On the train today, I decided to kill one of my favourite characters. I’m sad, but I’m convinced it’s the right thing to do.
I completed the third draft edit on page 135 of 506 pages, so he has around 340 more pages to live. At the current rate, he’ll be dead by next weekend.
I’ve lost over 2000 words in the edit so far, but it’s still a bit of an epic (127,000).
I’ve always agreed with the aphorism that good books are not written, they’re rewritten. All power to the elbows of those who can write once and publish. I’m not one of those writers. So how am I editing?
First I went through the draft as I did it, each day checking what I wrote the day before.
Then, after attending the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference in September, I completely rewrote the 30,000 words I had up to that point.
Then, as I came up with new ideas, I went back and planted seeds in earlier chapters.
So by the time I finished Farewell to Kindness, I was calling what I had the second draft.
As I approached the end of the writing, I read up on editing, and I posted what I found.
Next, I worked out my own process, which was a kind of an amalgam of everyone else’s with a few of my own ideas thrown in.
I took a long weekend, and – in a marathon 35-40 hour sprint – went through the whole book in hardcopy, page by page, writing character names, plotpoints, story outline, and any ideas or discrepancies in a spiral-bound notebook.
Then I decided that I needed to put some of this into a spreadsheet.
So I’ve spent every evening for the last week (and a few midnight hours) creating a three-tab spreadsheet. Tab one has all the plots across the top (four strands to the major plot, and 16 subplots), and all the scenes down the left hand side. I’ve marked where plots start, where they end, and where I’ve got lost somewhere in the middle.
This let me work out that I need to drop a couple of the minor plots because they aren’t needed, I need to work in a bit more about the Revenge strand of the major plot, because I pretty much forget about it in the middle of the book, and I need to close off some minor plots that I left hanging.
On tab two, I’ve listed all the characters in each scene. I’ve found (and fixed) some name changes by doing this. I’ve also put descriptions of characters when they appear in the book, so I could check that I didn’t change a person’s eye colour, height, or other personal characteristics.
Tab three is a calendar. I’ve added the phases of the moon, and moonset, moonrise, sunset and sunrise where they’re significant to the plot, and I’ve put the scenes in day by day. This allowed me to find out that Rede had an extra day up his sleeve, and could have been back in time to save Anne, so I’ve worked out something to delay him (which, not just incidentally, also allows me to close off my dangling plot lines before we get to the grand finale).
So here’s the spreadsheet. You’ll see it goes right from the left of my desktop screen to the right of my laptop screen.
It’s been a little tedious, but I’m finding it a remarkably efficient way to work. My mind goes off on flights of fancy while my fingers are filling in character names, and all of a sudden a difficulty resolves itself.
Next step (already started) is to rewrite to bring all the ideas into the third draft. I’m pretty happy with the preface and first three chapters, and I’m excited about the changes and new scenes coming up.
The plan is to get the third draft done then prepare a copy for beta readers within the next fortnight. I’ll let you know how I get on.
A row of roosters and their hens at the local agricultural show. I think the one on the right is my Mr Peep.
I’ve been researching the c–k term since I mentioned on Facebook that I’d included a joke around it in Farewell to Kindness. (Anne’s sister has a pet rooster which the heroine brings with her to stay at the hero’s house, allowing the heroine’s cousin to make jokes about the hero needing a prize-winning c–k).
One of the commenters said that the term in England was cockerel, and that the term c–k wouldn’t be used.
The same conversation came up on a Goodread’s thread, where another novelist asked about acceptable and time-appropriate terms.
It turns out that the one I wanted to use was in common use for both male birds and male members, and was not considered unfit for polite company (even when referring to male domestic fowl) until Victorian times, about 25 years after the setting for my book.
And a cockerel was, until Victorian times, a young male chicken – under 12 months old. The Victorian English applied the junior bird term to all male chickens of any age, while the Puritan Americans reacted to the double entendre a 150 years earlier, and adopted the term rooster.
So I can keep my joke and remain historically accurate, though Alex’s pun would have had him banned from the dinner table if the more innocent ladies at the table had understood his double meaning.
Other writers have clearly faced the same challenge, and some clever person has responded with a timeline diagram for male anatomy terms, taken from Green’s Dictionary of Slang, by Jonathon Green.
I could go for man Thomas, though there are a number of other possibilities. Calling it a battering piece might break the mood of my love scene, don’t you think? And shaft of delight, while authentic, is rather too congratulatory. Tickle tail is funny, and gay instrument might be misunderstood by today’s readers.
Here, by the way, is the equivalent timeline diagram for female anatomy terms.
I’ve rewritten the first chapter, changed the POV, lost 500 words, and turned it into a prologue.
He was drunk. But not nearly drunk enough. He still saw the boy’s dying eyes everywhere. In half-caught glimpses of strangers reflected in windows along Bond Street, under the hats of coachmen that passed him along the silent streets to Bedford Square, in the flickering lamps that shone pallidly against the cold London dawn as he stumbled up the steps to his front door.
They followed his every waking hour: hot, angry, hate-filled eyes that had once been warm with admiration.
He drank to forget, but all he could do was remember.
I’ve posted the whole prologue on my excerpts page. Take a look and see what you think.
Or, at least, will be editing after work.
So here’s my to-do list for the next three weeks. All going according to plan, I’ll have a draft ready for beta readers by mid-November. Of course, it’s a bit heavy to lug on the train with me. 🙂
Update the outline as it is
Update the plot spreadsheet as it is
Need: single subject spiral bound notebook, 3 to 4 colours of pen, printed draft, Outline Notebook, maps.
Read.
Write down:
Mark:
Questions:
Discuss my proposed solutions with my PRH and my lovely sister
Now fix all the things I thought were wrong, rewriting and reorganising as needed.
ADDED: Check that every chapter ends in a way that keeps people reading, and that every chapter begins with a hook.
To See (See, Sees, Saw, Seeing, Seen)
To Hear (Hear, Hears, Heard, Hearing)
To Feel (Feel, Feels, Felt, Feeling)
To Look (Look, Looks, Looked, Looking)
To Know (Know, Knows, Knew, Knowing)
To Think (Think, Thinks, Thought, Thinking)
To Wonder (Wonder, Wonders, Wondered, Wondering)
To Realize (Realize, Realizes, Realized, Realizing)
To Watch (Watch, Watches, Watched, Watching)
To Notice (Notice, Notices, Noticed, Noticing)
To Seem (Seem, Seems, Seemed, Seeming)
To Decide (Decide, Decides, Decided, Deciding)
To Sound (Sound, Sounds, Sounded, Sounding)
I’m dancing around the room going, Yay, and Woohoo. I’ve finally written myself to Rede’s and Anne’s happily ever after.
Today is a holiday Monday in New Zealand. When I woke up and started to write, the good guys and the bad guys were all converging on the one spot. It took me 8,000 words and nine hours, but the villains are defeated, the proposal has been tendered (properly this time) and accepted, and all the loose ends I remembered have been tied off.
Now I’m going to help my granddaughter design a built-in for her wardrobe and read Elizabeth Hoyt’s Darling Beast, which I’ve been saving as a reward.
Next job is the first edit. I’ve been an editor for most of my adult life, and I’ve long thought that I’m a better editor than I am a writer. But I’ve never before edited a novel, let alone my very own novel.
I’ve some resources to guide me through that, and I thought I’d share them for anyone else who is at the same stage.
Here’s Autumn Birt on five ways to edit (yes, folks, five actual different edits for different purposes and different things).
And here’s the process Holly Lisle follows (lots of similarities, you’ll note.)
Chuck Wendig offers 25 steps, which he says he sometimes follows and sometimes not.
Jessica Bell gives a few simple tips for tightening opening sentences and dialogue.
Finally, Mike Nappa says you write your book 4 times. And goes on to tell you want you do each time.
Tomorrow, I’ll decide which of those, or what selection of those, I’ll try.
Today on the train on the way to work I passed the 116,000 mark. One month ago to the day, I posted to say I’d written 60,000 words. Looking back, I wrote 30,000 in the first three months, 30,000 in the fourth month, and 56,000 in this latest month. In part, I’m getting faster as I become more confident. In part, I’ve stopped putting down the novel to research every little fact. In part, it’s the new iPad, which makes it easy to sit up in bed at 1am and type another scene. And in largest part of all, its my personal romantic hero (aka the PRH), who keeps me fed and supplied with endless cups of coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon (and a glass or two of wine in the evening). Love you, darling.
I still have 11 scenes and probably six or seven chapters to go. Boy, am I going to have to cut when I edit! I’ll have around 130,000 to 140,000 words, and I’ll need to trim back to 100,000.