Notes from the Revision Frontline
Jan. 13th, 2010 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomi_jayBecause this is a war. A war of ... words, I guess.
I got through 40 pages of revisions on Wild last night, which made about 60 altogether for yesterday, since I worked through my lunchbreak too. At the moment, there's a lot of little fiddly changes to be made - slight alterations in dialogue and scene setting to accommodate changes in the overall plot. I'm making a lot more use of Liverpool as a location in this draft, which has affected a few scenes quite drastically. I chopped the first two chapters of the novel out altogether, for example, and wrote one new first chapter to replace them, using my favourite night club in Liverpool as the setting. I'm always a bit neurotic about that kind of thing, because I'm convinced I'm making everything worse, but actually I'm quite pleased with the new opening, which sees Lizzie popping pills in the toilets. Glamourous! But actually, you learn more about Lizzie and her life through this version than you did through the old opening. A net gain, right?
I'm going to get to the really sticky stuff soon, where I'll be cutting out massive chunks and rewriting them entirely. In addition to replacing Vaughn with an entirely new character, I've also cut back majorly on Lizzie's family. Before, they all lived locally and a big part of the story focused on her relationship with them, and how her lifestyle affected them. Now they're living in another part of the country, which enables me to cut out a hell of a lot of screaming, whining, and angsting on Lizzie's part.
Cutting out whining and screaming is something I'm keen to do, as Lizzie does spend a lot of the novel doing it. Too much, mayhap? I think so. I always wanted her to be a "difficult" character - different from the typical UF heroine in that she's not an ass-kicking, leather-clad, high-sexxing monster hunter, but just your average drug-taking loser. I wanted part of her personal arc to show her move from down-and-out waster to someone with a bit more hope, a bit more fight in them.
Problem is, there's a fine line between "difficult" and "annoying." (My agent remarked at one point that she hoped Lizzie "chokes on a big wad of junkie splooge." LOL - not the reaction you want a reader to have to your protagonist. So, I want to make Lizzie softer and more sympathetic without taking away her edge. A lot of that I can via her interactions with other people - her friends, her family, her boyfriend (except her boyfriend is scum, so...).
The other big looming alteration is to my bad guys. In the first draft (waaay back in 2007), they had no motivation at all. They were just randomly bad. In the second draft (2008), they had motivation but it was vague and pretty lame. In the third draft (2009), they had better motivation, but it was really only alluded to in the penultimate chapter, by which time most of them were either dead or missing. In Draft 2010, they're going to have real motivation! Proper, serious, villainous motivation which causes them to cackle wildly and rub their hands together.
I just don't know what it is yet.
I mean, I kind of do. Sort of.
No, actually, I don't.
So... You know, I need to work on that before I go much further.
I got through 40 pages of revisions on Wild last night, which made about 60 altogether for yesterday, since I worked through my lunchbreak too. At the moment, there's a lot of little fiddly changes to be made - slight alterations in dialogue and scene setting to accommodate changes in the overall plot. I'm making a lot more use of Liverpool as a location in this draft, which has affected a few scenes quite drastically. I chopped the first two chapters of the novel out altogether, for example, and wrote one new first chapter to replace them, using my favourite night club in Liverpool as the setting. I'm always a bit neurotic about that kind of thing, because I'm convinced I'm making everything worse, but actually I'm quite pleased with the new opening, which sees Lizzie popping pills in the toilets. Glamourous! But actually, you learn more about Lizzie and her life through this version than you did through the old opening. A net gain, right?
I'm going to get to the really sticky stuff soon, where I'll be cutting out massive chunks and rewriting them entirely. In addition to replacing Vaughn with an entirely new character, I've also cut back majorly on Lizzie's family. Before, they all lived locally and a big part of the story focused on her relationship with them, and how her lifestyle affected them. Now they're living in another part of the country, which enables me to cut out a hell of a lot of screaming, whining, and angsting on Lizzie's part.
Cutting out whining and screaming is something I'm keen to do, as Lizzie does spend a lot of the novel doing it. Too much, mayhap? I think so. I always wanted her to be a "difficult" character - different from the typical UF heroine in that she's not an ass-kicking, leather-clad, high-sexxing monster hunter, but just your average drug-taking loser. I wanted part of her personal arc to show her move from down-and-out waster to someone with a bit more hope, a bit more fight in them.
Problem is, there's a fine line between "difficult" and "annoying." (My agent remarked at one point that she hoped Lizzie "chokes on a big wad of junkie splooge." LOL - not the reaction you want a reader to have to your protagonist. So, I want to make Lizzie softer and more sympathetic without taking away her edge. A lot of that I can via her interactions with other people - her friends, her family, her boyfriend (except her boyfriend is scum, so...).
The other big looming alteration is to my bad guys. In the first draft (waaay back in 2007), they had no motivation at all. They were just randomly bad. In the second draft (2008), they had motivation but it was vague and pretty lame. In the third draft (2009), they had better motivation, but it was really only alluded to in the penultimate chapter, by which time most of them were either dead or missing. In Draft 2010, they're going to have real motivation! Proper, serious, villainous motivation which causes them to cackle wildly and rub their hands together.
I just don't know what it is yet.
I mean, I kind of do. Sort of.
No, actually, I don't.
So... You know, I need to work on that before I go much further.
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no subject
on 2010-01-13 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-01-13 06:31 pm (UTC)Love the new layout!!
no subject
on 2010-01-13 10:56 pm (UTC)And I see you're looking for a band name without wolves in the title. Although I might say that there is an Aussie band called WhereWolves which is pretty awesome :B
no subject
on 2010-01-14 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-01-14 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-01-14 08:58 am (UTC)