Off his Face

day gentle reader, 

Finally, the dread rewrite of Book 2: The Face of the Goddess  is done … well almost, now it needs a good edit. That's the trouble with a rewrite - it’s really a new draft, the 4th for this book.  As posted earlier, the cumulative word cut I did at the start left me lost for words: 60,000 of them. The rewrite added a few words, quite a few, but not enough, which in and of itself created more problems. 

Face took 10 years to write 2001 (2000-2010), during which the original start slipped to chapter 29.  Chapters 1-28 were the first, deepest cut. The new starting point is the old starting point, with a major rework of the new chapter 1. From there story proceeds as a reader might expect towards the climax predicted in the opening, except it now reaches that point too soon, and leaves the novel too short for a good read. 

 As also mooted in my last post I had the rethink I had to have. 

The ending had to change, so I gave the original climax a twist. (much like killing a hero expected to live.) I had to rewrite everything after that, and make a couple of tweaks leading into it, which made the rewrite longer, (over the allocated year) The extended finale allowed me to further clarify aspects of my imagined world, and set the storyline up for what I know is coming in the already written Book 3: The Arch of Restoration. The new climatic ending brought Face back over 180,000, in line with Break and Arch. 

All good so far? Well no. This rewrite, 25-15 years, and a couple of million words after the first draft amply demonstrate, I write differently now, (better I believe :>) But that concerns me. Given today's preoccupation with AI, some might attribute style differences to artificial enhancements.

I'm now in a quandary whether to edit Bk 2 Face or Bk 3 Arch. I’m tempted to move on to the final book, (which means I will), however the wholesale changes to the storyline made after the original climax, may turn what should have been a simple edit, into another massive rewrite.

 I’m about to find out.

ooroo until my next post, Rob

PS - I often question why I want to write (which is easy), because to get published  the edit/rewrite process (which is hard) is unavoidable, and reminds me of this quote.

"If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass." ~ Lawrence Block

 

 

 

    

 

The Plot Thickens

gday gentle reader, 

There’s a reason why my website links to here, reads [occasional blogger.] It's been over a year since my last confession, a year of rewriting as last posted, 

The Face of the Goddess.

As I said I removed 40,000 word from the beginning, several pov chapters from part one and three chapters from the end, which rightly belong in Book III. It dropped from 193,000 to 132,000 words.

On 28/1/2024 (I know, its last year. I'm a slow writer; I have a life.) I began rewriting a couple of deleted pov chapters from a different pov. Some worked some didn’t. Two glaringly obvious old pov chapters remain, I need the information, but couldn’t see how to rework it for another character. It was holding me up; I left it for the next edit and ploughed on. By the time I reached the old ending the story had grown back to 155 K words.

For me writing is so much easier than editing, and in the last month I’ve added 14,000 words but here’s the rub, the extra chapters have now buried the end point goal to which my hero and heroine have been striving. It only dawned on me when saw I was reaching my target word count (180,000) that I now had no end point to work towards, I had already passed the end point.

If I'm thinking, “Why am writing this?” I can easily imagine readers thinking “Why am reading this?”

Time for a rethink.

ooroo until my next post, Rob

The Dread Rewrite

gday gentle reader, 

Now that  The Break of Civilisation  Vol 1 of The Restoration Legends trilogy is out there, both as an eBook and as a trade paperback, I’ve been working on rewriting Vol 2; not just editing but rewriting significant bits.

Originally, that is, way back in 2000 on finishing Vol 1, I ploughed straight into  The Face of the Goddess  Vol 2 writing 50,000 words in a couple of months. 

I kept my trio of POV characters from Break and added two more, a son of one, and a daughter of the other two. Five POV characters, complicated, yes?  

But wait there’s more .....

I always intended each book would be a new generation, so I started roughly 20 years after the events in Vol 1.  But then I, the author, felt I needed to know what happened in between and began filling in the 20-year gap, eventually pushing the story back to where it finished, and adding a 6^th POV character.  Chapter 1 was now Chapter 42, 60,000 words later, half of them (30,000 words) before the heroine, the daughter, is born.

The reason for all the above is attempt to explain why I'm rewriting. I'm trying to recover my original vison. It’s not all bad but I’ve slashed 40,000 words, from the opening, and will reduce the POV characters to the three children. 

All that background material that I needed to know, so I could write with authority I can and will re-use in short stories.

Speaking of which brings me to the just self published (15/12/23) collection  Colony Worlds: 13 of my award winning stories but that  story is for my next blog.

ooroo Rob