Well, many changes have been made to the novel. The main character isn't Shadowhawk, anymore. I've renamed her Nightblade. Still hokey, but at least it's not associated with a gay comic book character!
I'm up to chapter 6 in the red pen revisions, and chapter 4 in the actual rewriting. It's still not where I'd like it to be, but it's improving. The main problem I'm having is I can't get away from "and". In my effort to keep my narrative flowing (no staccato stops with too-short stops) my sentences have taken on a cumbersome rhythm with too many ands. Usually, the sentence is structured something like this:
"The character did this, and then turned around to to that."
It's not feeling natural, but I can't quite figure out an alternative.
Hmm. Methinks I might post an excerpt to Forward Motion for some good, heavy critique.
2 comments:
Ah, the dreaded Fall-back Sentence! Mine is:
"The character did this, doing that all the while."
I thought it was clever at first. By the 900th time I had used it, it was just annoying. (At least, when used so often.)
I usually have to let cumbersome passages sit for a while, then when I read back through them, a solution will present itself. Typically, my most cumbersome stuff tends to be action scenes -- and usually, the problem is that I've described everything everyone does absolutely to death. Maybe it would help to prune a bit? Dunno if that helps, but good luck!
I'm hoping that on draft three, I'll be able to do the fine tuning that I don't really want to waste time on, right this moment.
After this, I'll have to go back through and do some serious fine tuning, maybe throwing some stuff on the crit boards at Forward Motion. Helps to have outside eyes look at stuff.
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