she really noticed the trees around them.

I got rid of “really”. It’s the worst kind of adverb, one that’s unnecessary. The sentence loses nothing by taking it out. Then I eliminated the “around them” because the context establishes that fact already. Shorter and more to the point.

For the first time, she noticed the trees.

Sentence four.

The trunks looked as though some giant hand had twisted them horribly, as if trying to wring out the sap.

First off, I think I can get away with a pronoun here, so I use “They” to mean the trees. Being twisted by a giant hand sounds kinda horrible, so I can lose the adverb. Another bad adverb, taking it out loses nothing. I used “as” twice in the original sentence so I needed to address that. It reads fine without the “as if” so I can simply remove the words.

They looked as though some giant hand had twisted them, trying to wring out the sap.

I’ll leave the rest for the next post, I need to get some more editing done in the manuscript right now.

Into paragraphs like this:

"It's incredible." Aimee tore herself away from the sight. For the first time, she noticed the trees. They looked as though some giant hand had twisted them, trying to wring out the sap. Gnarled branches stuck out like broken fingers, writhing in pain. She put a hand to a trunk, and it came away sticky from sap bleeding through rents in the jagged bark. Her nostrils twitched from a moldy scent that made her want to hold her breath. Is this how the trees are in the Wild?

Thus, 113 words become 88 words.

Does the second one read better than the first? I think it does. Next post I’ll pick through the reasons behind the changes and cuts.

I feel a bit stalled out at the moment, but that’s almost entirely due to work eating up time. Hopefully, I can get rolling again soon.

Lately, the day job has been eating into the work on the book both in time and in mental energy. It’s slowing me down, but the march toward a better revision goes on.

I need to do a better job on the blog too. It’s hard to write blog entries when I get the time because I want to make progress on the book instead. Maybe I can blog some examples of revision to give a window into the editing process.

My wife has done a lot of work marking up my first revision and really helping me cut out words. Now I’m going through and applying that good stuff with tweaks and cuts of my own. I expect I’ll add another iteration of chapter 1 to the blog pretty soon to show the evolution continuing.

This is my no means the last iteration, this is all about cutting and tweaking. Putting on that final coat of polish and hunting down punctuation and grammar errors will come later.

I’ve also been listening to my revision while commuting. Hearing the writing really makes mistakes pop out and slap the ear. Repeated words, repetition in description, and typos all conspire to make me wince as I drive along. Computer text to speech can only go so far though, it makes the words sound dull since the computer doesn’t know how to read a story. Everything comes out as a drone even if the voice is a high quality one.

The way I’m working, it looks like my second revision is going to be about making the plot changes and cuts I have planned. The third revision is going to be all about tightening, loosening up the prose, correcting mistakes, and trying to turn little patches of telling into integral parts of the scene.

I’m having some doubts that I’ll ever be able to make it read the way I want, like maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe the feeling will pass.

Unfortunately, a lot of work remains, but this is still a huge milestone. Almost every word was rewritten with this revision, so to some extent I have a new rough draft.

Now the time has come to pull out the knives and start cutting away the dead wood while making a few additions. The good thing is that I don’t think I need to rewrite the whole thing again. The next step will be to take care of the cuts and additions so I can get to rephrasing and getting rid of unnecessary words. There’s other work too, I need to reinforce the characteristics of the characters so each can stand out as unique, make more vivid descriptions of setting without making descriptions longer, cut repetition, replace verb-adverb pairs with stronger verbs, and all the other things that make the writing more compelling.

My latest audiobook was Killing Floor by Lee Child

It was a good read with a few niggles. He maintains a good level of tension in the story by keeping some mystery and danger going through the whole book. The main character is pretty good, the author delivers some good backstory and motivations without just dumping it in exposition. The two important secondary characters are also well drawn, beyond that the characters are role players with exaggerated characteristics, but I think that actually works well.

There are problems though. I think the book runs too long, sometimes there are scenes that feel like they could be cut. Also there are a couple of massive coincidences that are awfully improbable and a couple of scenes I just couldn’t buy. Some of the action scenes felt a little drawn out for me, not the amount of action, more like too many words spent on one event in the sequence.

I got the audiobook on a recommendation to see how the author establishes characters without a lot of words. However, I don’t think it’s a fit style-wise. Killing Floor is written in first-person from the perspective of, essentially, a detective, so he can just tell the reader what characters are like. It fits perfectly in this context, but it’s not something I can do in my story.

**** Spoiler ****

If you’re curious, the scenes I couldn’t buy were the airport scene where, first of all, the foot traffic is described more like a tsunami. I can’t really see people hanging onto a pole to avoid being swept away by the crowd. I thought Jack and the walkways was a bit too much as well. The part I really couldn’t buy was the killing of Molly. They had to shove her through the flap in the baggage carousal without attracting attention in a busy airport, and somehow they did this without characters standing at the baggage area exits or anyone else in the airport noticing despite stating that the woman was a ‘screamer’ later. Didn’t make sense. I also couldn’t buy the way Jack found Paul Hubble late in the book. Too many variables to have guessed it that easily.

The coincidences were Jack’s brother being killed where he happened to get off the bus, the book does acknowledge that’s highly improbable. The other one being that the one FBI guy they have help is the one FBI guy in on the plot. That felt contrived especially since there was no particular reason for the FBI guy to be in on it.

Still a good read, just those niggles.

click for full size

I don’t think a map is necessary for the book, really, but it does help me stay a bit more consistent.

A year is a lot of time to spend to get to a single revision, or not quite a single revision, but it’s not like I can do this during the day. I think the next time around it’ll go faster, my rough draft will probably be equal to my this book’s first revision. I’ve learned a lot over the last year.

Right now I’m sitting at 62 chapters and nearly 140,000 words. I expect the first revision will end with 155,000 words. That’s 23,000 fewer words than the rough draft, but still way too much for one book. While I resigned myself to splitting the book, I can think of enough cuts to give the one book strategy another try. I’ll have to see once the chopping and tightening begins. My wife already is finding lots of places to lose words with tightening alone, she’s been a tremendous help during the whole process.

One year down, hopefully it won’t be another year before I’m done.

My strategy is to try to find a minimal set of details that give insight into the character’s personality. It doesn’t really matter if the character has dark hair or blue eyes, but shaggy, unkempt hair and penetrating eyes tell the reader something more than physical appearance. I’ll have to think hard with every character introduction to isolate the traits to give details on and make sure they all do double-duty, but I think it’ll be a good approach.

To start off 58, I decided on a bit of narrative summary to get the main character from point A to point B. I had planned a bit more detail and maybe a couple of scenes, but I decided it would be pretty dull. There’s no point in having dull, so I decided to fast-forward over it. Part of the upcoming chopping process will be to find those dull places that don’t really contribute much, and either just remove them or summarize over if a transition is needed.

My current audiobook is Killing Floor by Lee Child, and there are some places that feel cuttable to me, places that I’m tempted to literally fast-forward over to get back to the plot. Maybe they will turn out to be important, we’ll see as the book unfolds. This is crime fiction rather than my usual fantasy and I fear that may limit what I can learn from it. When your main character is a detective and the story is first person, then the author can just tell you a lot of things. It’s completely in character for a detective to notice details and make observations, a great mechanism to sketch in characters with narrative.

The writing is good enough that I didn’t notice it. I want to study the way he describes things since I got a good impression of setting and character even though the book doesn’t have a massive wordcount. I’m trying to develop a strategy for character descriptions so a little study here could be instructive. Expect a post on character description in the future.

Good descriptions are worthless without a good story and it delivered here as well. I felt like a lot of stuff happened in the book and, again, delivered without a huge wordcount. The setting was also interesting, a fantasy version of Europe with an early 20th century feel. I guess this is classified as a young adult book, but it doesn’t feel targeted at youth. I get the impression that the young protagonist is the only reason it’s considered YA.

A good read, I enjoyed it.

At one point I thought 55 (the number that is, not what is happening in the plot) would be the last chapter, but the ‘going big’ decision has changed all that. Now I have a few more chapters to go. Writing is hard, who would have thought?

My next book report will cover ‘The Golden Compass’, I thought it was a good read. I expect I’ll be looking over that book to see how the author does some things. Character and setting descriptions in particular. He seems to make a lot happen in that book without eating up a ton of words, a nifty ability.

This is an interesting article about writing fiction.
Ten Rules For Writing Fiction

Just a quick scan already has me thinking about my strategy on character descriptions.

There have been plenty of times I’ve been trying to do too much with too few words, some obvious, some not. If I try to flesh out these areas I’m going to exceed my word budget even more and I’ve already got at least 20,000 words to cut. No doubt I’ll lose words to tightening and eliminating some unnecessary scenes, but I don’t think it’ll be enough.

I’ve decided for the time being to go big with the story and split it into two books. This means that the ending of the first book will be a bit different, but it will be an ending. Fortunately the story has a pretty natural splitting point.

I’m feeling good and bad about things as I wind down this revision. On the good side, I’m feeling like the next revision won’t be a total rewrite. Not that there isn’t plenty to do, but I’ll be working off the existing draft. On the bad side, the characters and setting are probably too flat. I’ve also been told I do too much telling.

I’ll need to work on those areas, probably hunt down emotion words to deal with the telling. However, I worry about just not having the ability to kill the flatness.

One problem though, this book does not stand by itself. There’s no getting around the fact that the book is just the beginning of a tale. This means the style can afford to be very slow as there are plenty of words available to the author to give backgrounds and flesh out scenes. I wonder if the entire story, spanning multiple books could be improved with a paring down. I’m pretty sure that many scenes could be deleted without harming the main plot or even the character development and that’s generally a good sign they shouldn’t be there.

There’s also a plot element that just doesn’t add up for me and never gets resolved. Maybe it does in the larger story, but after reading this book, I’m left with a rather major part not making any sense at all. There’s a bad guy who wants to do something at the end and it seems like he could have done it many times over before, so what the heck? A mystery is one thing, but right now it just seems sloppy. If it is supposed to be a mystery, then some character in the story needs to ponder it to let me know the author is aware of the inconsistency.

So, a good book, but expect to read more of his books if you want to get the whole story. I’m planning to move onto something else for my next listen.

At this point, the first revision is going to consume more time than the rough draft did. From what I understand of the writing process, this is fairly normal. I’ve read that rewriting is more important than writing and this appears to be very true for me.

I’m hoping to update the blog more often as I move out of the grind of rewriting and more rewriting that I’ve been doing for months.

I think I can land this revision at 130k. Surely there must be another 10k that can be removed from tightening and my planned cuts. I’d also like to work in a few more details so I’m hoping to cut 15 – 20k and put about 5k back in just fleshing out descriptions and characters.

One of the big changes between this revision and the rough draft are scenes. This revision is much more scene oriented with less narrative. I think this is the primary improvement of this particular revision and the reason I’ve rewritten almost everything from the rough draft. My hope is that the next revision won’t require this kind of transformation and won’t therefore take as long. I’ve been grinding on this revision for a long time now. At least it’s a big improvement over the rough draft.

I finished the David Eddings book and it indeed has no real conclusion in the one book. However, I want to sample another author so I won’t be going on with the series.

I’ve dug into 41 now and have gotten through the opening fight. Now for the flight, and a couple of complications before going onto 42.

I think I have a definite plan for shortening the beginning though it may only net me about 5,000 words or so. Maybe I can cut a little from chapter 12 and 13 as well and get another 2,000 words or so. After that, I’m not sure, there is so much interdependency.

The other plan would be to slow things down and give more detail while going to a two book solution. I’d have to juice up the plot in the beginning half though since it was never meant to be complete story.

I haven’t gotten a lot of feedback of late which is to be expected during the holiday season, so I’m hoping that will help me formulate the plan.

There is a lot to do once I’m through with this revision. Go with a one book plan, go with a two book plan, or maybe both and see which one works best and then cleaning up the winner. Hopefully, the next revision won’t require the kind of total rewriting I’m doing now though if I go with two books I’ll definitely need some new material to make the first book come to some sort of conclusion and to complicate the plot a bit.

I’m almost through another audio book from the library. This one is Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings. I have the feeling this book is not going to have a conclusion.

Speaking of killing words, I find I sometimes do stuff like this.

“I don’t like this.” He felt a sense of apprehension claw into his mind.

Rather repetitive, hopefully there’s enough of those to knock out a good number of words.

If you are wondering why I pick out the books I do, it’s because I’m checking them out from the library and my selections are not vast. So, I’ve never heard of the book or the author, but it was available so I got it.

I didn’t make it through this book, I just lost interest. Some of the reason might be because of the format, I think this book might be better for reading than listening, I really couldn’t say unless I read it. The book reads a lot like a Dungeons and Dragons adventure turned in a novel. The four main characters are a fighter, a thief, a sorceress, and a healer and they appear to be in a dungeon crawl making their way through encounters. This is where the book failed for me, I felt like the story wasn’t going anywhere. There were some hints at a larger story, but they were merely asides to the narrative. I wanted more stuff to happen, some sort of character arcs, some larger context, or at least for them to get somewhere.

The sorceress is a good character, but the others felt pretty flat. Good characters are hard, I’m not sure any of mine are where I’d like in terms of development. I had a hard time getting a feel for the other figures in the story outside of their generic descriptions. The villain of the piece just seems like he’s pure evil without any shades, and his minions act just like evil minions should act.

There is some good stuff here though. I like the descriptive text and the action is nicely written, but that loses its luster when they keep doing the same things and stay in the same place.

My overall rating is meh. Solid writing, but a bland story with bland characters.

The lack of enthusiasm for the chapter has me feeling a bit discouraged about the publishing potential. I’m not sure that a book of publishable length will quite do it for the plot. I might have to make a longer version that isn’t really publishable if I want to do something with it aside from submitting. That’s a decision for later I suppose.

Hopefully, things will progress a little better with the next few chapters and I can start getting into the last third of this rewrite. I really, really want to get the rewrite done so I can come up with a plan to create the final version.

“Mean and pretty is a scary combination for me.” — Curtis

I’m through Chapter 30 now. Chapter 30 starts an interesting part of the story, I stay in a different POV for an extended period of time. I’m finding that I’m still rewriting almost everything, so it’s a long ways from being done. Hopefully, the next revision won’t be as big a change, I really don’t think it will.

In addition to writing, I’m reading some fantasy books. Well, listening, because I don’t have much time to read and I can double up my time by listening while I commute. Right now I’m listening to Terry Brook’s Sword of Shannara on the recommendation of a friend. It isn’t outright bad, but it feels like something from another era.

Here’s what I mean by that. The story itself is written in third-person omniscient instead of a specific POV. Something about that style doesn’t feel modern to me. I think it’s because it puts me a step away from the characters and immediacy is more valued today. Maybe it’s just me though.

Another thing that stands out is the exposition. There’s a lot of it, a whole lot, at times an unbelievable amount. It’s written as dialogue, but it’s just a character lecturing and it’s about as exciting as lecturing sounds. I’ve skipped over some of it, but it just kept going on and on and I won’t remember or care about it later in the book.

There’s also a good deal of telling. I’m told how characters are, or how they feel, or what they are doing instead of events unfolding in real time. I just got told that a character is very affable and lifts the spirits of the others, and I still haven’t seen any examples of this. We’ll see if it happens.

Finally, it’s just plain big, a huge word count that I don’t think a first time author would have a hope of getting away with today. So far I can see how a more restrictive word count would have helped the story, there’s some uninteresting parts that could be cut *cough* exposition *cough*.

It’s obviously derivative of Tolkien as well, but I won’t knock it for that. A lot of epic (high, classic, pick your word) fantasy steals elements from Tolkien, though this one maybe steals more than most. An oddball development is that the setting appears to be post-apocalyptic version of our world, though it makes no difference in the story so far. I’ll be disappointed if it never makes a difference, because, why make it that way?

That all makes it sound like I hate the book and that’s not true. It’s been a decent story so far, but that’s all it is, a tale, not an experience. I doubt a first time author could get this published today, it belongs to an earlier time. The book could be a lot more compelling if it had to live up to what it takes today.

Loads of stuff happens in these chapters which makes the revision process more fun but perhaps a little harder. Overall, these four chapters are not a lot of fun for the main character, which, of course, makes for good story.

Sometimes it seeems difficult to think I’ll be back through all these chapters again in another revision, but I know it’s not there with this revision so I’ll have to dive back in. I’m amazed at people who work on more than one writing project at a time, I don’t think I could do that, I don’t want to distract from getting things done. It would be all too easy to just produce a bunch of rough drafts without ever doing the serious work of rewrites.

Speaking of distractions, I have a brand new spanking computer game sitting on my shelf in it’s spiffy packaging. Doubtless I’ll lose some writing time to it, but I don’t intend to lose too much, I want to get the project done!

“Why am I a Lady?” — Aimee

Chapter 23 and 24 have been defeated. Well, for this revision anyways. That brings me to chapter 25. This should be a fun chapter, but it really needs work from the rough draft. There is lot of narrative summary in this chapter and narrative summary is not fun to read. My wife told me that this chapter has a lot of missed opportunities and I can see what she means. I summarized over events that have the makings of good scenes.

I need to pick 3-4 good scenes to play in real-time and then very short summaries to glue them together. The challenge will be to do all this without using loads of words. These scenes will have to be short and sweet.

“What? I was supposed to ask your permission?” — Aimee

I made good progress on 23, but it’s taking longer to get past the new stuff than I thought. Thank goodness I cut out a bunch of stuff at this point in the plot. I guess I will press onward with 23 until I hit a point that would make a good chapter break. I think there is some slack in my chapter plan that I can use to prevent word count from exceeding my goal.

In my plan, I had always thought about splitting it off in two directions during my next revision. One, the straightforward revision and two, a modified version without the more adult stuff solely so my daughter could read it. Now I wonder if I could turn that second version into a full-fledged YA derivative. Food for thought, I suppose.

It can be a bit discouraging to go through this long process and still not feel it’s going to be done when I revise that finally chapter, but I have done so much rewriting from the rough draft that being done after this one revision is just not realistic. Hopefully the next revision won’t take so long.

“Don’t you dare tell me you don’t want this” — Holly

My rough draft weighs in at 178,000 word. In other words, way too many. I’ve mapped out my plot and I’m thinking I’ll be able to wrangle down the next revision to 120,000 words or less. That’ll be much more manageable.

On the one hand, I find myself thinking I’m throwing away a novel, 58,000 words or more. On the other hand, having to cut that much is a good exercise in figuring out what’s important. I’ve decided to put a hard cap of 120,000 words on the book, so the cuts will be made. I’m making a couple of plot cuts, but mostly the plot will stay intact. Stuffing the plot into while a smaller number of words can only be good, it’ll keep things moving.

In the next revision, I think there’s going to be plenty of room on tightening the language. My plan is to hit my word count target in this revision and then trade tightening for detail in the next revision. I think this will be a good strategy.

I think the idea that the society has technology founded on magic is lost in the current revision. I need to introduce some of that concept when I revise further. Magic has given this world technology of a sort. I want to get across the idea that magic has changed society, that this isn’t just an idealized medieval Europe typical of fantasy. I think I’ll need to change some terms as well to give less of the typical fantasy feel.

I’m about a third of the way through the first revision and I’m seeing that the second revision will be a lot of work as well. I have read that rewriting is what makes a good writer, maybe I can get there if I work at it hard enough.

The revision process is going to take longer than I thought, I figured it would be at least as long as doing the draft, but now I’m starting to think that figure is going to be more like three times as long. I don’t think I have a goal to finish anymore, just a goal to keep working hard on it when I get the time. Keeping going may be the most important part of the writing process.

“May I suggest we leave before congratulating ourselves,”– Avar

Edmund extraction from my revision is all done. If I hit my target word count I’m almost a third of the way through my revision. Well, my first revision that is, this certainly is not the final draft. There is a lot of work to go.

My current target is 120,000 words for the final version. That will mean cutting 58,000 words from the rough draft. There are still some tough decisions ahead, but I’ve already done some plot cutting so hopefully it will come out close without any more major changes.

120,000 words seems like a good target for a Fantasy Novel in terms of submitting to agents. I’m not especially confident it can get picked up, but if I’m writing it I might as well give it a shot.

I’m at chapter 17 now in my revision and I’m about to enter the middle of the story where lots of stuff happens so motivation should not be a problem.

“It’s just wonderful to know that I mean less to you than a woman who has absolutely no respect for you.” — Aimee

Aimee is the main character of my story, but that hasn’t always been the case. When I took my original try at writing a book, the main character was named Karlac and is still around though the name has changed to Curtis. Aimee didn’t exist in my first attempt, but I thought of an idea of a supporting character who is sort of a technician, as odd as that may sound in the fantasy setting. Then I decided to make the technician a woman to sort of play against stereotype.

When I started going at it again, I decided to use Aimee’s POV to kick things off, but Karlac would be the main character with his POV dominating. However, I liked Aimee as a character better so I made the switch. Curtis/Karlac will still get a couple of POV chapters, but there’s no doubt that it’s Aimee’s story now.

Aimee suffers from insecurities, nerves, and perfectionism. She isn’t a great beauty and isn’t very good in a fight. She isn’t a leader, happy to follow when someone else takes the lead. But the fate of the world comes down to her in the end and she has to use cleverness, courage, and a growing ability to lead to meet the challenge.

I think the story works better with Aimee in the driver’s seat instead of Curtis. The change allowed me to exaggerate Curtis’ characteristics too. Now that he no longer has to shoulder a bunch of responsibility, he can be a bit more absentminded, a bit less brave, and a bit more of a slacker.

“I’ve decided to see how awful I can be to him before he doesn’t want to sleep with me anymore.” — Holly

I’ve been doing some experiments on the early chapters. I did a new POV switch, added a few more details, removed some bits that readers found confusing, and generally tidied up. Of course, I’m having to remove Edmund as well since he has been yanked from the story. Well, not completely, he makes a brief appearance at the beginning, but then disappears forever. My main character also got shorter, she’s down to 5’1″, the 1″ is questionable but she’s not going to give it up. The height isn’t mentioned explicitly, but that’s my image of the character. Her height is given relative to other characters in several places.

I managed to put in a fair amount of time this weekend. The weekend mornings are usually a good time to do some work on the book, and this weekend wasn’t an exception. I also did a bit of extra revising while watching my Chiefs lose to the Oakland Raiders, it’s looking like another long season for them.

Hopefully I’ll be able to buzz through my Edmund removing revisions quickly and start moving through my draft revision again. The experimenting got me a bit bogged down.

“One day, however, people will see that it was all part of God’s greater plan.” — Savin

I’m going to pull yet another character out of my story. Goodbye Edmund.

The problem with Edmund is that he just didn’t impact the plot that much. He had one moment in the plot, but another character can fill that role. Edmund had another major problem, he has a certain personality. He is fatalistic and waxes philosophical in his dialogue. The problem with that personality, is that another character shares it and it makes a whole lot more sense with the other character. Removing Edmund saves me the effort of trying to differentiate the two, though Edmund met his demise before the other character showed up.

A big benefit in removing a character is that it frees up words for my other characters. More lines of dialogue, more physical beats, more observations from other characters, and just more chances to give the other characters more, well, character.

It will be for the best.

I sure used the word ‘character’ a lot.

“Don’t start up with that stupid fantasy again. Going back to him will just get you killed. Who am I going to torment then?” — Holly

Revised chapter 14 and 15 are in the bag, well, for the first revision anyhow. There is plenty of stuff rewritten from the rough draft as usual. Revised chapter 16 is nearly done and 17 is in the works.

I’m working in one of two lulls in the story. There is some character development in these lulls, and it’s not like nothing happens, but the plot doesn’t clip along like normally. Come chapter 19, the plot will start to cruise along faster as developments come pretty quickly with the middle of the story will start coming up. While the action at the very end is probably the fastest pace, the middle is my favorite part and there are a a lot of developments. Some of that is on purpose, the middle of a story is often where the plot can go to sleep, but mine is structure so that a lot of interesting developments occur in the traditional slow spot.

Keeping my momentum going can be tough, especially in a part of the story that is a lot of work like where I am now. I have to tell myself that I’ve got to keep going if I’m going to get this project finished. It also helps to know that a cool part of the story isn’t all that far away. I know this section I’m working on will need a couple more revisions since I’m kinda rushing a bit, but that’s okay.

I’m not losing words the same rate I have been, but I’ll be cutting an upcoming section of the plot so words will still be bled.

Hopefully, my current slow down will be vanquished soon.

“We hide inside these barriers and pretend we are really part of this world. Sometimes I think the world doesn’t want us.” — Edmund

Soon the time will come when I will send forth chapter four to a couple of my beta readers. In preparation, I’m doing a bit of cleaning up of the chapter.

In the next revision, my plan has always been to look at sentences and paragraphs, trying to weed out the weak ones and replace them with stronger ones. However, there is another goal that I’ve added, and that is to “thicken” the writing.

I’ve been busy cutting away the dead wood of unnecessary prose and especially exposition, but the writing has also become sparse with too little detail. In order to make things a bit more vivid, I’ve been delving into chapter 4 and replacing generic details with more specific ones. So instead of “she moved by a couple of people in the marketplace” I have “she skirted around two old women haggling over the price of a bolt of cloth”. Also, I’ve been working on trying to get mannerisms of the characters better defined in dialogue and physical beats. In this case, I have a character who tends to be cynical and waxes philosophical, so I’m trying to bring more of that across in what he says.

I hope it helps.

“You went through that whole story just to tell me to get over it?” — Aimee

Audrey is the name of the voice my computer uses when reading things to me. I’ve taken to letting Audrey read my chapters to me to catch little things. The reading software also highlights the sentence and word being spoken as it goes. This is proving helpful not just to hear someone, well something, reading it, but also because I have to follow along at a set speed and see each word being highlighted. Things like using the same word too many times come out glaringly both from the reading and watching it be read.

Text to speech has come a long way, there are passages where Audrey sounds eerily like a real person. Not a lot of them, but a few.

“Yeah that’s probably the big reason they all hate me. I guess stabbing ****** didn’t help either.” — Holly

I’ve done some beta reading for other people and I’ve found it to be a helpful exercise. Taking a look at something totally different seems to sharpen my senses for what I think works and doesn’t work. It also illuminates why certain problems are problems.

For an example. When passive voice is used by me (like that), I don’t tend to see it. However, looking for it in somebody else’s work helps me to see how it can weaken the writing. In turn, I’m more alert to it when I revise and avoid doing it as much.

I like to provide feedback to other people, because I really appreciate having people read my writing and give me comments and I like to give back. In my case, nobody does it better than my wife, but everyone helps to some extent.

“Time strips everything to the bones, then the bones turn to dust,”– Descar

Chapter 12 and chapter 13 of the revision are done. If the revision goes as many words as I think, then I’m somewhere between a sixth and a fifth of the way through. Than could translate into something like 70-80 chapters. That’s a lot of chapters. Too many? I don’t know. Maybe it’s good even if I do go back and merge some chapters later, I try to end each chapter on a hook of some sort and having to come up with 80 hooks can’t hurt the story.

“The rock. . . are you ever going to stop staring at it?” — Holly

Things are slogging along. The current chapter is kind of slow, but is it too slow? It’s hard to tell. Hopefully, there is enough character interaction to make things interesting.

This chapter kind of kicks off a new section of the story. I see the book as divided into sections and I’m starting to go into the section that builds up to the middle of the book. The middle of the book is probably my favorite part, a whole lot happens at that point.

Maybe that’s part of what makes the current place tough, I’m looking forward to the chapters beyond.

“You should write poetry, Descar. What woman in the world could resist being quantified?” — Alex

I’m plugging away on revised 12. I’ve had a loss of confidence lately. I think the writing, especially in the revision, is too thin. I’m concerned that while the two most important characters are alright, that the supporting cast isn’t well enough developed. I’m also concerned that the setting needs a bit more description too. Maybe I’m cutting too much out.

I’m writing up some questions and answers about the characters to get a better handle on them. I’m also planning to write descriptions of various places in the world and then work in some details when the opportunity exists. We’ll see how it goes.

I don’t think it’s hopeless, I think I just need to put in more work on the details.

“His attraction is understandable, she has great quantitative beauty,”– Descar

I posted my current revision of chapter 1 to the Critique forum of the Chronicles Network which is a forum site dedicated to the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. The result so far has been some excellent feedback that pointed out some problems that I hadn’t really seen before. There is no doubt this will lead to some changes for the next revision. There seems to be no end to the refinement that can be done. Reading the comments gave me a fresh look on the first chapter.

Chapter 11 has been revised now and I’m on to chapter 12. I think I’m finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. This section of the rough draft really slowed down the story forcing me to make big changes and cut loads of words. Soon I’ll get past the lull.

“How disappointing,” — Vig

“I’m sure you’ve heard that a lot, Vig,” — Holly

The revised chapter 10 has finally been completed. Well, completed for now. Chapter 11 is very close as well. So progress is being made. I have to admit this is not my favorite part of the story in the rough draft, but I think it will be a lot better in the revised edition.

It can be hard to judge just how good or bad the story is. I’ve always known where things are going. Sometimes as the characters develop, I go in a new direction I hadn’t expected, but I never have the experience of really not knowing what’s next. This is what makes beta readers so invaluable. My wife consented to have the rough draft inflicted upon her, but with the revision, she no longer can come at it fresh. It helps to have people who have that fresh perspective look at things.

“There’s nothing out here but creepy looking trees and creepy looking creatures that want to tear my face off. I’ll be glad to get back to the city.” — Alex

I’m still losing words at a rapid pace. As I wrap up revision to the end of chapter 4 in the rough draft, I’m standing at about 19,000 words. This compares to 29,579 words in the the draft. The revised version is going to be much tighter and that’s a very good thing.

I hadn’t realized how much unnecessary exposition and unneeded detail I had in the rough draft. It’s a bit of my inexperience shining through I think. When I wrote the draft, I had a very specific visual image in my mind of what was happening. Very much like watching a movie in my head. When I put that movie down on paper I really wanted the reader to see what I was seeing.

The desire to convey the picture accurately led to some clunky writing as I would try to establish precisely what the characters were doing. Well, this isn’t a good way to write a book, you’ve got to trust the reader to fill in the details and let go of the idea that they will see the same movie you do. To a large extent, my goal for the revision is to make the story tight enough that the words don’t get in the way.

“Move, Princess, be horrified by my actions later,”– Holly

Revised chapter 9 is done and I’m onto chapter 10. Chapter 9 wasn’t easy since I had to do a lot of cutting and still have everything hold together. Chapter 10 won’t be the easiest of chapters either. In the rough draft, this section had a definite lull to it, so I’ve been needing to do a lot of work to tighten everything up.

Right now, I’m working on a new scene to help juice up the tension in the story. With the revised version, I feel like a have more pieces to play with when I have new scenes. There are more interconnections between characters that open up new possibilities for scenes. This is one reason I feel like the revision is really going in the right direction. Now I just have to decide how to play those pieces to get through chapter 10.

After chapter 10 will come one of those brand new chapters that wasn’t in the rough draft, but then I’ll return to the rough draft again and use a bit more.

“What is it about her that makes it so different than it is with me?” — Aimee

“Well, she’s really pretty,” — Curtis

I’ve noticed when I’m reading fiction or even listening to an audiobook, that I’m seeing things in a new light. Now I notice the mechanics of the writing. I see the text as scenes, blocks of narrative, physical beats, attributions, and the other parts that make up a book. I’m curious about how emotions are conveyed, how much detail is provided with minor characters, and how the author uses adjectives, adverbs, similes, and metaphors to paint a picture.

It doesn’t ruin the fiction for me, it just adds a different dimension. Of course, with work, family, and writing, I don’t exactly spend a lot of time reading fiction right now anyhow.

“It’s not a pleasure to meet you. Touch me again and I’ll hurt you,”– Holly

I know I posted I was going forward to chapter 9, but I ended up going back to chapter 1 anyhow. I made the mistake of reading the current revision knowing that there were changes to be made. In my defense, I did start working on chapter 9 first. Chapter 9 is another tricky one, there is information to convey and I don’t want to pummel the reader with blocks of narrative and dialogue that’s thinly disguised exposition. That stuff takes work.

Enough about chapter 9 though. I posted the new Chapter 1 in my ‘Evolution of Chapter 1′ part of the blog: The Current Chapter 1. I’m pretty happy with the chapter now. It feels like it’s pretty tight. There have been numerous fixes in the last revision between fixing mistakes, rephrasing sentences, and finding new ways to describe things. Not quite the final revision of the chapter yet, but it’s getting pretty close.

“He kept talking about seeds, more than usual I mean.” — Aimee

I finally finished the revised version of chapter 8. My wife suggested getting a certain character more involved in the chapter and it really worked well. There was plenty of action in chapter 8 before, it’s one of the most fast paced chapters that will be in the book, but now there is a new element of character conflict that wasn’t there before. Sometimes a little change can make a world of difference.

I thought the scenes from the rough draft were already pretty good for this chapter. Nonetheless, there were many changes and more than a few cut lines. I can see that even the best parts of the draft will get mauled pretty well in the revision process.

When I started revising, I decided to start with a brand new document instead of just editing the draft. There is no question that this has turned out to be the right strategy. I do copy and paste paragraphs on occasion, but I often just retype the words since I am so often changing them. I suspect the next revision will follow the same process only with a bit more copy and paste.

“Are you incapable of not being in the wrong place?” — Martin

One of the best bits of advice I’ve come across is to lose the emotional adverbs. If you need to tell the reader that something was said angrily, or lamely, or sorrowfully; then you didn’t write the scene well enough in the first place. The same applies to stuff like “was irritated”, “was furious”, etc. . .

Maybe it’s okay to use those emotional tags in the rough draft when you want to just get on with the story, but come revision time they have to go. There may be no better revision than getting rid those places where you tell the reader what the character’s emotions are. It forces you to reevaluate the scene to determine if the emotion is coming across without simply telling the reader. If you can’t figure out the emotion from the scene itself, then the scene needs rewriting.

“I’d say he’s worth one and a half men, so with you that does add up to two.” — Holly

It’s time to decide whether to go backwards and do some more work on chapter 1 or go forward and start working on revised chapter 9. On the one hand, the changes to make in chapter 1 are still relatively fresh. On the other hand, I would really rather go forward and keep revising ahead.

I think I’m going to go forward. It really is what I’d rather do at the moment. During this revision run, I’m not trying to go forward at full speed. I revisit chapters and make more changes once I’m done with the initial revision. However, this is certainly not the last revision. I’m making plot and character changes in addition to rewording sentences so there is a lot of new material being introduced. The next run of revisions will hopefully be mostly just cleaning things up.

I’ve read that rewriting and revision is the key to making a good book and I completely believe it. The rough draft has provided me with characters and plot, but it would make a horrible book. There are just too many problems. After this revision, I think I’ll have an okay book, but after a couple more revisions I might actually have something good.

“Could you not assume we’re all going to die?” — Vig

I’m in the midst of fixing up chapter 8 of the revision. This puts me at the end of chapter 3 in the rough draft. In the rough draft, the end of chapter 3 represents 23,471 words. In the revised edition, the same location clocks in at about 15,000 words. The revision is in flux, so the word count isn’t a set value, but there is no doubt that a lot of words have been cut.

Loads of exposition has been removed and, the more I think about it, most of it will not go back in at all. When I first wrote the rough draft, I wanted to convey all this important information so the reader would know something about the back story. However, now that I’m going through the revision, I know what’s coming in the story and I find that the back story just doesn’t seem necessary. Little bits of it will just come up naturally as the plot progresses, removing the need to simply tell the reader about it.

Removing the exposition has really improved the flow of the book’s opening. Hopefully the rest of the book will continue to show improvement as the revision process continues.

“I don’t think there is anything about me your mother would approve of.” — Aimee

The revised chapter 7 is done, or at least done for the moment. There is a lot from the rough draft in the chapter. Maybe now that I’m using the rough draft more, I’ll start speeding up the revision process. So far, I have not been progressing very quickly, but I suppose if the revision process is going quickly then it probably isn’t going well.

It can be hard to say encouraged when working on the revision. The creative process is still there, but not to the same degree as the rough draft. I can also see all my mistakes and poor wording very clearly as I go through. On the other hand, the whole story is already there on paper, so I know I have a destination to get to. That does help.

“This is me we’re talking about, if it’s valuable and not nailed down, I’m taking it.” — Holly

I didn’t work a lot on the revision last night, but I was able to make some good progress since I lifted a good deal from my rough draft. I knew that thing would come in handy one day.

So to get things started,

“I don’t think she likes me much, which is pretty damn ungrateful, the number of times I’ve saved her precious little ass.” — Holly

One of the problems I’ve run into is the physical description of my main character. My original description came largely in one scene where she looked at herself in the mirror. This was pointed out as being cliche so I ripped it out. I still describe a few things early in the book, slightly shorter than average, hair length and color. The hair description may be slightly forced, but certainly not a cliche. The rest I can finish off in chapter 6 in a very smooth manner, but I wonder if 40 pages in is on the late side.

Now that I’m using whole paragraphs from my rough draft, I’m finding that only a small fraction of my original sentences are making it through unchanged. I have a lot of sentences that use the word ‘was’ and the construction ‘had been’. I’ve been told correctly that a sentence with ‘had been’ can almost always be replaced by a stronger and shorter one. Sentences with ‘was’ don’t always lend themselves to rewriting, but often can be so that the subject is acting on the object directly. The word ‘was’ still is necessary sometimes for describing a characteristic of something (The wall was green).

There are also a lot of simply unnecessary sentences. Either they state things that are obvious, or simply don’t matter (The shelves were lined against the wall. Who cares? There isn’t anything happening in this room that makes the shelf location matter, let the reader visual the location as he or she sees fit).

This won’t be the last revision run. The next one will be be to smooth out sentences, correct grammar, look for stronger words to use, maybe replace adjectives with similes and metaphors, add description to make scenes more vivid, and look for clunky dialogue and characters out of voice. Lots of work ahead.

I’m on a good track to finish up the next couple of revised chapters to finish what I consider the opening of the book. Now that I’ve gotten past the first two chapters, I can’t think of any major cuts I’ll be doing. There’s a character that has been removed from the plot, but that won’t have much of an impact. I will have some minor scene cuts and certainly some added scenes. In an ideal scenario I’ll end up losing about 20,000 words from the rough draft word count, but we’ll see what happens.

With some brainstorming, I thought of an idea and ran it by her. Then, I went back into the end of chapter 3 and the middle of chapter 4 and added a couple of new scenes that upped the tension in the story. You know what, I like it a whole lot better. The new scenes both added tension and I think improved the dynamic between a couple of important characters. So, yeah, she was right.

I got chapter 5 done last night, but I still have work to do. I need to read through it and fix any major errors. Then it can go to my wife to look for the major errors I missed and I’ll fix it up again. After that, it goes to my beta readers to get opinions and find more errors. I’ll put it on ice for a bit after that. Finally, I’ll make the changes I collect from all of that and it’s back to my wife to look at for more revisions. That’s just for this pass through.

The more interesting addition is my new section about the evolution of chapter 1 from rough draft to its current partial revision. I have a heavily marked up paper copy of chapter 1 and will fix up the electronic version when I get a chance. Right now I’m working with the revised chapter 5. Chapter 5 is totally new in the revision.

I Love You Sweetie, thanks for all the help!

Anyhow, I’m almost done with chapter 4. Chapter 5 is a brand new one taking nothing from the original draft though it may convey a bit of backstory. Chapter 6 will pick up where chapter 4 left off and finish off chapter 2 of the draft with many fewer words than the original. I’m going to be very happy to get out of chapter 2 of the draft.

The advice that I believe is better says that ‘said’ is nicely generic. That sounded bad to me at first glance but I understand the value of that now. ‘Said’ simply serves to attribute the dialogue to a character without imparting any emotion. The emotion should come from the character and not what I write about the character.

I’ll still look for places where I don’t need an attribution as well as places where an attribution can better expressed as a physical beat. But where I don’t need a physical beat and I need an attribution, I’ll use ‘said’ without apprehension.

I have some ideas for mixing in some of the setting narrative into a couple of scenes. There was an action sequence in chapter 2, but I’ve decided to nix it since it doesn’t accomplish anything. That will make it a quiet chapter in terms of action, but chapter 4 will make up for it. Another important part of chapter 2 is to develop the characters. The reader needs to have a feel for these characters and I want to do that early in the story. Also, if there isn’t any character development then all I’m doing is pumping out exposition. Even conveyed in dialogue, that’s going to get old really fast.

This isn’t the last visit to chapter 1, I’m still not going through and trying to clean up all the punctuation and grammar. I’m also not going through and looking for places to punch up the language to make things more vivid. That will wait for a second revision pass when I’m not making substantial changes to the story itself.

Not all of that cut material will be dropped entirely. Some of it will reappear in chapter two, but there is still a fair amount cut to make things tighter. I don’t know if there will be another chapter in the book that is going to be as completely rewritten as this one. But chapter 1 is awfully important.

I’ve started on chapter 1. It’s slow going right now, but chapter 1 is one of the chapters that is going to be totally rewritten. Hopefully other chapters will go a bit more quickly.

He is a Faran.

She said it in Farani.

There is a group of Fari.

That is a Farian artifact.

I’m very happy to be rid of the Elves, the race wasn’t all that Elf-ish anyhow. Good bye Elves, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

The race name comes from the word ‘Faran’ which in Old High German means something like ‘to proceed’ or ‘first’. It is also an inflection of a noun for ‘danger’ in Swedish. These meanings align very well with the place this race has in my world. The credit goes to my wife for hunting down a word with some meanings that work well for the race.

My next step will be to read and dissect chapters 1-3. I need to catalog what happens and what is explained. Then I’ll try to push back whatever exposition that I can. I want to have 1-3 really move along, with as little pausing for exposition as possible.

I also want to refine my background notes and fill in more details about the world. I really know a lot more about the cultures and history than when I started. A little bit here and there about the world should give it more depth. I’ll be looking for places where I can work that in without weighing down the story.

Getting back on track, I have a made up language. I have a list of words in this language, just a couple dozen. I also have a few simple rules governing how words are constructed. That’s good enough for an important phrase that I think works best in the made up language. The question is, what do I do for other scenes where there are two languages? When it’s from the perspective of a character that doesn’t know the language, do I use the made up language or just gloss over it. “He said something that she didn’t understand.” Glossing over is easier, but less in the moment. However, reading lots of the fake language might be tiresome for the reader. I need to figure out the right balance. There is a lot of glossing over right now and likely most of that will remain. The question is, how much made up language to sprinkle in?

Then there is the case when multiple languages are in use and the perspective is from a character that understands both. Should I italicize the “foreign” language or should I just use dialog tags “he said in Elvish” to distinguish the language? I’ve tried the italicizing when there is a lot of two language dialogue, but I find it frustrating when I want to italicize for emphasis.

Revision decisions that loom ahead as the rough draft comes to an end.

There’s a lot of stuff in those 2000 words to tear up now. It can’t be saved for the revision because it will impact writing the rest of the chapter. I’ve started the process of destroying my words. One step back.

This all sounds very generic and indeed this was one of the problems with my first attempt. Hopefully, the details will make this world less generic than it sounds in a glossy overview. There is a level of technology facilitated by magic and engineering that make the setting have a different feel from the generic medieval world. I wanted to do this to make the characters themselves a bit more relatable since their world has some aspects of a modern society.

Humanity has been forced to live in protected pockets since the world is largely hostile to them. I wanted to do this to have a bit of mystery about the world at large. This way the central character and the reader can both discover new things about the world at the same time. The draft doesn’t take full advantage of this, so I have some work to do in revision.

One of the other races I mentioned in an earlier post. Certainly they are influenced by the traditional high fantasy elven races, but I’m leaning toward a different name. Elf doesn’t really fit properly. They have a haughty superiority that made me tag them with the name ‘Elf’ in the draft, but now that I know them better I can come up with something more appropriate. The other race I can’t really think of an influence for. They are secretive, rather obsessed with their own mortality, and never reveal their true appearance.

Now that the story is mostly on paper, I have a much better feel for how to fill in the details of the world. As I have gone along with the rough draft, I’ve added little things to the culture of the races and nations. The ideas I’ve had for these cultures while writing the story are a lot better than the ideas while sitting down and writing notes.

I think the work I didn’t do before getting started is going to pay off.

I believe there are two more chapters to go judging from events I know will take place. Then, I’ll follow it up with a short epilogue. It’s very exciting to be this close. Time to go do some writing.

If I choose a new name for this race, then I should be able to come up with something that better fits the world. That would be a good thing. Also, using the name “Elf” makes me feel like I’m being derivative. Another problem with the name “Elf” is that it suggests a more magical race than humans. In this world the opposite is true.

There is an other hand at play here. The name “Elf” buys me something. They are indeed a much older race that looks very much like humans (for good reasons). Also, they live longer than most humans and feel they are superior. These are some Elf-ish qualities that using the name would buy me.

One of many decisions to make.

Demons. Aimee didn’t fight demons. For that matter, she didn’t fight anything. She spent her days sitting at a workbench, carefully constructing the next gadget she was assigned to make. Yet here she was, heart thudding painfully in her chest and sweat starting to drip off the tip of her nose. On the other side of the wall, she could hear the heavy footsteps of whatever had killed at least a half dozen soldiers.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. I have a draft to finish first.

It just seemed a shame not to put in a chapter break when things look so bleak for the main character.

With the fall of chapter 24, I’m now just under 141,000 words. It’s time to attack chapter 25. There is now a light at the end of the tunnel as only five more chapters remain. Of course, that light is the train of revision.

Anyhow, I found that I was paying far more attention to how dialogue was handled than the actual story. Was the writer using good descriptions to convey the tone of conversations? Did he mix in actions instead of attaching adverbs to synonyms of  the word “said’ or “asked”? How often did the words “said” or “asked” get used? How was all the dialog punctuated? At the end of my reading time, I just had to leave the bookmark in the same place as when I began.

Six chapters left. At least that’s the plan, but there might be too many plot points to touch for just six chapters. Things don’t always go according to plan.

Once I get to revising, he’s a goner. I’m going to pull him completely out of the book. The plot point will have to reworked, but I think the reworking will improve the story. This character entered the story in chapter 2 and exited in chapter 22. Despite being in the story for 21 chapters, he isn’t going to be all that hard to remove. That’s a sure sign that he should have never been there in the first place.

Another reason why I’m writing a novel is because it is fun. I’m enjoying telling a story and putting these characters I have come to know in interesting situations. The scenes unfold visually in my mind more vibrantly than with reading. It’s like having a little movie playing inside my head whenever I want. Writing down the things that happen in that movie is very satisfying. Then there is the unexpected. There are the characters that develop in ways that I never anticipated, but feel right. Then there are the little things in the story line that I never expected to be important but become a much bigger part of the story than I ever thought possible. It’s hard on the outline but the unexpected is very exciting. Good times.

I heard more than once that just filling pages is important. I can see the wisdom in that now. The end would be nowhere in sight if I tried to made it perfect, or even acceptable, in the first go.  At least a milestone is in sight now as the end of the rough draft looms ever closer. Hmmm… That makes it sound like the process is a chore, but it’s not. I’m still having a lot of fun plunging ahead.