I'm in the middle of editing Blink - literally. The book is in three parts, and Part Two is giving me grief. I was never all that in love with that part anyway, but it's necessary. Without it, the MC doesn't learn the things she needs to learn in order to do what she has to do in Part Three. But right now it's lame. It's filler. It's weak.
Part One is excellent. Part Three promises to be excellent, too, once I finish tweaking it. Part Two is the ugly stepchild of the book. I think I need to rewrite the whole damn thing. And it's killing me to have to rewrite it. I know I'm going to have to print it out, and then attack it with the red pen. Like some odd literary leech, I need to make it bleed so it can live.
I just hate the thought of shredding it and rebuilding it from scratch. The only thing to be thankful for is as long as I stay true to the things she has to learn, it really isn't going to effect Part Three. I could write it a dozen different ways and still not have to rewrite the last part. The problem is which way to choose to get the most bang for my buck.
In the words of Winnie the Pooh: "Think. Think. Think." and "Oh, bother."
:wanders off singing: "I'm just a little black raincloud, hovering under the honey tree..."
The Long Trek Back
3 weeks ago
1 comment:
I did that with two books this fall. In one, I did the same thing you did. I gutted the middle. It did cause some changes in the last chapters, but nothing major. In mine, there wasn't enough tension in the middle. The stakes were too low, and I raised them.
Have you read Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook? That's a great book for times like this.
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