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And Revisions Continue
Jun. 24th, 2009 03:41 pmSo I finished revising chapters 1 and 2 in the past two days. This amounts to about 60 pages. And what did that do to my revision notes? Well, I got to strike out part of one of the bullet points I made. PART of one bullet point. But it's progress.
Basically, the bullet point was about adding a church scene. Not a long church scene, but my editor noticed that I had little about the religion from the main character's land, but I spent some time dealing with the religion (and their equivalent of priests) for the other two races and she felt that I should include more about the human religion as well. She suggested that my main character seek refuge in the church while fleeing from some baddies. I'd put that in my bullets as an option, but while I was reading the two chapters yesterday I noticed that my main character (I vaguely remember writing this) actually pauses in front of the church and stares up at the steeple, then moves on. Perfect! I decided to have one of the priests of the church see the MC standing there and invite him into the church, ostensibly to "check out the fine woodwork" since the MC is a carpenter's apprentice and would be interested in that. (That sentence comes off as more, um . . . predatory than it does in the book.) So that's what I did today: wrote that scene; a minor scene, maybe only a page or two, so that readers get to see inside the church, see some of its trappings, etc. I also introduced the priest as a character and I'll insert him into some relevant scenes later on in the book as well to make them more realistic for the world. Again, the idea is to add layers to the worldbuilding to make the world deeper and richer, not to change the entire plot. Adding this scene did that, and gave the MC some minor guilt complexes for what he does immediately after that.
That was the big fix for the day. The rest of the fixes were just sentences added here and there, a few words, all that to address some of the other issues my editor raised. Nothing big enough to let me do a strikethrough on the bullet list though. Mostly top-level revisions.
How many words did I add with that scene? Well, according to my word counter, I've added about 900 words to the book during the revision process so far. I've actually added more than that, because I've cut out some phrases and paragraphs as well along the way. I'm hoping that I can find enough to cut out to counter the scenes that I need to add in though. We'll see. I did some serious cutting before I sent it off to my editor, so I think the "cutting" scenes are going to be few and far between.
So let's see. At 30 pages of revisions per day, and with a book about 660 pages long at the moment . . . that means I'll be finished with revisions in 22 days. HA! End of July perhaps, since I don't work on writing during the weekends? I haven't hit any of the really serious revision parts yet. Most of those happen in the second half of the novel.
Anyways, that's the update for now. I think I can get through chapter 4 by the end of Friday.
Tonight, I'm off to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Reviews are mixed. I want to see shit blow up, so I'll probably be satisfied.
Basically, the bullet point was about adding a church scene. Not a long church scene, but my editor noticed that I had little about the religion from the main character's land, but I spent some time dealing with the religion (and their equivalent of priests) for the other two races and she felt that I should include more about the human religion as well. She suggested that my main character seek refuge in the church while fleeing from some baddies. I'd put that in my bullets as an option, but while I was reading the two chapters yesterday I noticed that my main character (I vaguely remember writing this) actually pauses in front of the church and stares up at the steeple, then moves on. Perfect! I decided to have one of the priests of the church see the MC standing there and invite him into the church, ostensibly to "check out the fine woodwork" since the MC is a carpenter's apprentice and would be interested in that. (That sentence comes off as more, um . . . predatory than it does in the book.) So that's what I did today: wrote that scene; a minor scene, maybe only a page or two, so that readers get to see inside the church, see some of its trappings, etc. I also introduced the priest as a character and I'll insert him into some relevant scenes later on in the book as well to make them more realistic for the world. Again, the idea is to add layers to the worldbuilding to make the world deeper and richer, not to change the entire plot. Adding this scene did that, and gave the MC some minor guilt complexes for what he does immediately after that.
That was the big fix for the day. The rest of the fixes were just sentences added here and there, a few words, all that to address some of the other issues my editor raised. Nothing big enough to let me do a strikethrough on the bullet list though. Mostly top-level revisions.
How many words did I add with that scene? Well, according to my word counter, I've added about 900 words to the book during the revision process so far. I've actually added more than that, because I've cut out some phrases and paragraphs as well along the way. I'm hoping that I can find enough to cut out to counter the scenes that I need to add in though. We'll see. I did some serious cutting before I sent it off to my editor, so I think the "cutting" scenes are going to be few and far between.
So let's see. At 30 pages of revisions per day, and with a book about 660 pages long at the moment . . . that means I'll be finished with revisions in 22 days. HA! End of July perhaps, since I don't work on writing during the weekends? I haven't hit any of the really serious revision parts yet. Most of those happen in the second half of the novel.
Anyways, that's the update for now. I think I can get through chapter 4 by the end of Friday.
Tonight, I'm off to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Reviews are mixed. I want to see shit blow up, so I'll probably be satisfied.
