I am coming up for air, short of completion of my current chapter edit in my near completed novel to relax with my blogs. The blogs are a great way to write in a more relaxed chatty way.
This sort of chat spread out over 110,000 words of a novel just has to be pruned back hard however, the novel has to flow quickly or it would bore a reader to tears. I'm sure we have all experienced books like that and i am possibly more critical than most. With so much in life I love doing, I cannot stand to waste time reading a boring slow moving novel.
I have set myself a goal to edit 10,000 words a day in my current novel, though I am only 1/4 of the way to that target at midday today and need a break.
I can see the part ahead of me can be dramatically shortened. It doesn't take me a lot of courage to remove a few hundred words, but to cut out a few thousand...I think I need a cup of coffee to give me the strength to do that.
This is why it pays to leave a novel alone for a while following an edit, so you have the courage to prune heavily when you come back.
What shocks me is that I see almost a page full does work but the story will not suffer if any of it is removed and I am thinking that more action and less of long character building talk is going to keep my reader's hooked into my story. What a thrill it would be to write a fast paced story that people do not want to put down. To there I have it...my sin of pride showing and a self pep talk to and coffee to give me the courage to get the chainsaw into this chapter and remove everything that is not propelling you forward. :-).
This sort of chat spread out over 110,000 words of a novel just has to be pruned back hard however, the novel has to flow quickly or it would bore a reader to tears. I'm sure we have all experienced books like that and i am possibly more critical than most. With so much in life I love doing, I cannot stand to waste time reading a boring slow moving novel.
I have set myself a goal to edit 10,000 words a day in my current novel, though I am only 1/4 of the way to that target at midday today and need a break.
I can see the part ahead of me can be dramatically shortened. It doesn't take me a lot of courage to remove a few hundred words, but to cut out a few thousand...I think I need a cup of coffee to give me the strength to do that.
This is why it pays to leave a novel alone for a while following an edit, so you have the courage to prune heavily when you come back.
What shocks me is that I see almost a page full does work but the story will not suffer if any of it is removed and I am thinking that more action and less of long character building talk is going to keep my reader's hooked into my story. What a thrill it would be to write a fast paced story that people do not want to put down. To there I have it...my sin of pride showing and a self pep talk to and coffee to give me the courage to get the chainsaw into this chapter and remove everything that is not propelling you forward. :-).
