It's Bleeding! Emergency Surgery Required!

Ok, I did it. I cut 8000 words out of my plot and replaced it with 6000 words. Emergency surgery is now required to suture it into place, stop the hemorrhaging and prevent system shock.

Only time will tell if I can perform plot surgery like this:


Or like this:

(For more info on the artist of the above painting, click here.)

Ok, I'm done with all the overblown comparisons.

Patching Plotholes

Does your story ever feel like this?

I look at this picture and I think, wow, now that's a lot of potholes. Of course, this is a dirt road, so maybe that's to be expected. However, the poor sucker who has to fix these potholes has quite a job cut out for him. I kind of feel that way right now about my espionage fantasy.

And you can only work on plotholes one at a time.

In order to repair a pothole, sometimes it's necessary to bring in some heavy equipment. And sometimes, that heavy equipment causes new potholes to form. I'm dealing with this as well. "Ok, so I've rewritten the entire catalyst scene from scratch, but now I have a dangling plotline where this didn't happen the way it did in the old scene, and at least ten or fifteen scenes further on down the line absolutely depends on this happening."

If I'm not careful, I'll be repairing this thing forever, and when it's finished, the patch will look like this:

when it needs to look like this:

 

Cowboy Muscle Car Story

I've finally finished the science fiction story I blogged about last month, the one with the muscle cars. I'm very happy with it. It's about 5000 words. I don't know if I'll sell it, but I learned a few things that I think will help me write future short stories.

• Keep the subplots to a bare minimum. I have two plots in my story. One is an overarching theme about having to do without fossil fuels. The other is the story of two brothers. I really had to keep it from growing. I wanted to add an aunt in there who was carrying on with the leader of the gang. But to resolve that plot would have required another 2000 to 5000 words. The more plots, the more words. If you get much over 6000 words, the number of markets you can submit to start getting limited.
  
• Keep the number of characters to a minimum. The more people, the more words the story requires. The aunt would have been nice in a story that is just about 100% male, but her part in it would have just complicated matters.
• Give it some drama. I get so impatient with many short stories--stories by seasoned professionals who sell lots of fiction--because they have no plots. There might be an interesting situation, or a fascinating bit of technology or magic, but no problem to overcome. As a reader, I need a problem for the story to keep my interest.
• Cut, cut, cut. Everything that isn't absolutely necessary has to go. That's why I eliminated another character that I liked--a younger sister. This was the story of two brothers, so I didn't need the sister. So poor Betsy had to go.

On the Starcaster front, I decided to rewrite a lengthy scene from scratch. It had so many plot holes that you could have used it as a sieve. It was also one of the earliest scenes I wrote for this story. I think those two facts are related. The replacing scene (or scenes) will be about half that length, I think. And, it will integrate better into some plot-lines that I thought of later in the story.

But still, over 8000 words was hard to cut from an 85,000 word novel. That was 10 percent!

What's the biggest chunk you've ever cut?

The Read-Aloud Phase

Finally, after being sick for almost two weeks, I have progressed to the read-aloud phase of my novel. This time, I combined the read-aloud phase with the hardcopy phase, in an attempt to kill two birds with one stone. For my last novel, I first printed it out and marked it up with a red pen, then after I incorporated all those edits, I read it aloud. I seem to notice different problems with each pass through the novel, but this time, I decided it wouldn't hurt to attempt to do it all at once.

Plus, this time I have an audience for my read-aloud. My heroic husband--who already read the rough draft--has agreed to listen to my read-through. (We occasionally read books together; we read Tom Sawyer and Huckelberry Finn in this manner, and I read him most of Janet Evanovich's One for the Money before he picked it up and read it himself.) We got through 42 pages today before my throat gave out in a coughing fit.

I am pleased with how it's sounding. With my last novel, I made quite a few changes during the read-aloud phase, as what seemed fine on paper didn't quite sound right when read aloud. I'm not making nearly so many changes this time. I think this is because the voice for this novel was so firm in my mind that I was actually able to hear it as I wrote it. For my last novel, the voice really was not this distinctive. First person really was the way to go for this novel.

About 260 pages left to go!

MS Word for the Novelist - Revisions, Part One

This is a document that I originally wrote for my co-workers. Since it's so long, I'm going to tackle it in at least two parts. This first part introduces revisioning in general.

~*~

As writers, we often take part in online critique groups, where we swap documents back and forth and provide helpful comments and suggestions. If both you and your reviewer have Microsoft Word, you can save a lot of time by using the Reviewing toolbar. With the Reviewing toolbar, you can automatically apply or reject a reviewer's suggested changes to your document.

By using these features, you save time both as author and as reviewer. As a reviewer, you save time because you are entering your comments and changes directly into the document rather than juggling another document or printing it out. As the author, you save time because you are free to accept or reject any changes with the click of a button.

Reviewing Toolbar

Regardless of whether you are the author or reviewer, you will need to use the Reviewing toolbar. To bring up the Reviewing toolbar, right-click the toolbar and select Reviewing from the dropdown menu. Here is a segment of what that menu looks like:

Once the Reviewing toolbar is up, it looks like this:

Turning on the "Track Changes" option is quite easy. Just push the second button from the right. It will turn orange, like this:

And you're done. The document is now ready to send off to your reviewer. The reviewer--as long as he doesn't tamper with this button--can make all the changes he wishes, and once you get it back, it will contain both his revisions and your original text.

The rest of the Reviewing toolbar is discussed in the rest of this article and my next installment.

Revisions Displayed

The first dropdown in the reviewing toolbar contains options that control how a reviewed document will appear. "Markup" is Microsoft's words for revisions. When someone makes a change to your document, the changes are considered "markup".

• Original - This shows how the document appeared before any changes, hiding all revision markups. This is handy if you want to print your original document and retain all revisions.
  
• Original Showing Markup - This shows how the document originally appeared, along with revision markups showing all changes made since then.
• Final - This shows how the document will appear if you accept all current changes. It hides all revision markups. This is handy if you want to print the final doc, yet retain all revisions.
  
• Final Showing Markup - This shows how the document will appear if you accept all current changes, but it also shows everything that changed within the document.

If you select either Original or Final, Word will hide all revisions from you. However, they are still present in the document! These features have made national news when a sender inadvertently distributed a document with hidden—and embarrassing—revisions. Also, if you think you lost your revisions, check this dropdown and make sure you have selected an option that shows the markup.

To avoid sending out documents with embedded revisions that you do not know about, always keep "Final Showing Markup" selected.

Revision Markup Options

Other options control how the markup in the revised document appears. You can use either the Balloon method or the Reviewing pane method.

Balloon Method

By default, Word shows deletions and comments in balloons off to the right, and insertions within the text. When the right margin no longer has any room for new balloons, Word will open the Reviewing pane.

If the Balloon method is not already set up, you can set it up by selecting the following options from the Show dropdown on the Reviewing toolbar.

• Place checkmarks next to Final, Comments, Ink Annotations, Insertions and Deletions, and Formatting
• Click Balloons, then place a checkmark next to Always.
• Click Options and select "Always" from Use Balloons (Print and Web Layout).
• Then, click OK.

When you click a balloon, Word will highlight the text to which the balloon applies, or it will attempt to point to the deletion point. If there are many deletions, they will become difficult to locate.

Word constantly adjusts the size and positions of the balloons as the reviewer adds revisions. There is no way to move the balloons manually. When the balloons take up all the space along the right margin, Word will compress the balloons and open a Reviewing Pane along the bottom of the page. It will also attempt to merge the contents of several balloons into one, using ellipsis (…) between revisions. Click on the balloon and the Revision pane will display the complete text.

For these reasons, the Balloon method is only useful if you have occasional changes here and there. For sweeping changes, use the Reviewing Pane.

Reviewing Pane Method

Older versions of Word used the Reviewing Pane rather than balloons. The Balloon method is the friendliest and easiest method to use. However, when the document has many revisions, the Reviewing Pane becomes more useful.

The Reviewing Pane sorts revisions according to their position in the document. Most of the time, your revisions will show up in the Main Document area.

To turn off the bubbles and turn on the Reviewing Pane, bring up the Track Changes option box and select "Never" in the Use Balloons (Print and Web Layout) option.

Deletions will now show up as strikeouts and comments will appear in the reviewing pane. The text that the reviewer commented upon will appear highlighted and labeled. If you move your mouse over the highlighted text, the comment will appear in a bubble.

The image below has examples of how a line of text appears with insertions, deletions and comments.

The Reviewing Pane automatically comes on when reviewing changes in the Normal layout.

Hybrid Methods

The Track Changes option box gives you complete control over how tracked changes will appear on your computer. You can italicize your changes, make them bold, or format them in any manner.

However, no matter what method you use, keep the following important fact in mind:

Track Changes options do not save with the document!

The options that you choose apply to every document with revisions that you open on your computer. However, if your reviewer were to open the same document on another computer, it will appear according to the options that the reviewer chose.

Don't let all this daunt you. Ordinarily, you don't need to do anything to set up revisioning. The default settings work wonderfully.

~*~

That's all for this installment. Open up a document and play around with revisions. As usual, I'm ready to answer questions in the comments. The next installment will cover how to actually make revisions or insert comments.

Starcaster Readers?

I'm going to be looking for readers for Starcaster in the next month or so, and I wondered if any of you are interested. It's short for a fantasy (85,000 words at present). I am serious about finding readers, so I want to make it as easy as possible for you. For that reason, I want to actually mail the complete manuscript to interested parties. I'll send the return postage, too, along with a bonus red pen for easier mark-up. Why do I want to do this? I know first-hand how difficult it is to read a manuscript on the computer, and I would not inflict that upon my readers. Kristin sent me her novel when I beta-read for her, and I thought it worked out very well. Hopefully it did for her as well!

Before I send it to you, I'll email the first 20 or 30 pages. I only want to send the complete manuscript to people who are enjoying it, so you could read as much as you want and then let me know if you want to read more.

Here is a crude blurb, to make your decision easier. This blurb is by no means final.

UPDATE: also please note that this blurb is highly experimental.

Tory is a starcaster, a wielder of a weak form of magic available only on clear, starlit nights. Tory is also a spy for His Majesty's Royal Intelligence Service.

When Tory attempts to deliver a prototype of a mysterious film to Mr. Carter, her delivery attempt goes awry with the interference of two foreign spies. She has no idea that the spies have asked her superior, Mr. Bradburn, for political asylum from their cruel dictatorship of a government. And the defectors do not realize that Bradburn is using them unlawfully for his own purposes. And Mr. Bradburn has no clue that two other foreign spies are busy tracking down the defecting spies. And the hunting spies are not aware that Victoria has convinced Mr. Carter to fabricate a device from the film that will enable a starcaster to suncast as well. And Mr. Carter suspects that Mr. Bradburn might be behind the false imprisonment of his brother, who is accused of espionage. And Mr. Bradburn has no inkling that his thug and toady, Mr. Crowley, has fallen for Tory. And Mr. Crowley is fully aware of the fact that Tory's partner Julian was once in love with one of the defecting spies. And the defecting spies have no idea that Mr. Bradburn is playing a deadly game of government against government to protect his lady love, who has fallen under the power of political operatives with their own agenda.

Starcaster is an espionage fantasy that takes place in a pre-industrial, Londonesque setting. It runs about 85,000 words.

If you are interested, please either leave a comment here or send an email to tia dot nevitt at gmail dot com. I will reply from my personal address (which I never put online). Thanks in advance! Oh, and query suggestions welcome in the comment threads.

Novel Arcs

I've written a five-book arc for the Starcaster series. Ambitious? Nah!

Anyway, I've come up with some simple themes and decided what I want to do with them in each novel. For example, I've come up with a Career Arc and a Romance Arc for Tory, along with a Politics Arc for the political situation of her world. These arcs seemed to suggest certain titles. Therefore, I've named all five of my novels, and I have written a one-paragraph synopsis of what each one is about.

For each arc, I try to do something different in each novel. For example, in the Career Arc, I've decided that Tory needs to spend some time as an illegal spy. She's an outlaw spy for most of the first book, but for the third book, she's not a spy at all, but ends up spying anyway. In the Politics Arc, the benevolent king gradually turns paranoid over the progression of the novels, and becomes repressive toward the end. As he grows more repressive, a certain organization grows more powerful.

I think five books is enough to plan out for an unsold series. When (think positive!) those five are published, I'll see if I want to continue it through books 6 thru 10, or if I'll just give Tory a Happily Ever After and let her retire.

Just doing all this while I relax during my post-draft slowdown. I imagine I'll be back to serious polishing by the weekend.