Justicar Jhee and the Spectral Armada
A Justicar Jhee Mystery
A Justicar Jhee Mystery
I tried something a little different with respect to editing. Among other things, I implemented a series of 10-minute sessions for editing. The haphazard totally unstructured way I’ve been working netted me next to no progress. Because I also liked numbered and ordered scenes, I found myself reluctant to use drag and drop if I used numbers in the document name. Moving them about meant the scene names were jumbled up. I switched to using a generic document name like “scene”. This way I could leverage Scrivener’s tags and automatic titling feature in the Compile stage. However, I’d lose my place in the binder during an edit pass or read through. Unique names were fine, but they were often cryptic or too long for the binder pane.
Enter Scrivener’s label colors and status features. Now, once I finished a 10-minute session, all I had do was change the label. I’d also used the label color to mark what state I think the document is in (readable, needs lots of work, etc.). This way I’d know which scenes or sections to focus on. It also allows me to track my progress once I read or did an editing pass on a document.
With the process change, I made another editing pass, though not quite a full one. Every document in Book 1 got a minimum of 10 minutes worth of love. Not the major revision I was hoping for, but at least I made a bit more progress than before. This feels much more doable now. It wasn’t as deep an edit as I had hoped for, but it at least touched on some areas where I had been balking at making changes.
I also started from the end. This encouraged work on some areas which didn’t always get the same amount of coverage. There is often a temptation to repeatedly polish the beginning of the story. Usually, in the beginning, you start out strong and keep going because you’re excited. However, much like with the actual writing of the story, your energy starts to flag, and you get fatigued in the middle. Often what you think of as momentum is just a bit of impatience and the desire to get it over with. I often found that when I hit certain parts, especially if they were difficult, I tended to skim over them.
I don’t know if I’m going to try and do the 10-minute break down where every document gets 10 minutes worth of love like I did for Book 1. At least not yet. I think I’m going to do another pass on Book 1 before I attempt this new process with the revisions for Book 2.
I admit it. I still haven’t done a conceptual synopsis for Book 3. Every time I sit down to start, the other books need my attention, or my life goes haywire.
Have a lovely day!