Sorry about yesterday's 'ghost post'. When I slotted the posts all in for the month, I accidentally hit 'publish' instead of 'save as draft', meaning the blank post posted itself yesterday. Oops!
Today we're talking about Stage 4 Editing, which is a great example of how writing processes can change, because when I first planned this series of posts, Stage 4 was the final stage; but now I have 6, slotted in between the original 3 and 4.
So what does Stage 4 Editing involve?
Turns out, it involves a synopsis. See, I went away last weekend, and as we were travelling I got talking to my husband about Jesscapades - well, complaining about it is probably more accurate ;) We ending up talking about the book for over two hours, and - lo! - my problems are solved! :D In't my DH wonderful? :)
Anyway. We got to where we were going and the next day I sat down to attack my plot. I prepared to break out tape and knives and red ink and whatever else would be necessary to beat the thing into submission.
I didn't mean to start writing. But I did, and 4.5 hours and 5.5 thousand words later, I had a beautiful, complete, shiny, PRETTY synopsis. And it works, and there are no more plot holes, and it's pretty.
And that was Part A.
Part B involved then examining what I had and putting it back into a Line-for-Scene (L4S) outline like at Stage 3. This was slightly less than dead simple, because my synopsis was a writer's synopsis, which means it includes into that my POV character can't possibly know.
Figuring out where and how to begin was hardest, and I'm still not sure that how I have it works, because I have what basically equates to a 5-scene prologue, but eh. I'll see how it works, and if it doesn't, I'll incorporate the scenes as flashbacks.
What I have got now is a scene-by-scene outline of my entire story, pretty, fixed, and ready for the next stage of editing.
And that, apparently, is Stage 4.
And yes, I'm now giving thought to writing synopses before spending 70k creating problems for myself. Oi. o.O
:)
5 comments:
Did the post get lost? :(
Indeed %-) In the deep dark depths of my brain o.O
Fixed now though! :D
That is stage four! It was the only way I was able to get a holistic picture of the story. Before I wrote my synopsis it was just a fractured collection of scenes. I'd worked on it for so long I'd lost the feel of the overall story.
Hearing you, Inkster. Writing synop of newest wip before writing it is proving...useful.
Kerryn - I completely agree! Only I never really HAD a sense of the overall, unified story, so I felt even /more/ fractured.
Yuna - I'm glad it's going well. I'm going to attempt one for Borderlands before I write any more on it :)
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