ROW80 check in 3/7
March 07, 2012
Checking in here on my progress. Doing better.
I did manage to chug through the other dozen or so blog postings, many helpful. Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds recommended a new TV show as being a show written by writers - Awake, on NBC. I just watched last week's episode - the first I think - he was right, very well written. Also as part of my blog readings I found an article by Holly Lisle on editing in just one pass, I think it will help me focus. Basically she has you write down in a notebook your novel's one-liner, main theme, any secondary themes, one liner for main characters, and the book jacket blurb. Make sure your story is split into scenes where needed, then PRINT, and start going thru scene by scene. Check out the link tp her post, it may work for you too. She has many other helpful articles - I resisted the temptation to start going through them all.
Using the above process from Holly, I got at least 90 minutes of editing done - mostly preparing for the big printout. Needed to be able to review properly, apparently it is different than just reading on the screen once again. Speaking of which, another recommendation I've seen is to read your novel out loud - especially any dialogue.
Short story challenge is not getting anywhere in my head yet. Picking a random song title from iTunes doesn't give me enough to go from. Have until Friday, maybe it will come together tomorrow.
Reading out loud REALLY really really works to find inconsistencies in word choice. When reading my own work, I tend to skim since i know the story line, reading out loud forces me to change that.
Posted by: asraidevin | March 08, 2012 at 01:42 AM
I find it really helps in developing any dialogue - and helps to point out where I need dialogue to pick things up a bit.
Posted by: Mike | March 14, 2012 at 11:51 AM