Revision resumes with a potential turn-back point, which Heroine basically ignored in her mechanical trudge toward the next plot point. I had her slow down to acknowledge both certain death ahead and equally certain but postponed death if she turns back, then tapped both her conscience and a grudge as motivation to justify moving forward. Now there’s an actual choice at that turning point rather than a glib “eh, whatever” in service to the plot.
Wild how writing more makes it seem less like the author’s hand is pushing plastic pips through a maze that has only one route.
I hashtagged the subsequent scene “the edge,” so it probably used to be where I explained a lot of curse physics to myself. I rightfully cut that infodump during the last round of revision, and the little bit that remains hasn’t acquired a self-contained purpose in my absence. Salvaged a few lines to merge into the previous scene and jettisoned the rest.
Meaningless Trivia: After that trim, the word counts of the current draft and the chunk marked done from the previous draft were within 18 words of one another. Which means my additions and deductions so far have been balanced.
So much work to end up with the same number of words! And that, class, is why we don’t pretend word count is a meaningful craft metric. When is numerical “productivity” anything other than a sop for management that doesn’t care if you ruin the product—indeed, the entire brand—with shoddy work as long as line goes up?
I had a random thought during a read-aloud about ancient backstory that has nothing to do with this book and left a note about it in the random spot where it occurred. When I came across it while applying that batch of notes, it had to go in the pen-and-paper revision notebook. I wrote it down… and the pen just kept going, like I’d unlocked some sort of alien puzzle box that couldn’t be stopped from unleashing its diabolical contents.
The ancient backstory, which I now know in detail, still won’t be dumped in this book, but it does change what one character wants from Heroine in an upcoming interaction, and what he gives her, and pulls up a thread that’s been dropped for too long in a way that makes Heroine think she’s the only one who doesn’t already know everything that’s going on and fills her with doubts about the alignment of her “good” mentor.
I won’t be as happy about it when it’s time to rewrite that scene, but the moment of breakthrough was pretty exciting!
And maybe it will lead to the “High Noon moment” I’ve always felt that scene deserved…
Moving on to fixing up another half-converted Hero POV scene that is largely to blame for the huge delay between updates. Too close to the last Hero POV for my taste, but he has inside information the reader should know but Heroine shouldn’t yet, so taste is irrelevant.
Not only is a POV change, but I’ve eliminated a big pointless argument since I last visited this scene, so it’s also a tone change! Not quite a total gut job, but close enough, and I struggled with this one for a disheartening amount of time before tripping over the correct problem.
Typically, scenes in the wrong POV are emotionless because the chosen POV character has little or no stake in the outcome of the scene. Nothing happens to alter their baseline mood and they skate across its surface in a state of “eh, whatever.”
On the bright side, that’s a big red flag for wrong POV. However, when you’re changing the POV, there are no prompts that tell you Emotion Goes Here. You can replace what Character A sees with what Character B sees, but you can’t replace emotion that isn’t there—you have to find it and then write it from scratch. We know Character A had no stakes. Now we have to define what Character B’s stakes are and tweak the scene to push those buttons; if we don’t, the scene won’t be any better than the previous version.
My brain very badly wants to be in fine-tune mode, not doing shit that belongs in the outline phase, so it took a long time to squeeze the work out of it. The resultant scene isn’t pretty (lol it’s hideous), but it’s marginally more functional, and perhaps we’ll find places to redistribute the gnarly bits as we plod forward.
*deep breaths* It doesn’t have to be perfect, only better.
I ran the second (or maybe third) full-manuscript check for correct past tense of “lie.” I’ve never had a problem with the difference in meaning between lay and lie, but the past tense of lie being lay continues to spark sorrow even after 28 years of writing and copy editing.
But I’m making progress! Looking it up every time I add a new lie in its lay form and neurotically checking all prior occurrences is leagues ahead of contorting language to avoid ever using it at all, as has previously been my MO.
Removed several bits of “make it more romancey” from the previous draft’s identity crisis. They were obviously tacked on and even more out of place in this draft, where I’ve committed to my unmarketable ratio of fantasy to romance. My inner demisexual is saying these characters have no trust at this point, so romance isn’t even a possibility.
After they get each other through the series of midpoint crises, they’ll have bonded enough to unlock that path. If it’s “no burn” until then, that’s just the way it has to be.
Changed one god’s name so it no longer has an “a” at the end. No need to encourage people to gender the deity who appears to humans as a column of light.
There’s an absolutely miserable transition in here that I kept throwing words at to “solve” the problem. The hole is full, even if it’s full of garbage. Fingers crossed the next draft will shed light on what’s actually needed. (Probably “cut back way further than these useless words you added.”) But sometimes you have to address the obvious need in order to expose the full extent of the problem.
I need the enemy camp. I need to acquire the large horse. Maybe the way I have them acquire the large horse, which has been present since the rough draft, is the problem. Immediately before that is where I got hung up. Maybe I was trying to tell myself “don’t go there.” What else happens there? They get a quest, which is never relevant and the fulfillment of which interferes with an aside that’s probably more relevant to this story.
Well, shit. That is not the part I thought I’d be cutting. Okay, so how are they supposed to acquire the large horse, Brain?
What do I have to work with so I’m not pulling it out of thin air? Heroine has a history of rescuing one abused horse, but on-page animal abuse would be extreme for this purpose. The enemy camp might conceivably have a draft horse for ongoing construction, but its departure would be conspicuous and it wouldn’t be able to outrun the enemies. In fact, stealing is out entirely because Conspicuous and Slow. Hero’s dressed for mourning, which I do need to make more use of, but where does the horse possessor come from in order to make an appeal? Rescue the horse possessor being hassled by the enemies with the gift of gab and bribes? Risky because Hero would definitely be recognized and Heroine might be, but Hero does have a savior complex and Heroine really wants a horse. And if the horse possessor is taking his livestock to the logging site where I previously set the horse acquisition, I can recycle character and description and write slightly less. By glob, I think that might work.
Oh joy, more rough draft material… but at least the log jam is busted at long last.
