This past month, I began editing the first novel in my series. I’ve edited this piece before, but with kid gloves. The first time, I wasn’t ready to cut and maim and kill my darlings. This time, I’m back with a vengeance and murdering sections left and right to make it a cohesive narrative.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
Sections get Crossed Out
The way I originally wrote this novel, in the third draft when I had all of the pieces I needed, I added a whole section of flashbacks in each chapter that now, reading through, is basically useless. Don’t get me wrong, I love these characters in the flashbacks and their journey, and it does lead up to the reasoning for some of the characters actions, but to pull the reader out of the current events and into a flashback just wasn’t working. Maybe in the future there will be a use for them. (Maybe a companion novel?)
Sections get Moved
When I wrote this novel, I wrote the two viewpoints and the two worlds as complete separate chapters. Editing through, I’ve realized things are happening at the same time in the narrative and they need to be closer. Chapters are melded together, events are moved to make more sense in context of the other perspective. Things even get moved up or pushed back depending on where they make the most sense.
Sections, Pages and Full Chapters get Deleted Without Mercy
When writing a novel, especially with a quickly approaching deadline, scenes get added in that potentially never lead anywhere. In editing, now that I know where the novel is essentially going to end up, I can look at each scene and ask “Is this important to the plot, either in this book, or another in the series?” If not, or if it’s just awkward, it gets axed. No questions asked. There is one scene so far that I can think of that was just complete cheese and not necessary. The character had already said her piece and to have her come back, with no real reason, was just wrong.
It’s Not a Linear Process
For the most part, I am a very linear writer. Chapter one all the way through until the end of the book. This hasn’t always been the case for editing. This edit is a weird one, because I’m essentially editing one section, rewriting another one and completely getting rid of a third. To jump between editing and writing and back and forth so many times in one chapter is tiring. So I’m switching back and forth every few days. The editing is the easy part. The rewriting is hard.
Sections Return from Previous Drafts
I’m rewriting some of the draft, but some of the scenes of a particular section are coming back from a previous draft. I have rewritten this novel so many times since it had never been quite right. I’m thankful I’ve kept those old drafts, because there were certain sections that were gold and will appear in the final edit.
Organization is HUGE
When I started edits, I underestimated how many sections would be in this novel. With each page break being a new letter of the alphabet, since I was reorganizing it all, I quickly ran into multiple letters and numbers which was a huge headache. I was only halfway through Chapter Four with section titles like FF and if I continued, I might have the whole alphabet in sections by the time I reached the end. So I simplified from going through the alphabet multiple times, to just however many sections were in that chapter. From multiple letters to 1A, 1B etc.
I’m barely halfway through my edits for this book, with my deadline at the end of this month, but these are all the things I’ve learned so far.
Stay tuned for Part Two!
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