Tuesday, August 23, 2011

AAAAAARGH! Chapter Overhaul!

I think a paint-roller with red paint ought to be more appropriate.
Bless him... my editor just clobbered me with the Harsh Stick today.  Okay, it's excellent feedback and he's so infuriatingly right, that I want to throw myself off a bridge... not because of my errors, I can live with my errors, but because of the work it's going to take to make the fix.  Criminy!



We are heading slowly towards the final chapters of Tinna's Might, and editing has been moderately painless on the most part, some turbulence here and there, where only minor adjustments are required.  But this new adjustment is HUGE. It might turn Chapter 10 into Chapter 10 and 11.  And I'm somehow going to wrench more out of my creatively tapped brain to fix two rather huge mistakes that just take the wind out of the sails of the whole plot, and would likely make a reader lose momentum and give up on the book.



It's funny we don't see this as we toil through our stories. But it's important to look through the eyes of a reader and not an author.  Would you feel compelled to move forward if you already knew too much.  I was too generous with plot exposition and it killed all the momentum I'd worked so hard to build in prior chapters.

Editors are your first true reader. They are like the test-subjects, the guinea pigs... and if they see an issue, you need to listen, no matter how much work it is to fix.  ::groan::

I sure am whining a lot lately.  When I get through this hurdle, and closer to finalizing this book, I guarantee you I will be a much happier author.  Promise (at least until Tinna's Reign is finished up and is sent in for editing).