Critiqued pages, met with Joe and Joan -- good general discussion on cutting, organization, purpose. Brought a dumpy scene -- more suitable as backstory, I guess though, one needs to get through that first before the scenes come. Or maybe they become one of the scenes left out that helps provide a sense of mystery. That scene will work that way since it is the foundation for my characters bad behavior. Oh, and burned 430 calories with additional sets(24's) on weights.
Discussed some other rules of the road, many learned at Viable Paradise including the leave out scene hint above:
- just show the sensory data -- > don't lead in with I smelled, saw, heard etc.
- allow whitespace in scenery and description, only include what the reader needs to know, emotional cues, and really unique bits
- keep a scene focused on one purpose
- don't explain how, just use what with regard to technical/scientific data
- unique, futuristic names of common objects and specificity
- make sure time, place, setting is clear at the start of a story
- allow sensuality even without romance, its impingement of sensory data on the body
- process names don't change -- copy means the same thing whether using monks in a cave or a Xerox machine or a fax machine or a digital rewrite
- careful how much lump data one dumps on a reader
- money flows to the author (Yes, let it do that!)
- to cut, an author needs to get into a different mindset that during creation. I had to hate my novel and just want to get done with editing before I could do this.
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