![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Alpennia Blog: Are you ready to rumble?
Nov. 24th, 2015 02:57 pmSometimes it's hard to confine this part of the blog to talking about "writing process" topics and not, "OMG this really exciting thing is happening in the current chapters and I want to share with you!" I'm about to begin working on chapter 21 (formerly chapter 22 before I eliminated the one where nothing was going to happen) in which a zillion crises all happen at once. And I can't tell you about them because: spoilers.
So what can I tell you? The wordcount is now officially over 100K. I'm almost at the 2/3 done point (in terms of chapter count). Pretty much everything has been set up for the rest of the book at this point and it's just a matter of tipping over that first domino and watching them start to fall.
In the mean time, with every chapter I find myself going back and adding some revision notes to existing ones. "I need this romantic tension to start earlier. S needs to be approached by K regarding some magical observation in *this* chapter. What has Frances been doing for the last 8 chapters? Mention her occasionally. Totally revise the backstory for S's husband, which affects how they got together and why they're estranged. Add brief "bookend" chapters that provide key background/setting for the weather/water/flooding issues throughout the book." And so on.
The first revision pass (once I've got a full first draft) is mostly going to be major issues like that. Information that goes in different places. Things that need to be bulked up or trimmed down. Continuity issues. Pacing.
The second revision pass is going to work more by checklist. What is the distribution of character references? Which ones seem to disappear? Who needs more context when the reappear? Have I entirely dropped the ball on any minor characters? Does everyone get a nice solid description around the first time they appear? Do I involve all the senses regularly? Do I need to tighten up the point of view structure? Is everything vivid and immediate?
The third revision pass is for smoothness, for turns of phrase, for beauty of language, for avoidance of repetition, for readability.
Then it goes to the beta-readers. Still stressing out about finding beta-readers for some of my special topics, but time enough for that later. (I'll be drawing up shopping lists of Subject Matter Expert topics and hoping to get overlap and redundancy.)
Folks, I think this thing is happening!
So what can I tell you? The wordcount is now officially over 100K. I'm almost at the 2/3 done point (in terms of chapter count). Pretty much everything has been set up for the rest of the book at this point and it's just a matter of tipping over that first domino and watching them start to fall.
In the mean time, with every chapter I find myself going back and adding some revision notes to existing ones. "I need this romantic tension to start earlier. S needs to be approached by K regarding some magical observation in *this* chapter. What has Frances been doing for the last 8 chapters? Mention her occasionally. Totally revise the backstory for S's husband, which affects how they got together and why they're estranged. Add brief "bookend" chapters that provide key background/setting for the weather/water/flooding issues throughout the book." And so on.
The first revision pass (once I've got a full first draft) is mostly going to be major issues like that. Information that goes in different places. Things that need to be bulked up or trimmed down. Continuity issues. Pacing.
The second revision pass is going to work more by checklist. What is the distribution of character references? Which ones seem to disappear? Who needs more context when the reappear? Have I entirely dropped the ball on any minor characters? Does everyone get a nice solid description around the first time they appear? Do I involve all the senses regularly? Do I need to tighten up the point of view structure? Is everything vivid and immediate?
The third revision pass is for smoothness, for turns of phrase, for beauty of language, for avoidance of repetition, for readability.
Then it goes to the beta-readers. Still stressing out about finding beta-readers for some of my special topics, but time enough for that later. (I'll be drawing up shopping lists of Subject Matter Expert topics and hoping to get overlap and redundancy.)
Folks, I think this thing is happening!
