Yesterday, my husband dragged me out of bed at 5:30 after staying up till 1:00 a.m. finishing up Chapter 2 and then digging into Chapter 3. Chapter 3's problem wasn't content--I located good solid unrepetitive facts throughout, just focus--it started off lame, finished weak. So, picked out the points of conflict and attention getting action and restructured it all. Work is still in progress, I hope to finish this today.
So then at the editing workshop, I joined the Whidbey Island Writer's Association and watched many of the writers--many of them are writing middle grade stories and young adult. Next week Saturday I do this all again.
Susan Wiggs had some interesting suggestions:
1) sort all your characters in a alphabet chart to see if you're making names sound too much the same
2) for a cold read of your novel, print it out landscape and don't reformat the page so you have a good wide column for writing comments
3) at the start of a cold read, write a list of what you like and don't like about your novel
4) get rid of your precious work you most love--I don't know that I agree with this one, necessarily, except that the first draft should be ready for the scissors.
5) she passed out many lists of things to look for and fix
6) I absolutely agreed with her that getting the first draft finished was more important than nitpicking prose endlessly since a lot of the first draft hits the cutting table and doesn't survive. When you're first writing a draft, you don't necessarily know your story, it grows out of your working with the characters and research materials.
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