Novel Watch #20: -62 pages [0 total - oh no!]
“Egads,” you say, “what happened? Did your computer crash and lose your entire book? Was all that hard work for naught? Why did I say ‘egads’? Who says that, anyway?”
Good questions.
Okay, I’m not really back to square one, although I kind of feel like it. After another long weekend away from my book, I’m able to notice some major deficiencies in what I’ve written so far. It’s not so bad that I have to scrap it all and start over, but I have decided to do some big revising now rather than later. It’s a method I’ve gotten used to at school: write the first section of a story, get critiques from fellow writers, then redraft the first section and continue on from there. In this case, I’m able to skip the critiquing part and address some issues with plot structure and character development. I need to complicate some characters and flesh out others, as well as add a bit more excitement up front, so for approximately the next two weeks I’m going to be working through what I have and rearranging it, at times supplementing it with new material.
I actually added 2.5 pages today, but I’m still at 0 out of 62 pages in terms of revised pages, and I haven’t quite decided what the best marker of this revision process is going to be.
With luck, the end result of this process will be a firmer structural basis for when I start part 2 later this month.
Today, though, I mostly added a scene at the beginning with Adrianna getting some advice.
“You will never amount to anything,†the college advisor said. He was thin-lipped, thin-cheeked man with a sallow complexion and a pencil moustache. Adrianna found herself staring at a large brown wart on the side of his nose. It trembled as he spoke, expanding and deflating with each nostril-flaring breath, the two wiry black hairs sticking out of it twitching like insect antennae.