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Tag Archives: editing

It’s a story

Look! Second-draft is done! No pages remain on the bottom shelf, no scene notecards above them. All pages on the top — done, done, done! I used up all the 500 loose-leaf notebook pages in my pack, so had to switch to the yellow pad for the last two scenes. Structure is solid, promises are [...]

Posted 12 September 2010 † nickyp § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , ,

Making the turn

So yeah, it’s taking longer than I thought, but this story is even better than I thought, so there. I’ll be running silent, running deep until vacation in a couple weeks. I really want to be done with this pass and take a complete break, but as the parents say, “we’ll see.” On scene 50 [...]

Posted 14 July 2010 † nickyp § Learning § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , ,

Off-line, on deadline

So, I’ll be running silent, running deep for a bit (like, 4-5 weeks) as I plow through the big second-draft revise. This pass includes the massive plot revise, character sharpening and combining, story rearranging, scene setting, and fluff cutting. I’m finding this nearly as hard as the scene-for-scene cards I did in April, and for [...]

Posted 11 June 2010 † nickyp § Learning § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , ,

Second draft hurtles into view

So, after a sluggish start and some mild howling about the first draft of my Manchester story, I managed to build a weekend’s-full of space to get down to reorganizing and shaping this behemoth. This is the revised sentence-for-scene outline, all 15.5 pages of it. It took me 17 hours over two days and the [...]

Posted 07 April 2010 † nickyp § Learning § Reading § Thinking § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Hearing voices

Hearing my WIP read out loud is one of the easiest ways for me to “see” what’s wrong with a scene, but I dislike reading it myself and I double-dislike forcing my friends to do it. Especially when I’m editing at 3 a.m. on a Thursday. So I am a big fan of text-to-speech software, as [...]

Posted 06 September 2008 † nickyp § Writing ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: ,