SUMMARY OF EDITS FOR CHAPTER TWENTY

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 to take responsibility for themselves. It is the point in the story when they either regain skills they have lost, understand that their beliefs have held them back or they realise they’d lost a part of themselves. It is this new understanding which will drive them through the final part of the story. This is what Chapter Twenty was all about.

When I read through this chapter again, I realised that I could still incorporate a lot more into it. It was a fairly short one, comprising only seven MS pages. Most of the others averaged around twelve. I rewrote a couple of scenes incorporating new ideas I had come up with since I wrote the original and the net result was two extra pages. Other changes I made included rephrasing the odd sentence and changing words here and there. All in all, the latest version is much better than the original.