Ok, Now I'm Excited Again

I was down to the last nine pages of the edit, plus the new ending chapter I had to write from scratch. It turned out that I painted myself into a corner, or wrote a story to nowhere, I suppose in this case. What to do, what to do? I tried diagramming what I wanted the ending to be, but couldn't make it fit with the story I had in place. Uh oh.

If I couldn't make the ending fit the story, I would make the story fit the ending. Here's what I did: I typed my handwritten outline and made revisions. I made a quick sketch of what parts of the story would have to change and noted that on the printed outline. There was quite a bit of red by the time I was finished. To top it off I wrote some character sketches. Some would say you should write those before your fifth? draft. Whatever.

With these vital documents in hand I turned back to the computer. Draft 5 became draft 5a and away I went. Much to my surprise a lot of what I read was actually good. The first few days of the edit I flew through 20% of the novel. Not bad. The effort wasn't the slash and burn then rewrite extensively affair that previous revisions have been. Of course, this is not a major revision, just a tweak (hence the A in the draft number). For the most part I moved around sentences and paragraphs. I did write a fair amount, but took out much less. I added about eight computer pages and only took out one and a half.

The first few days went well, but the next two (also the last two) have been a little slower. A little background: There are two sections to the book - Before and Now. Before takes place (somewhat confusingly) in modern times. Now is 100-200 years in the future when life as we know it has been destroyed. Before is about 20% of the total. The past few days I've been working on Now, which during the previous edit I added a lot to the beginning. Reading it this week, it showed.

Some paragraphs looked scabbed together while the rest were obviously untouched or completely new. It might have been quicker for me to start over, but the thought of all that white is so intimidating. Methodically I moved paragraphs and sentences around to make the story flow with the new outline. On top of that I added a few paragraphs - Now was just not flowing as well as Before. There was so much revision that I added a new chapter. It's a short one, but it explains a lot to the reader. Previously I had spread out too many revelations through the entire story. Now, in Now, the reader gets a Cliff's Notes type explanation of the future (remember that Now is in the future).

To make a long story short - I have made some good changes that will make the story purposeful and upon reading my work over I feel that all the writing is finally at a level I am proud of.