Weekly Blog - Monday 8th December
Death Of A Thousand Cuts
Last week saw the start of the editing process for The Beholder. Having completed the first draft of a novel, the first thing I do is to give it a read through to tidy up the prose, which generally involves making lots of small cuts. My first drafts tend to be a little on the flabby side, as it’s fair to say that I have a natural tendency towards verbosity, but I also think that there’s a sub-conscious factor at work, namely that when I set out to write a book, the last thing I want is to get to the end and find that it’s not long enough! This encourages me to waffle a bit as I write, so the first read through is all about taking out anything that doesn’t really need to be there.
For the most part, this means removing the odd word or sentence, although occasionally whole paragraphs (or even chapters!) have been known to get the chop. By the end of last week I’d worked through two thirds of the manuscript, and cut about 7,000 words from the original total of 105,000 words, making it a much meaner, moody beast!
Cheers,
Steve
What’s Steve been listening to this week?
Memory and Humanity – by Funeral For A Friend
Chinese Democracy – by Guns ‘n’ Roses
When Your Heart Stops Beating - by +44
Last week saw the start of the editing process for The Beholder. Having completed the first draft of a novel, the first thing I do is to give it a read through to tidy up the prose, which generally involves making lots of small cuts. My first drafts tend to be a little on the flabby side, as it’s fair to say that I have a natural tendency towards verbosity, but I also think that there’s a sub-conscious factor at work, namely that when I set out to write a book, the last thing I want is to get to the end and find that it’s not long enough! This encourages me to waffle a bit as I write, so the first read through is all about taking out anything that doesn’t really need to be there.
For the most part, this means removing the odd word or sentence, although occasionally whole paragraphs (or even chapters!) have been known to get the chop. By the end of last week I’d worked through two thirds of the manuscript, and cut about 7,000 words from the original total of 105,000 words, making it a much meaner, moody beast!
Cheers,
Steve
What’s Steve been listening to this week?
Memory and Humanity – by Funeral For A Friend
Chinese Democracy – by Guns ‘n’ Roses
When Your Heart Stops Beating - by +44
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