Weekly Blog - Monday 2nd February

[Steven Hague]

I spent last week reading through the manuscript for the third novel in the Zac Hunter series, The Beholder, ahead of delivering a draft to my agent, Broo Doherty. The task was more onerous than I expected, resulting in a few late nights and early mornings, and I ended up cutting another 4,500 words from the prose. This brought the total down to around 93,000, which is more in line with that of both Justice For All (89,000) and Blood Law (91,000), and I’m confident that the cuts have helped make the novel a leaner, meaner beast.

I also find that I sometimes overuse certain phrases or words when I write (there were lots of ’dull thuds’ in this one, and if I had a penny for every time someone took a deep breath…), so I checked through the manuscript (using Word’s very handy ‘find’ function) and re-worded certain sections as necessary.

Once I’d finished editing, all that was left for me to do was to sort out the chapters. Let me explain. When I first work out the plot for a novel, I divide it into a series of scenes (kind of like a movie storyboard but without the pictures), which can vary in length from just a couple of paragraphs to a number of pages, thus one of the last things I do with a manuscript is group some of the shorter scenes together to form decent sized chapters.

Next week I’ll be reading again, this time to check through the final draft of my second novel, Blood Law, before it goes to print, and once that important task has been crossed off the list, I’ll be enjoying a beer or two to celebrate my birthday!

Cheers,
Steve

What’s Steve been listening to this week?
The Sufferer And The Witness – by Rise Against
Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness – by Smashing Pumpkins
Minutes To Midnight – by Linkin Park