The Hand Edit Continues

I have moved through the edit of the first section of the GIANT (which is about 20% of the book), and have made a decision. My last hand edit was an intensive affair, where I hand wrote long passages, but it was a slow process. So far, this edit is no different and has been a slow, but productive affair. I feel as though I have made a lot of good changes, but when I move onto the rest of the story, I'm going to change the pace.

There are a lot of plot points and timing issues to remember (I still don't have an outline), so I'm going to move through the rest of the edit as quickly as possible so as to not forget points. Instead of handwriting long passages, I'm going to make more broad suggestions and make the actual changes on the computer. If I have particularly good ideas, I'll write those out, but otherwise I'm going to make this a quick strike sort of affair.

Onto the Next Draft

The GIANT is broken into two sections, and it is clear from the outside edit that the first section needs a fair ammount of work. It has been months since I have read through the entire manuscript, and more than a year since I've held a physical copy of it. Additionally, I have tweeked the plot somewhat, so just a short way into the edit I have significant changes to make.

What I've spent a lot of time focusing on is pulling the reader quickly into the story. Always critical to a story's success (who wants to plow through a boring story by an unknown author?), a good beginning is doubly important to the GIANT to explain the technical structure of the story.

Editor's Comments

I've flipped through the latest manuscript which has my editor's, Stacy, comments. It is quite helpful to see the story through another person's eyes. There have been quite a few, "why did I do that?" revelations on my part.

Stacy left quite a few notes on the pages. I am not a professional writer, nor have I taken more than the required English courses during my educational life, so there are quite a few technial aspects I am not clear on. It's always helpful when someone helps me out in that regard. Stacy also pointed out a few places where my writing style was either confusing, uneeded, or out of place. For example, I started a wealth of sentences with And and But, and an attempt to control pacing I used too many short sentences.

Stacy also provided quite a few big picture comments which shows me where I had not explained the plot and story well enough.

I will begin my next edit (hand) soon.