If you follow me on Twitter (and really, why would you do something stupid like that?) you may have noticed that I have been a little remiss in covering off the last lot of rewrites, between chapters 6 and 14, inclusive. You probably haven’t noticed, though, because I managed to screw up a couple of my updates, and confirmed I had completed up to chapter 13, not 14.
But if you’ve clicked on this link and have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll point you to my previous article about my rewrites, which may fill in some gaps for you.
But back to the matter at hand, and I have indeed been remiss in my update. I finished the rewrites of these nine chapters back on 7 July, and as I write this, it’s 16 July. So I’m nine days late. I assure you that my tardiness is for very good reason, as I spent eight of these days undertaking my edits for the remainder of Till Death Do Us Party. The other day? Um, yeah…writing this little article.
The remainder of Till Death Do Us Party comprises chapters 15 to 29, more than half the book. While I procrastinate with the book, I’ll be writing an update about my Hell for leather editing, which I’ll post in a week’s time. You might also get a new review, and I may even write another short story.
As I mentioned in my original article about the book, I initially undertook a high-level edit to ensure there is some form of readability. Following this, I delved into more detailed edits, and stopped at chapter 5, which was a good breaking point, and comprised the second draft. In this second round of edits, I stopped at chapter 14. Currently entitled “Reflections of Those Lives Lived and Those Lives Not,” it is one of the book’s more depressing chapters. Having drafted thirteen chapters before it, and edited the fifteen after it, I can say that it’s one of my favourites.
In the previous post, I noted that these chapters are now longer, increasing from 67 pages to 81 pages. I’ve now split the manuscript up into different files, and I’m not going to be checking the count on all these pages, so instead, let’s take a look at the word count:
- Chapters 1-5: Originally 17,291 words, increasing to 20,284 (increasing by 17.3%); and
- Chapters 6-14: Originally 29,806 words, increasing to 31,421 (increasing by 5.4%).
As I proceed, some chapters will increase more than others, and some might even decrease. This hasn’t happened yet, but a huge portion of the original gains are because I added a lot of additional material to chapter 5.
In this latest round of edits, Chapter 6 grew the most. It’s a short chapter and remains that way, but my rewrites added another 262 words to it. Most of the changes involved removing extraneous sentences and rewording existing ones. I did add a couple of paragraphs, but nothing major.
On the opposite end, chapter 7 grew the least of any chapter thus far, increasing by 262 words. It’s another small chapter, and the reasons behind these changes are similar to the previous one.
Chapters 8, 9 and 10, however, grew in similar ways to the bulk of the opening five. Some of this can be attributed to adding detail, since I am introducing new characters and new locations in the story. There’s definitely some world-building happening here.
Similarly to chapters 6 and 7, chapter 11 is a fairly short chapter. In this chapter, I explore Hell a little bit, but move pieces (or, more to the point, one of the characters) around, setting the scene for what’s to come over the next little while.
This all brings me to chapters 12, 13 and 14. Across these chapters, a situation escalates in some major ways, which drive a lot of the following chapters forward, particularly thematically. It also plants some seeds for a little character growth—if the character/s in question are capable of growth, that is. While I didn’t undertake any major rewrites, I did add a few paragraphs here and there, while removing a bit of redundant text.
If you recall the previous article (if you don’t, I’ll wait until you scroll up to the link I provided, click it, read the piece, and come back—every page view helps my ego), Chapter 5 included some pretty major rewrites. None of these chapters required it. I’d let that go to my head, but in the second “half” of the book (the average length of the chapters increases the further it goes), more will require some pretty major rework. You can read about that in a week.As I did at the end of the last update, I’ll bug you about signing up to my newsletter—“The Wonderful World of Was”—because increasing subscriber numbers inflate my ego even more than increasing page views. Each month, I’ll direct you to what’s new on this little web home, and as always, you’ll be able to see snippets of this work in progress. And it’s free, so woo hoo!
TTFN,
wastanley.com 