I need to get cracking! I’ve given myself a deadline for finishing the revisions and getting the manuscript out to publishers. I had hoped to have it done by the end of June, but after the conference in May I realized that there were several areas I needed to review. I’ve been working on them and I now believe that the end of August is a realistic goal.
Now that we are back to a little more normal routine I need to get back to my 24 hour writing workweek. So, I guess you know what I’ll be doing in the next couple of days.
The revisions I am working on right now involve going through each scene and evaluating for several things. The first one is the Point Of View. You are only allowed one point of view character per scene. This is tough for me. I tend to “head-jump” and this is a problem. So, I’ve been going through each scene and identifying the POV character and then I just make sure I don’t have any thoughts pop into the scene from someone else’s head.
The second area I am looking at in each scene is the description. The more senses you involve in description the more interesting the writing is. I’ve heard it said that you should use all five senses to describe things in each scene. I’ve also heard that you need at least three. I think five is a pretty hard one to accomplish. I like to eat but getting taste in every scene seems a little contrived. So, my goal is to get at least three in each scene.
There are a couple of other things I am looking at for each scene but those are the main ones. Once I am done evaluating the scenes I need to evaluate each character and determine if there are any further clues to their personalities that need to be plugged in. Have I fully developed each of their individual story goals? Do they grow in some way throughout the book?
Whew! That’s a lot to do. I guess I should get off of here and get started. Pray for me, I really want this to be the best book possible and I want it done on time for my self-imposed deadline.