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Editing and Research

Recent research has included:

  • The Street with No Name (for the 1950 story);
  • Guns of August/Tuchman (for the adventure story);
  • The Crimean War/Figes (for the adventure story);
  • Wish Me Luck (BBC series) (for the 1939 story);
  • Carve Her Name With Pride (film about Violette Szabo) (for the 1939 story).

I really could use some working titles here!

Current editing:

Still trying to understand the structure process. Getting lost in midsection (story-world). Next step: peel out individual subplots and character arcs to help see where they have holes.

Eventually, I really hope to get a story structure process together. It feels so mysterious.

Incoming:

Need more work and thought around either fantasy or sf story lines. Both are currently too thin and the character voices are not strong enough to talk me through.

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Editing and planning….

CampNaNoWriMo

I’ve started the editing process. I set up a plan which vaguely goes like this:
Prep:

  • cut all chapters into scenes
  • mark thematic elements
  • character lists
  • mark point of view
  • short research as necessary

Draft 2

  • Scene organization
  • place scenes in structurs [start with major ones]
  • placeholders for insertions
  • write missing scenes as go through draft from beginning to end

Draft 3

  • Scene arc
  • treat scenes as small stories
  • review internal scene integrity
  • full rewrite, beginning to end

Draft 4

Fact Checking

Draft 5 and onward

Word-level revision

The plan is to get through draft two in September and then three in October. Once that’s done I’ll have a reading draft to show to some initial readers to see what they think overall. The last two+ drafts could take a year. It’s hard to work too much on that in advance.

At any rate, this will free me up for:

NaNoWriMo 2011

Generally, I’ve been what in NaNo they call a pantser—that is, I do everything by the seat of my pants. This year I want to try to write from an outline. Generally this kills it for me, but I am hoping it won’t tank my November draft entirely. Also, one of the characters in my draft from last year—well, his backstory kind of took over into its own story, and I’d like to run with it.