Monday, February 1, 2010

How Do You Know?

How do you know when you’re done with a scene? A chapter? The whole gosh darn novel?

I’ve been editing the THE UNCOMMON ONE (Book 1) for the umpteenth time. I finally got some great feedback from a contest (of which they received an older version). While a lot of the mistakes they noticed had already been corrected (pat on the back), there was a major flaw I didn’t catch: a lot of talking and not much movement/action. The best feedback was the judges thought the story was unique (yea!) and wished me luck on the revisions.

So as I go through my book, I noticed I had improved chapter by chapter (more showing, less telling). I hope it’s just the beginning that needs work, but I’m still going through it scene by scene.

My problem? Every time I re-read something I think I fixed, I always find something else. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied! Is that common?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I found you from Nathan Bransford's blog. And I see you live in the same area as I do--how awesome :)

Anyway, it is a common thing to go over something a thousand times and then find something else. I find that my critique group will often pick out things I never would've thought of but then realize it once I see it. Sometimes we're so close to our stories that we have a harder time seeing how all the pieces fit together to form the whole.

Anyway, nice to see another fellow writer in the area :)

Stacy McKitrick said...

Thanks for visiting!

After this post, I went and revised the beginning - again! But it needed it.

Eventually I'll get it right.

Jeanne Estridge said...

Universal, I think!