Yesterday I started on the fourth rewrite of A History of Lightning, my l latest short story. Actually, I started the keying in part, I’d already completed the “combining all the suggestions from the critique group” and the “put in all the notes you have on scraps of paper” part. And as a demonstration of such an event, here is the first page of edits.
Again, this is the fourth round of edits. So you thought it would get easier did you? Ha, I say. Ha.
Okay, to be fair, this is just the first page so it holds some of the general comments I want to keep in mind as I rewrite/edit. That’s most of the red marks up top. One of the comments that most people agreed with was I didn’t make the POV clear in the first paragraph, so that explains most of the marks there. The other pages have less red. No, really they do.
Ken McConnell
Matt Mitchell
Stephen Buchheit
bandraiocht
A Smith
sallyfogel
stefwithnf
ladybriony
My revisions tend to look like this and since I reuse paper (the back) it gets pretty messy. Big different for me is I use blue ink. It’s distinctive enough to stand out but I don’t hyperventilate on seeing all the red.
Amberly, I’m old school (old art school) with my markups, so I use red. I’ve tried blue, purple, and green, but I keep heading back to read. It’s quickly visible. I know some people have issues with the color itself, but I eventually recycle the paper so I have my revenge on the evil, nasty revisions in play before starting.
I find that I need to do at least my polish on hard copy. I’m embarrassed about how many little mistakes I skill with doing all on-screen proofing (although I’ll run through those as well, doesn’t result in another revision level though).
Like last night. I must have reread the ending at least ten times (last 1000 words or so) after making all my marked up and :little scraps of paper” edits. Each time through I found things to adjust and trim. That part of the story hums now. Next up to to take the other 4000 words to the same level.