Ready for First Edit Ever - Any Advice???

Jamesaritchie

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Well, if this is your first-ever novel, then it likely will suck. Most of us can attest to this from our our own first offerings. So how to deal?


Good luck.

I really hate this attitude towards novels. There's no more reason for a first novel to suck than for a tenth novel to suck. The choice of telling the kind of story publishers want is more likely to be off, but not the quality.

A first novel may well be unpublishable because of story choice, because the writer doesn't understand exactly what publisher, and readers, look for in a story, but my experience is that if novel one really does suck where ability to write and tell a basic story is concerned, so will novel two, novel three, and novel twelve.

Writers need to treat novel one like it is not going to suck, like it doesn't suck, like it's worth as much as any novel, anywhere.
 

Nancyleeny

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Hi all,
Thank you all for your very generous suggestions!! I know it will pretty much suck!! I am reading my first chapters and they suck! I have learned so much in just the months since I started it, mostly from here, such as not frontloading back story, and don't explain everything. I have been "accused" of overwriting and I definitely think that is true!

I started the edit, and I am adding a lot to each scene, especially in making sure I have conflict of some kind in each one. I do love my character, I love the setting, her job, some of the other characters. I have another novel I've been playing with also, and I used a friend of mine as a prototype for a sidekick and some readers liked her better!! So I added a wildish liberal Grandma in this one, who fights with all the conservative family members, and gets arrested protesting the protestors at Planned Parenthood, and stuff, so I think it will be a lot better through the edit.
Thanks again!
nancy