Onward, Onward, Game Is A-Foot…
…as the great Sherlock Holmes would say (or words to like effect.)
On Monday June 30 I mentioned that I had just finished “reading through The Heir Of Night and The Gathering Of The Lost — as discussed in Reading M’Own Books: How That Went — and finally the DAUGHTER manuscript” and had “made lots of notes.”
So now it’s onward into the edit. As I mentioned in a recent interview with fellow author, Kate Forsyth, I think there is something magical about this stage of the story development process, when you have the essential arc “down” and can then shape and refine, adding greater nuance, texture and subtlety.
Little things, like “finally” nailing a name (one of several) for a character who wears several ‘masks’ through the story — but which I hadn’t been able to pin down until I had completed that vital read through of all 3 books that now comprise the ‘story to date.’ (And all of which touched on aspects of this particular character.)
And then there’s all those continuity niggles — like, “but if this, then how come that?” Many of which you don’t see when in the throes of story wrangling, but which leap out on a read-through — and must all be addressed before the story is loosed on an unsuspecting world.
So hence my enthusiastic “onward, onward” re dealing to those “lots of notes.” 😉
Continuity niggles… at a Convergence panel, some smart writers talked about timelines and other tools for getting that straight
Tools certainly help, as does an attention-to-detail approach at edit stage.