Are we really at 20% of this revision already? Whew, the fourth draft of a years-long endeavor just whizzes by!
Next Scene on Deck: Oh, cupcake. We’re gonna be spending a lot of time together.
For future reference, getting a handle on a main character only during the second revision pass is ungood. Like and subscribe for even more advanced pro tips!
Deleted part of a scene (a scenelet?) just to see how it goes. I added it in a previous revision round to work through Heroine’s thoughts about companions Hero would have lurking about if he was what he claims to be, but now I think that might be adequately covered in the surrounding material, making this an unnecessary tangent.
Or something. Those several pages felt jammed in, and not in the “I can blend the edges” way. Maybe the function is necessary but I picked the wrong way to illustrate it! Whatever the case, the nature of the problem isn’t leaping out at me, so the only way to fix it is to chop, see if that creates a discernible lack, and then deal with the lack in some way that isn’t these clunky pages.
There are always untouched previous drafts if dead words need to be resurrected.
Minor continuity patches, such as Hero seeing Heroine’s hair for the first time being notable tomorrow morning, so covering it with a scarf can’t happen after they’ve been hanging out for an hour today.
I’m positive I actually wrote her wrapping her head and leaving only her eyes exposed in a previous draft, but apparently I missed the relevance and deleted it at some point. Oh well, it’s back in roughly the same place now!
“One wall was lined with bookshelves” vs. “Bookshelves lined one wall.” I may jazz up “lined” to be more in the mood of the room. Or I may forget to do that or decide it’s heavy-handed cheese! But moving the do-nothing wall to its rightful position as an object at least gets rid of the passive voice problem.
Even if it remains a lackluster sentence, the nouns are in the preferred order.
I spend an excessive amount of time describing one room, but it will be important later, I swear. It’s a clue.
Now I just have to amp up what it is a clue to, in keeping with Past Me’s note on the matter: “omfg this is his entire character arc and he LITERALLY PUT IT IN HER HANDS!!!” Maybe if I pump it up elsewhere I’ll be able to dial back this room garbage, but we won’t know until we know.
