Thursday 24 February 2011

OBITUARY

Writing starts slowly. Squeezing words out of my brain is like trying to get juice out of a dried up grapefruit. It's all pips and dribble. 
Brain
Today I'm editing, which is about a hundred times worse.

The text looks like it's 'finished'. My job is to rip it out, smash it up - rearrange the deep structure, work out character motivation, more realistic details for my 'worlds' and put it back together.

When I've done, it ought to read as if it had never been touched. It is extremely finicky work.

I spent about three hours yesterday rearranging sentences, deleting whole chunks of gorgeous description and subtle emotional moments because they no longer make sense in the story. I also deleted a character called Iggy. According to my editor he made no sense in terms of the plot and was completely over the top.

So goodbye Iggy. No more 'malodorous farts'. No more 'picking food from between his teeth and flicking it at the wall'. No more trying to stab my main character, Frank in the neck.

I replaced Iggy with two sets of cannibals and a murder scene. And then I remembered I was writing a book for age 9-12. I had a bit of a think about this.

I added more blood and made it so Frank could 'taste' it in the air.

Children like to be scared. Apparently.

More Plot Structure...

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