Rachel Sparling

I have finally breached the 500 page mark! I am officially 524 pages into my manuscript. The pile of edited work compared to the pile of unedited work, is getting larger. This is…..good news. It is a lot of progress.

I have also handed off the first chapter to the first of three people who must read it and edit it. Also progress!

So far, I do think that the flow and consistency is there. I am noticing small things and have marked them on the manuscript. Nothing huge and story changing, but small, like “did I say she already had her sweater on in the previous chapter?” kind of thing. Not an actual example, but something small like that.

I have also decided to make one structural change, which is to combine a number of chapters. This mostly came from the length of the chapters. In the first part, the chapters are pretty evenly distributed, ranging from about 15-30 pages each. In the second part, it’s a bit all over the place, ranging from 3 pages to 30. Since there are a chunk of chapters that are all more or less covering the same thing, I decided to combine a few, so that the chapters are both longer, and there’s more consistency with the length.

Normally length of chapters wouldn’t bother me, but this seems like a consistency that could throw things off. I likely did it because I only wrote a few pages on those days, OR, I did because I wanted to create more tension for the reader to keep reading. The latter can still easily be achieved with combining the chapters, so I don’t feel like I’m losing anything at all by doing it this way.

I have made so many notes, but I feel like the notes are lessening as I go through the second part. I know that I’m coming up to a rather complicated scene. A lot of the events have come to this specific scene happening, and what it will inevitably do to the main character. In my mind, there is a part of the scene that seems completely unnecessary and I have been thinking of ways that I can change it. Another part of the scene…..well, I’m worried as to whether or not it would make sense, and that it would be believable. One of my biggest issues with Man of Steel was that they had so many scenarios that could have easily been avoided. So many lives could have been saved. A big part of that was the writing behind it and the huge plot holes they created. And it irked me so much because it literally didn’t make sense as to why they didn’t just do it a different way. The scene I’m working my way up to, might have a conflict there. Is there a better way that I could have this written out? Does this make sense that it would happen this way? What kind of logic can I put in there to make this make sense? And should I add in something later to explain why it happened the way it did?

Those are all questions that are going through my mind. I figure once I’m at the scene, I’ll be able to make that decision more confidently. If not, I can make notes on it, and get my editing friends opinions on what would make the most sense, and how to work it. I’ll probably ask for their feedback regardless, since that’s what I’m trying to get from them – another set of eyes to find the things that I missed and to provide feedback and other suggestions to make it better.

Anyway, here’s to more editing, and more work to do, and slowly making the progress towards something that will hopefully be publishable.