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Now with 40% despair and hair pulling!
I actually made positive progress today on editing the Tower!Guy novel. I realized that it's not the big huge mess I thought it was yesterday.
What really helped was following![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fairmer's suggestion to use a chart to keep track of chapters and POV's. I hear there is software out there that can do that for you, but honestly? It was just as easy to make a chart on the back of one of the pages of the manuscript.
I'm one of those people who doesn't tend to believe in having a lot of bells and whistles in the physical writing process. Not that those who have special tools or software are wrong or lesser writers, but I'm kind of a naturalist. I basically just need a quiet place to think and a word processor. Or pen and paper, depending on the situation. Of course, I'm also a completely unpublished nobody, so the mileage on this may vary.
Another helpful step was to make a list of the bare bones of plot that happen in each chapter on the chart next to the POV column. This way I can see not only who's telling the story, but what's happening. It helped me see that there were some chapters where a lot of plot points happen, and some chapters where nothing happens. Having a character watch something for ten pages is not plot.
Not to mention that making the chart gave me a very visible understanding of why things were lopsided. I have three POV characters, but there's a huge six chapter streak of my novel that's only from one character's perspective. And most of it doesn't have to be, either.
What all of this means is that I won't have to go back and do another massive overhaul of the novel like I did this summer. That was like taking an old house, knocking out walls, putting a new roof on, and basically remaking the place.
This is more like fixing some leaky plumbing and maybe putting in hardwood instead of carpet. Nothing to despair over.
Guess it's time to cowboy up with the Red Pen of Death and get back to line editing for all my grammar mistakes. Seeing my own grammar errors gets a bit funny after a while. It's like a thousand English teachers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
What really helped was following
fairmer's suggestion to use a chart to keep track of chapters and POV's. I hear there is software out there that can do that for you, but honestly? It was just as easy to make a chart on the back of one of the pages of the manuscript. I'm one of those people who doesn't tend to believe in having a lot of bells and whistles in the physical writing process. Not that those who have special tools or software are wrong or lesser writers, but I'm kind of a naturalist. I basically just need a quiet place to think and a word processor. Or pen and paper, depending on the situation. Of course, I'm also a completely unpublished nobody, so the mileage on this may vary.
Another helpful step was to make a list of the bare bones of plot that happen in each chapter on the chart next to the POV column. This way I can see not only who's telling the story, but what's happening. It helped me see that there were some chapters where a lot of plot points happen, and some chapters where nothing happens. Having a character watch something for ten pages is not plot.
Not to mention that making the chart gave me a very visible understanding of why things were lopsided. I have three POV characters, but there's a huge six chapter streak of my novel that's only from one character's perspective. And most of it doesn't have to be, either.
What all of this means is that I won't have to go back and do another massive overhaul of the novel like I did this summer. That was like taking an old house, knocking out walls, putting a new roof on, and basically remaking the place.
This is more like fixing some leaky plumbing and maybe putting in hardwood instead of carpet. Nothing to despair over.
Guess it's time to cowboy up with the Red Pen of Death and get back to line editing for all my grammar mistakes. Seeing my own grammar errors gets a bit funny after a while. It's like a thousand English teachers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
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I agree on bells and whistles being unnecessary. I outlined each chapter of my novel in a chart in MS Word after I wrote it, so I could keep track of the plot. This made it much easier to see where things needed to be tweaked, combined, or moved around.
I know you mentioned before that you were embarrassed at making mistakes, but writers have to make mistakes to improve. Writers should be constantly trying to fail. Most things really can be fixed in revision--especially with such a strong early draft. Feedback and critiques are invaluable, if they help you work. Even when a manuscript is "ready" and publishable, a lot more revision is likely going to be necessary. It can always be better, but the key is making it as good as you're capable right now. If you don't want to get stuck on one book for your whole career (or a few movies, in George Lucas's case), there is such a thing as "good enough", although that still has to be pretty damn good before you start submitting.
The caveat being, I'm still relatively new at all this, and I don't know so much :)
Keep at it!