September is here, which means the start of our homeschooling year (my daughter is in 3rd grade! HOW IS SHE IN 3RD GRADE ALREADY?!). I’m also starting my second pass through The Ikessar Falcon in all 180,000 words of its glorious mess.
I do my second drafts with an extremely critical eye–I normally do the developmental edits for a lot of World Tree Publishing books and a bit of line-editing as well (I am shit at proofreading though, roast peasant case in point), so wearing this hat isn’t that big of a stretch for me. I’m not sure if I would trust this process to anyone else. Not that I think I am perfect from any means–far, far from it, and I do still defer to trusted critiques at the end of the road–but because I have extremely specific goals for my novels.
I do my second passes with two guides: the first draft’s key events and conclusion, and my original outlines which state the character progression. While my novels have a plotline (in general), they are character-driven, which means every single event gives way to character growth–to acceptance or realization or change, whichever way the story chooses to take it. So I try to make sure every sentence in the story funnels down to these key events, right down to what the characters say or do or think or look at. This is easier said than done, and is especially difficult when characters do things that are inconvenient or pull us away from the plot momentarily. (They’ve got their own minds. I swear to God, I can’t control the bastards even if I tried).
I also do a lot of foreshadowing in the way that events are mirrored to emphasize something, so I have to make sure I’m not just repeating words to drive the point home. And every single event has to serve a purpose. I’ve cut out entire scenes that I liked simply because they didn’t bring the story forward or contribute to any character growth whatsoever…I still have them scattered throughout my hard drive.
So there’s a lot of paring things down, streamlining, moving things around, and fleshing descriptions or feelings out. It’s more art than science. Once this is done, I may end up doing more passes with very specific thoughts in mind (“Is the character arc for so-and-so clear enough? Is there enough scenery? Feelings?”). Only when I’m happy with everything does this novel get tossed down the line (technical edits happen only once I’ve gotten feedback from editors and beta-readers, a whole different process altogether). I am really hoping I can reach that by the end of the month.
