SUMMARY OF EDITS FOR CHAPTER TWELVE

Apart from a small arrow indicating that the start of the first paragraph should be against the left hand margin, a missing question mark and one small typo, this chapter didn’t draw any criticism from my editor. At first glance it seemed that it required almost no work at all. Appearances can be deceptive.

This chapter marks the midpoint in the story. It is where something happens to set the MC off on a new path. In the first draft, the MC became less proactive from this point on. This was the main issue which needed to be addressed when I set about revising.

Because of changes I’d made to earlier chapters, much of what I’d written became redundant and so I cut out almost 80% of the original text.

The manner in which the MC is forced to change direction wasn’t as dramatic as it could have been. This is where I needed to go and lie down, close my eyes and come up with something better. I’m not going to give away too much here but the solution was so simple, I still wonder why I never thought of it in the first place. Of all the revisions I have made this is the most significant and really sets the second half of the story alight.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW I LANDED MY LITERARY AGENT

Being represented by a literary agent is what authors, who wish to be traditionally published, aspire to. It's the only way their work will ever be seen by a major publishing house editor.  This is not always an easy thing to achieve and statistics say that the odds of receiving an offer of representation are about 6000 to 1. This is how I received my offer of representation. On the 18th of March 2021,  I sent a query letter and a 10 page writing sample to Cindy Bullard at Birch Literary. 39 days later, on the 26th of April I received a request for the full manuscript. Not wishing to blow my chances, I spent 10 days editing the manuscript and sent if off on the 6th of May. The next day I received an email saying that Cindy would be in touch within 8 weeks. On the the 1st of July I received an email saying that Cindy was behind on her reading and asking if the manuscript was still available. I said it was, and the next day Cindy emailed and thanked me for my patience as she con...
Read more

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

When I completed my MS I was in no doubt that I had a good story with an interesting premise. However I knew something was lacking and was so close to my own work I couldn't see what it was.Over the past few days I have read the editorial report in conjunction with the annotated MS my editor returned to me. I can see that I missed quite a few opportunities for some really tense drama. Now the blinkers are off and I am raring to go again.
Read more