The Middle Squared

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That guy on the left? That represents me. That pencil in his hands? That represents revising.

This giant monster of a task that just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

When will it end? I can’t say. Not a specific date anyway. I was hoping for the end of July, but looks like that’s only going to get me to the 3/4 point. Maybe August will fare better.

The good news? I can put The Narrator away for a while to let it marinate.

The bad news? I still have to incorporate the critiques from my writing group.

The worse news? It’ll be that much longer until I can begin querying agents or publishers.

All I know is, I can’t wait to be in the Middle of a new project.

Expanding Your Story

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Have you ever received the comment, “you need to expand this?”

Sometimes it’s a good reminder. When you’re writing, your mind flies so much faster than your hand. You might have left out sentences that could help the reader follow the action.

But sometimes you feel that you have nothing to expand. Maybe you wrote twice as much description as you normally do, or you wrote every thought your character had. What’s left to expand?

Part of my revision this time around is focused on expanding what I already have. Mostly this involves adding new scenes and extending old ones.

I like to write concisely, so expanding can be a difficult task for me.

How do you expand your story?

Do Over

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Make the revisions stop!

Hopefully this is the last time I have to re-plot The Narrator before I send it out to beta readers. I’m getting sick of re-plotting it, but I know the story is benefiting from it!

If you know anything about the protagonist’s inner and outer desires, excuse the quick explanation. The outer desire is what they want, and is usually selfish; the inner desire is what they need, usually unknown, and is usually unselfish. To create a great protagonist, these desires need to be in opposition.

I came up with the perfect set for Prince Calder. His outer desire is to go on adventures and be a hero; his inner desire is to control his own life. Normally those go hand in hand. But with an omniscient, powerful narrator as your antagonist? Holy crap, you’re screwed.

If you go on adventures and are a hero, you’re not really controlling your life because you’re falling into what the narrator wants. If you don’t, you are controlling your life but you’re very unhappy. And probably no longer qualify as the protagonist!

Unfortunately, this revelation also means that my progress bar reset to 0. The first quarter of the revision should go pretty fast, since the content is similar, but it’ll slow down as I expand or totally re-write the rest of the novel.

I Am Stuck

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Revising is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

In between writing bouts for Screnzy, I’ve been trying to revise my NaNoWriMo novel. Ha.

I want to change like, half of it, but getting up the nerve to actually buckle down? My mind instantly rebels and runs back to Screnzy to crank out a few more pages. That’s not what you’d call the best progress.

I’ve managed to storyboard the thing, but I’m not super happy with how it looks at this point. I might end up tossing out the end and free-writing again to see where it takes me. I hate when I have an absolute ending in mind and can’t for the life of me figure out how to get there.