The AW Editing Month Extravaganza

PandaMan

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A tale of two halves.

Finished scrubbing the first half of the ms of introspection that leads nowhere, POV errors (I hope), fluff, dander, and all around dithering blather. Yeah, baby yeah.

But, and this is a big ole butt, I discovered a hole in the mid plot point large enough to drive a galaxy through. Gawd, how could I have been so dumb! I mean, geez, the whole novel revolves around it. Dumb, dumb, dumb. What to do, what to do?

Ya see that kid in my current avatar pic? That's how I feel. I wanna cry. I want my mommy.
 

mrsmig

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Aw, poor Panda.
 

Sage

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Aw, that's the worst. I bet you can work around it. I'm really good at devising a Sage logic way around my major plot holes. Can we help?
 

Sage

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Oh, and I reached 100%, woohoo! I still have to type up the stuff (which will be a 2nd round of voice and language revision, so that's handy), but I got the major problems dealt with. Except 2. One I just can't see fixing. I spend a huge chunk of the beginning (a smaller chunk now, though) in a flashback to three years prior. But I don't see me losing that beginning. The other thing is a transition from a character's feelings in the first half to his feelings in the end. But that's an easy fix. I just have to be diligent in the next round. I did some this time around too.

Anyway, done!
 

mrsmig

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CoffeeBeans

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But, and this is a big ole butt, I discovered a hole in the mid plot point large enough to drive a galaxy through. Gawd, how could I have been so dumb! I mean, geez, the whole novel revolves around it. Dumb, dumb, dumb. What to do, what to do?

Ya see that kid in my current avatar pic? That's how I feel. I wanna cry. I want my mommy.

I so feel you. On my read through, I realized two big action scenes just fall apart if you stop and ask yourself what's going on.

I made a list of what I had that I wanted - which parts of the conflict I wanted to keep, and then started adding in cause-to-the-effect scenes.... After I spent a day wallowing :Hug2:

Oh, and I reached 100%, woohoo! I still have to type up the stuff (which will be a 2nd round of voice and language revision, so that's handy), but I got the major problems dealt with. Except 2. One I just can't see fixing. I spend a huge chunk of the beginning (a smaller chunk now, though) in a flashback to three years prior. But I don't see me losing that beginning. The other thing is a transition from a character's feelings in the first half to his feelings in the end. But that's an easy fix. I just have to be diligent in the next round. I did some this time around too.

Anyway, done!

Done is awesome! Congrats!

I'm rewriting broken scenes. It's tough, I wish I'd known how broken they were before now. Back when I'd finished the MS, I wished I'd had more to write. Now, I don't WANT to write from scratch, but I have to. Oh well, I'm sure I'll hit my stride with it soon enough.
 

PandaMan

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Oh, and I reached 100%, woohoo! I still have to type up the stuff (which will be a 2nd round of voice and language revision, so that's handy), but I got the major problems dealt with. Except 2. One I just can't see fixing. I spend a huge chunk of the beginning (a smaller chunk now, though) in a flashback to three years prior. But I don't see me losing that beginning. The other thing is a transition from a character's feelings in the first half to his feelings in the end. But that's an easy fix. I just have to be diligent in the next round. I did some this time around too.

Anyway, done!
Sage drives, shoots, and scores. The crowd goes wild!

Wow, finished with a week to spare. Way to go. Time to celebrate before the next round of edits.:partyguy:
 

PandaMan

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I so feel you. On my read through, I realized two big action scenes just fall apart if you stop and ask yourself what's going on.

I made a list of what I had that I wanted - which parts of the conflict I wanted to keep, and then started adding in cause-to-the-effect scenes.... After I spent a day wallowing :Hug2:
I was out of town yesterday and got nuttin done.

Today I got a lot of pacing back and forth done in my ole bamboo grove. Trying to figger out what to do...It's one of those time travel thingamajigs. Yep, the dreaded time travel plot hole.:) Ugh. May I have a drum role please?
 

PandaMan

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Aw, that's the worst. I bet you can work around it. I'm really good at devising a Sage logic way around my major plot holes. Can we help?

Thanks for the offer. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Actually Sage, your username and avatar are already helping me focus on the problem. They both relate directly to my WIP! Lemme see if I can explain. Here’s the scoop in a nutshell.

There’s movement from one time frame to another, but from both perspectives, the movement is into the past. How can that be?:Shrug:

Here’s a more detailed explanation.

A nested frame story - lots of stories within stories. Hence the connection to your avatar pic - a picture of someone contemplating taking a picture, imagining what the picture will be. The mystery of imagination is the key here, as I believe it is to the power of your avatar. Nice pic, btw.

Two main stories. Outer frame, Inner frame. Both frames contain other stories embedded within them. All relate to the each other.

In the outer frame a storyteller tells a story to his granddaughter. Her life depends upon him telling it properly. If he fails, she dies, however, if he's successful, he dies.

He’s believed by some to be one of the "Three Sages of the Bamboo Grove" (that's the connection to your username). They are a group of storytellers believed capable of telling magic stories. There's some political intrigue involved here, but I don't think that relates to the plot hole. Let's push on.

He begins telling the story to her on her eighth birthday, and continues, piece by piece, on consecutive birthdays until she's a young woman.

The story told (inner frame) is about a young man searching for his kidnapped father. During the search he discovers he’s been taken into the past by a king who believes the father to be one of the Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The plot thickens. Are you still with me here?

In order to find his father he must travel back into the past, into the outer frame story. His quest is to discover out how to do that. He eventually does and here's the plot hole at the midpoint of the novel. From his perspective, he travels into the past, but from the perspective of the outer frame, he travels into the future. Does that make any sense? Is that a throw the book against the wall moment for the reader?

Here's what I'm a gonna do. First, change my avatar to a pic of someone not snoozing! I want a kid who wants to hear a story.:)

Second, sleep on it. There are more stories embedded in both frames, so maybe the solution lies in one of them. Too tired to get into that right now. It’s been a long day and I’m suckin fumes. It’s bedtime for Panda.
 

Sage

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The story told (inner frame) is about a young man searching for his kidnapped father. During the search he discovers he’s been taken into the past by a king who believes the father to be one of the Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The plot thickens. Are you still with me here?

In order to find his father he must travel back into the past, into the outer frame story. His quest is to discover out how to do that. He eventually does and here's the plot hole at the midpoint of the novel. From his perspective, he travels into the past, but from the perspective of the outer frame, he travels into the future. Does that make any sense? Is that a throw the book against the wall moment for the reader?
I have to admit that as soon as you said the past = the outer frame story, I started trying to wrap my mind about it because I had assumed the outer story to be the future.

Some questions that may be apparent in the details but aren't here:

Is there any reason why the story being told in OFS needs to be told about the past? Could her grandfather be telling a story of "what might be" instead of "what was"?

Is there some reason the king in the IFS can't take the father to the future instead of the past?

And I assume that IFS MC and OFS MC meet at some point, or OFS is still telling the story about IFS and realizes that that past has turned into his present. Couldn't you just do a moment of realization for him? I'm sure it'll come along with the inevitable, "nothing is real! What if we're all in a story?" moment ;)
 

PandaMan

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Is there some reason the king in the IFS can't take the father to the future instead of the past?

Yep. In this story one can’t travel into the future because it hasn’t happened yet. The future only exists in our imaginations. IOW, we can’t know what the future will be since it hasn’t happened yet, but we can influence it with our actions, hopes and dreams through the stories we tell. Does that make sense?

A sage in the IFS tells the MC (Elon) this through a story.

The Three Sages represent the past, present, and future. Kohtalo is the present. Elon’s father is thought to be the future sage. That’s why he’s kidnapped by the king, so the king can control the future.

And I assume that IFS MC and OFS MC meet at some point, ;)

Nope. You’re close though. The OFS MC (Kohtalo) dies when Elon enters the OFS. Elon does meet Kohtalo’s granddaughter, Alana, in the first scene after the two frames join. And yes, they become a couple. Smooch, smooch, kiss, kiss.:e2kissy:

or OFS is still telling the story about IFS and realizes that that past has turned into his present. Couldn't you just do a moment of realization for him?

Nope. This is what he wants to happen. The moment of realization is with his granddaughter. The story is told for her benefit, but her life is still in danger. She must help Elon find his father and return them to their original time frame.

Is there any reason why the story being told in OFS needs to be told about the past? Could her grandfather be telling a story of "what might be" instead of "what was"?

This is kinda what I’m leaning toward. This morning I was thinking about perhaps putting in some foreshadow in the scene just before Kohtalo begins the IFS. A hint the story might take place at any particular time, only limited to her imagination. I don’t want to specifically say it takes place in the future, otherwise, the plot twist wouldn’t be much fun for the reader.

I also have some stuff I wrote last summer that was kinda experimental in nature for me. Another layer of storytelling containing surreal imagery in first and second person POV with a personification of Time as the narrator. Just doing it for kicks and giggles. That was going to be the beginning frame of the novel. I ditched it since it’s written in a different style than the bulk of the novel. Perhaps I might try to fold that into the hills and valleys of the story, in a dream or something. Difficult though. Not sure if I have the writing chops to pull it off. I’ll chew on it some more.

I'm sure it'll come along with the inevitable, "nothing is real! What if we're all in a story?" moment;)

Well, actually just the opposite. It’s all real. The gist being stories influence our lives, and our lives influence our stories. Our imagination is a part of us and we are dependent on it, just like life is dependent upon death. Mountains alter the course of rivers, and rivers alter the shape mountains. On and on and on, and blah, blah, blah. Metaphorically, that’s it in a nutshell.:)

Anyway, mucho thanks sage! :Hug2:
 

Sage

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How are you guys doing on your goals? Nobody's posted in here in a while.
 

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It has been quiet! (says the one who just posted in the MaNoWriMo thread)

Looking back at my goal from the start of the month...

1) Coffeebeans, Beans, CB, etc
2) TFM edited to a decent spot to throw up for the Beta Project
3) Steampunk adventure/thriller - A woman retraces her mother's steps though her most controversial experiment in hopes of finding her biological father

I did and didn't accomplish much. I got two entries ready for the Beta Project, but I didn't complete an edit on anything, and neither of them went into the project polished as well as they could be. Both of those things are letdowns. I tried to do everything, and ended up with less than I wanted done. If I had been more targeted, I could have had sections polished, but MSes unread... so I suppose its a work now/work later deal either way.

I am switching to project two for revision today. it was the one of the two to draw interest, and I THINK it needs much less work. Hopefully, I'll get the worst of the ugly gone and send it off to my new Betas!
 

mrsmig

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1) mrsmig
2) excising 10k words (at least) from this novel
3) I'll be editing the second book in my fantasy series, currently at just over 151k words.


I didn't meet my goal - only carved 5k out of the m/s - but I was happy with that 5k and am going to let the book sit for a while. Right now my agent is reading it and his suggestions once he's finished may give me some specific cuts to make.
 

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1) Sage

2) At least 50 hours of revising, preferably going through the whole book with the voice alteration (starting at 21% of the original, which is on the Kindle, and is probably going to be the best way to count this)

3) 2012 NaNo novel, YA fantasy called A PARANORMAL BROMANCE, about a teen, his ghostly best friend, and the girl who threatens to tear them apart. 75K

I definitely did more than 50 hours of revising, since each percentage took about an hour. And I got through the whole book, yay!
 

PandaMan

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March goal: Work on the openings to each story within a nested frame novel. Clean up some POV issues.
Title: Mountains and Rivers Without End
Genre: Fantasy

I finally reached my goal this afternoon. Hip hip hooray.:snoopy: Of course, I still have the plot hole to fix, but I'm feeling much better about it now. I'll probably post in SYW sometime soon and see if the beginning of the novel works or not.
 

EMaree

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End results for March:

My March goals:

1) Finish scene outline of BROKEN THINGS [DONE]
2) Rough out missing pieces of scenes [STARTED, UNFINISHED]
3) Finish present tense rewrite [STARTED, NEARLY FINISHED]
3) Prepare to start reading through it again to do a proper, full rewrite... [DONE]
4) Total 50 hours of editing, of any kind [EH, MAYBE SORT OF?]
5) Don't get distracted editing other stuff. [...DO I GET POINTS FOR TRYING?]