Sunday, April 25, 2010

Editing Progress Report #1

A week ago, my editor sent some general suggestions to improve my novel. One involved charting characters’ relationships to my protagonist, Casey, to determine their importance and relevance to the story. I thought I knew all about these relationships because I compiled something similar after starting the book way back when. So it was startling to realize that after all those drafts and a newly critical pair of eyes, some relationships now don’t seem as necessary as they did during earlier rewrites. In fact, two characters are now banished forever. You’ll never know who they are and it’s not important that you do because they simply didn’t matter much, which is the point of the exercise.

The second task I’m still working on involves charting a timeline for every event that happens in the book. Again, this is something I did at the beginning, but rewrites changed things. When I started the timeline this week, I quickly realized that the timing of some events doesn’t quite work anymore. Needless to say, I’m happy, if not downright relieved, to be going through this process, but I tell ya, I have my work cut out for me.

NOTE: This is the last week that Taxed to Death and Fatal Encryption are on sale in ebook form for only $3.98. Check them out at
Fatal Encryption at http://tinyurl.com/y9k4hjl
Taxed to Death at http://tinyurl.com/yzbhu95

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