Hello, writers. First and most, please send good thoughts to jabney, who had a stroke and now has aphasia.
His diary about it is still poetic, though.
If you want to send him a kosmail, he says in the comments that he's able to read them. (Just go here and click on "send message”.)
I've seen people make stroke recoveries to a degree that was once deemed impossible. Am really really hoping this will happen for jabney.
Difficult segue.
Okay.
So last week, I wrote about planning the revision of Jinx 3. To report this week that I'm still planning the revision is embarrassing, but true. Here's what I did this week:
I focused on the first movement, which contains the first 12 chapters and is 28,500 words long.
I divided the movement into 32 scenes. The scenes are between 1 and 8 pages in length. Three of them cross a chapter break. (That is, they begin in one chapter and end in the next.)
I wrote a list of the scenes, giving each one a number and a title. Then I wrote what made the scene necessary, eg “It shows the threat from X and explains how Y works”.
(A scene that isn't necessary should no longer be in the manuscript at this point.) I wrote down what comments people had made about the scene and what concerns I still had about it:
That is, something like this:
Scene 6: in the storm
purpose: blah blah
possible problems/edits: blah blah
Scene by bloody scene, for four pages. After printing this list, I put one, two, or three stars next to each scene, according to how much editing it needed. (Three stars means a major overhaul.)
Finally, I drew my throughlines in the margins. You've heard me talk about throughlines before. In the first movement, everything needs to be driving my protagonist toward the action that he's going to take at the beginning of the second movement. The pressure on him has to build continually.
While there are several throughlines that help build to this crisis point, there are mainly two that still need work. Using a pink pen and a purple one (Uniball Vision: nice glide, but it soaks through paper) I drew a line down each side of each page, and made an X for scenes where the throughline is building effectively and a ? for scenes where it still needs to be built.
How very organized, right? Or possibly how very procrastinatory? See, I've got reviser's block. Which is weird, because revising's the easy part of this job.
It's a series thing. I'm finding out how different it is to write a series.
Jinx went out into the world with no expectations. And he didn't do badly there. He got four starred reviews and was named a "best book of the year" by Booklist, Kirkus, School Library Journal and Amazon. Who the heck saw that coming? Other than GussieFN, I mean? Inevitably, this means the second book is going to either thrill people or disgust them, and so far it's done both. Kirkus says “Blackwood squanders the promise of her debut” and Booklist says “This series deserves a permanent place in the children’s fantasy pantheon, with Narnia and Earthsea.” Bit of a split decision there.
So I'm reluctant to start revisions on book 3 because I'm worried about how people will react to the book. Cry you a river, right? But it's a real Thing. Once this revision is done, we'll go to copyediting, and although changes are possible after that, the ARCs (advance review copies) are made from the copyedited manuscript... which will probably be whatever comes from this revision, only with better punctuation.
ARCs used to be bound in plain paper and distributed to book reviewers at newspapers and industry journals. Nowadays, ARCs have got shiny paperback covers, cover art, sometimes illustrations, all the bells and whistles, and they're distributed as giveaways at conferences and in online raffles... and sometimes reproduced and pirated before the book even comes out.
The final edited version is only read by those who plunk down their money after the reviews are written and the book has been declared a hit or a miss.
So I've got reviser's block.
Nevertheless. The deadline is hurtling toward me so I'd better get to work on this thing.
Tonight's slightly-related challenge.
In the scene below, the character does something for which there is no build-up at all. The throughline that leads to the action isn't developed. In editor-speak, the action isn't “earned.” Rewrite the scene so that the action makes sense.
Mr. DuCharme looked at check. “Is this supposed to be your rent? It's $50 short.”
“$625,” said Elaine. “That's what it's always been.”
“Not anymore,” said Mr. DuCharme. “I raised the rent last month. You owe me $50 for this month, and $50 in arrears.”
“But you never even told me you'd raised the rent!” said Elaine. “And anyway, I haven't got it.”
“Get it,” said Mr. DuCharme. “Or get out.”
Elaine turned into a leopard and ate him.
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