revisions

My revisions end up being longer than the original, though I know many writers say that a draft always need to be cut significantly. I do cut, but I add more than I cut, apparently.
I’d like to hear from other writers. Is your revised material on average longer or shorter than your original draft?

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in a rut with Marie and Fred

One of the recurrent difficulties I’m having just now is the inability to solve old narrative problems in new ways. My brain is strangely resistant to coming up with new answers to problems I have already answered.
It goes like this:
Maybe I’ll write a scene where Marie encounters her arch-nemesis Fred at the bank where she works [...]

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winter blues

Yep, I have them - compounded today with the Sunday blues! I’m in survival mode now: first survive January, then survive February, then survive March, and so it goes for every me, every year.
Anyway, I thought I should post an update on my writing, even if it’s just a record for my future self to read on [...]

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showing character motivation

One of the problems (actually, the biggest problem) I’m having with the revision project is the whole issue of character motivation. The protagonist’s actions get him into trouble, and as the author, I know why he does what he does (or at least I thought I did), but I don’t think it would be clear to a [...]

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revising and rewriting

I have divided my novel into five segments of roughly 20,000 words each, and at this moment I am keeping only the first segment on my computer. The other sections are stored elsewhere. I am going through it scene by scene, and I’m sad to report that very few scenes are fine the way they [...]

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the relationship between hero and villain

One thing about my draft that I am now changing is the relationship between the hero and the villain. The villain is actually much older than the hero, and I am adding details to show that the two have an important connection that goes back almost to the beginning of the hero’s life, and of [...]

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revision: world-building

I did some world-building before, but not to the extent I should have. More or less, I plunged into my plot without building the world. I believed that the necessary details of the world would come during the process of writing, and to a degree they did. But I think there is some depth missing [...]

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can’t bear to look…

…at the draft.
After a month-long break (okay, okay, more than a month!) I’m back. And of course, I’m talking about Beamstar. There’s just so much work to do, and I hardly know how to go about it! I’ve divided the novel into five sections of about 20,000 words each, and I’m taking them one at [...]

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thinking about revision; bought a workbook

I purchased this workbook to help with the revision of my novel. The title is Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, but it’s geared toward revision rather than writing, as it assumes you already have a completed draft to work with. This workbook is meant to accompany a book with the same title, but it seems to have all the same information, [...]

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