Star Fall Update 4
Oh my! I’ve finished going through the editor’s comments. As milestones go, I rank this one #3 behind 1) finishing the initial draft and 2) finishing the book. This took me far longer than I thought it would. A major factor in the extra time is that I’ve added 51,000 words. I’ve come close to adding an entire novel to the book (a short novel is about 60K). Indeed, it’s long enough to split into 2 shorter novels and I’m tempted to do that, but I also feel that it would be incomplete. It is a space opera epic and those can run long. Dune for example is 187.000 but of course I’m not Frank Herbert. The editor for a time thought I could eliminate a few of the POVs but she retracted after she got to the end and saw how what felt like disparate threads came together. Having said that, as I reread the new draft, I will keep an eye out for chapters/POVs that I can eliminate. I’m also going to reflect on whether I can indeed split this beast into two.
One structural aspect that I’ve noticed is that I have a preference for splitting up scenes. But I’ve decided this is a “fake” technique to build tension. I think it has its place but I overused it. I do have a fair number of characters with multiple POVs. The constant switching gets to be too much, and so I’ve consolidated many of these split scenes together. The “minus” is that I may be off from the primary thread for more pages but I think it’s less confusing to the reader.
Next steps are many— I need to read through the new draft with an eye for anything that can be cut. Once I get to a happy place, I’ll run it through the Autocrit platform which has various edit tools. Once I get a revised “pristine” version, I will reread book 1, at the suggestion of the editor, to see if I need to make any revisions. Once I’m happy on that front, I will resubmit the book2 to the editor. Because of its length, everything will take longer, alas.
This is a short update! I’m focused on the restructuring aspect (rearranging and combining scenes), which takes a good deal of concentration.
