Month: June 2019

Well, as usual, I’m behind schedule.

I wanted Book 3, now titled A Knight’s Loyalty, to publish in mid-to-late spring. Yet, here we are enjoying our triple digit summer weather of 2019 in San Antonio, and I’m still slogging away with the 1^st Rewrite.

For me, rewriting follows marketing as the second of the most difficult tasks in producing a book.

Why? Motivation and process.

Motivation, first.

Drafts are polished and re-polished versions of your original story; wherein, the author reads a sentence, paragraph, or chapter and says, ‘I can make that much better.’ These shinier and prettier versions are internally motivated by the writer’s muse and self-established standards.

However, rewrites are almost exclusively motivated from ‘outside’.

Some authors use family or friends to get this ‘external’ review. Others use ‘professional’ beta readers. And some use professional editors. While others use all three.

For integrity’s sake, I confess I do use family first – my wife, whom I do not consider an outsider. (That may get me a hug!) She is my sole beta reader. She dislikes my genre but reads the novel piecemeal. Think of it as a themed, patchwork quilt. As I produce a patch, she always truthfully answers three basic questions about each patch: Does this make sense? Does this flow? How does this make you feel?

If she answers ‘No’ to either of the first two and/or ‘Nothing’ to the third, I am disappointed with my effort and begin an immediate rewrite of that patch.

I also use a contributing editor. This means he has acquired ‘a whole lot of knowledge about a whole lot of things’ – the least of which is where to place commas. For my chosen genre (epic fantasy), he must have complete knowledge of the story’s plot and sub-plots, an intimacy with the characters and their roles, and a working familiarity with the magic system and the world’s geography and inhabitants. If he doesn’t know squat about a written specific task performed by a character – e.g., stringing a Mongolian-type bow – he must know where to obtain that knowledge and master it before evaluating the accuracy and believability of that single passage.

And, he’s not just evaluating the individual patches, but the entire quilt, the matching pillow shams, the bolster, the carpeting, and the drapes. In writer’s parlance, that means he reviews plot and character arcs, realism and believability, pace and consistency, and accuracy and readability. Then, he must compare this new quilt (novel) to the two previously made quilts (novels) and review the consistency and …

Well, you get the dealio. He undertakes this herculean task, and in a few weeks, he says, “Nope, you can’t publish this. In detail, here’s why.”

When you hear that from an ‘outsider’, you are beyond crushed. That first sentence sounds like a death knell. The bell’s tolling for you and your drivel, old boy.  It can make you ignore the second sentence.

Of course, that second sentence is what you pay for – the roadmap to a rewrite that makes your quilt sellable.

Process, second.

You would be wrong if you thought this process was this simple: author submits polished draft -> editor reads draft -> editor returns draft marked up with suggestions and corrections -> author begrudgingly makes some changes and ‘tweaks’ -> book is published.

Using my third book to illustrate why it’s not that easy, consider this:

As a result of my editor’s suggestions, I’ve cut 13 chapters from the finished draft. He also recommended I eliminate several data dumps to improve the pacing. Some of these cuts have been absorbed by remaining chapters while others have been pushed into the next book in the series. A few have been put in storage, maybe for future use or for inspiration. Many will never grace the reader’s eye.

Excising chunks of narrative and dialogue is not a simple matter.

In many cases, the removals adversely affect the preceding and following sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. New segues must be crafted to maintain continuity, rhythm, chronology, logic, and pacing.

Author: “B-but this paragraph is critical to my character’s feelings!”

Editor: “Use this word instead.”

Author: “T-this chapter updates the reader …”

Editor: “Use this phrase in the character’s ensuing chapter.”

What you are really doing is remaking the quilt with fewer and better looking patches. To make it more traumatic, you are following an outsider’s pattern to do so.

Yet, when you’re done, somehow, someway, you’re looking at the exact quilt you originally meant to craft. And it matches everything else in room.