David Weller Author Blogspot

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There were a few pencil marks on Chapter Twenty to draw my attention to things I’d missed. They were all things which I’d have eventually noticed myself such as a missing letter on the end of a word or a missing comma.  There were also a couple of tick marks to indicate parts my editor liked. So on the surface not much to do with this chapter. The end of the previous chapter marked the Crises point of the story. This is the highest energetic marker in the story so far. It is the scene of highest intensity in terms of Character Emotional Development and Dramatic Action. It is the point in the story when the MC is at their lowest ebb, sends them to their knees and cracks them wide open. As a result, the MC is transformed and comes to a new awareness. This is followed by the threshold scene when the character asks why they are in this mess. It is a period of self reflection when they rethink who they are. It is a time when they can reflect on their own back story and begin t...

When my editor read Chapter Nineteen, her pencil homed in on two missing commas, two small typos and struck out three superfluous words. She also made two valid suggestions. The first involved something which had vanished. My editor suggested that the MC, who’d never been to the place before could suggest to the others that they’d either got lost or come to the wrong place. I wondered why I’d never thought of it myself and quickly inserted a piece of dialogue to that effect. The second involved the MC suggesting something which she knew wasn’t possible. On this second point I had to stand back and try and look at it from my editor’s viewpoint. When I wrote this I was in my MC’s head. She knew it wasn’t possible and knew why. However, the people she was talking to were not aware of this impossibility because they had not experienced it for themselves. In effect she was holding back information. I can see why this was confusing and got round the problem by getting one of the oth...

If I hadn’t seen a comment from my editor on the final page, I might have thought she hadn’t read this chapter. I’d used the cliché ‘It’s vanished into thin air.’ My editor suggested that I could have used ellipses and stammering to add tone to the dialogue as follows. ‘I-it’s vanished!’ This was a technique I had already used earlier in this chapter when I wrote: Ramona’s expression deepened. ‘Ray...Ray...’ she stammered as tears welled in her eyes. ‘He... was taken... by Beasties as well.’ In my latest draft I changed this to: Ramona’s composure shattered into fragments. ‘Ray... Ray...’ she stammered as tears welled in her eyes. ‘Yetis...took him... as well.’ I’m still in two minds as to whether the use of the word ‘stammered’ is necessary. It didn’t draw a comment from my editor but is something I will need to think about. The term Beasties is one which Elisha’s community had coined to describe the mysterious hominids which had been sighted near their villa...

Chapter Seventeen extracted very little lead from my editor’s pencil. Her observations are summarised below. ·            A small arrow to indicate that the start of the first paragraph for a new chapter or section should always be against the left hand margin. ·            Two commas which shouldn’t have been there. ·            A missing question mark. ·            A missing letter on the end of one word. ·            One paragraph of information already revealed earlier in the story. ·            A big tick and the comment ‘Nice’ against one of the scenes. On the surface it seemed that this chapter wasn’t going to require too much work. However, that’s where an author ne...

Chapter Fifteen only required minor revision. This occurred at the end of the chapter and included one instance of the passive voice and a small amount of telling writing. For comparison I will show you both the original and amended text. The original version: Elisha’s heart raced as Jack led them away from the hide on a route which took them in a wide circle of the Scavengers camp. She felt conscious of every sound they made and feared any one of them might alert the Scavengers to their presence. Once they found themselves inside the tree line she felt slightly more relieved. Amended version: Elisha’s heart raced as Jack led them away from the hide on a route which took them in a wide circle of the Scavengers camp. Conscious of every sound they made, she feared they might alert the Scavengers to their presence. Once inside the tree line she exhaled with relief and wiped the sweat from her palms on her dress. Chapter Sixteen contained a few instances of missing co...

At the end of Chapter Twelve I came up with a more dramatic way for the MC to be pulled in a new direction at the midpoint in the story. As a result chapters thirteen and fourteen needed to be reworked. Following my usual practice, I copied and pasted the whole of Chapter Thirteen into a document I use for discarded text. Although most was redundant as far as this chapter was concerned, it contained some material I would be able to reuse later on. All of the material in Chapter Fourteen was still relevant to this part of the story but the first half needed to be reworked. I began the revision by writing a continuation of the final scene from Chapter Twelve. This included material from the beginning of Chapter Fourteen which was reworked to fit in. I followed with some new material which convinces the MC to change direction. To complete Chapter Thirteen I used the remainder of Chapter Fourteen. The result of my editing cut my chapter count by one at this stage but with ...