Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Guardian is in the editing phase.

So last week I wrapped up the first draft of Guardian.  I printed out the last 30 pages before heading off to my editors place who already had 4/5 of the manuscript red line edited and waiting for me.  It took a little over 20 hours to apply all of the edits.  I was a little concerned with the amount of simple syntax and grammar editing there was.  Requiem on its first pass only took about 14 hours to edit for syntax and grammar.  Having been through this process once, I assumed there would be less grammar edits not more.  Apparently according to my editor when I asked, I write my sentences backwards. For example.

Original sentence.
"Arrow," she said, pointing at the dead guard's body.

Edited sentence.
"Arrow," she said, pointing at the guard's dead body.

English was never my strongest subject in school, but math is.  To me this is like saying 5-4=1  Not -4+5=1.  Honestly I see no difference between the two.  It was not limited to possessive nouns either.  Every page was like this.  So if any of you more experienced authors or editors could explain I would be grateful.



With the first round of editing finished.  My current itinerary is to spend two weeks on revisions.  The beginning of Guardian is a bit weak and I have a list of items I need to clarify.  One thing I dislike is having to repeat myself in my writing.  Take the movie Star Trek Generations.  The first movie for The Next Generation group.  They spent half the movie making sure that we know Data is a robot, Geordi is blind and the thing on his face is a visor that lets him see, and that Troi can sense other peoples emotions.  After 7 seasons on tv, we know this already.

So when I started cranking away at Guardian, I did not retell what to me was obvious.  Kail is a mage, Angela can fly and was born a thousand years ago.  Suki can heal, and Camden can turn his skin into the same material he is touching.  So I have to add these things back in, as well as reminders about what happened in the first book, Requiem.

Putting in these reminders will make Guardian a better book.  My editor's most compelling argument was that I do not know how much time has passed for someone who reads book one before they pick up book two, and the possibility that they start with book two.  I disagreed with argument about someone reading the trilogy out of order, but what sealed the deal was when she said, "You have one book, not seven seasons of Star Trek."  Point made editor, point made.

4 comments:

  1. And this is why she's the smart editor and you're the writing genius :-)

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  2. Love me some TNG, first of all :)

    As far as the 'backwords' sentences go, I'm not sure I can help explain except to recommend maybe saying those sentences out-loud and see if you can tell the difference that way. It just rolls of the tongue differently. Flows differently. Not that I'm the english genius or anything, that's just the ideas that came to my mind as answer to your question. Best of luck with the edits!

    Sarah Allen
    (my creative writing blog)

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  3. I see your editor's point. I agree with Sarah.. try to read it aloud, you will become aware of your mistakes. Good luck with the revisions.

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  4. Second round of editing is done. Three 10+ hour days are finally over.

    @Pearson- Hehe, indeed.

    @Allen and Rachna- Yes, now that the second round of editing is finished the next step we are doing is reading the entire story out loud. We did this with the first book and it picked up a lot of things.

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