SUMMARY OF EDITS FOR CHAPTERS FOUR & FIVE

I wrote the first draft in 1st person present tense in order to get closer to the MC. I then changed it back to 3rd person past. Anything the MC didn’t actually witness was related to her by another character. This was a mistake. I should have chosen the most important character present and written the scene viewed through their eyes. This would have avoided some telling writing.

At the end of Chapter Four the MC is informed that her nearest and dearest have been arrested. She then rushes off at the beginning of Chapter Five to find out why. In my rewrite, I deleted the end of Chapter Four and wrote a brand new scene to begin Chapter Five. This new scene shows the events leading up to the arrest. The second scene shows her turning up at the jail to try and get them out. The result is a vast improvement on the original draft.

Other things I did to improve Chapter Four:

·         I sorted out the formatting.
·         I added a few details to add depth to one scene.
·         I took my editors advice and turned a reference to something into a scene. I described this in a post dated 10th December. This rounded off the chapter so I was able to cut the original ending.

To improve Chapter Five:

·         I wrote a new first scene as described above.
·         I changed a reference to the MC returning to the jail at night with some food into a small scene.
·         I revised the final scene to incorporate some new ideas I had.
·         I changed the odd word here and there.

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