Editing plans

One of the things I like about the internet and uploading my own work is that finality. An invisible audience on which I can project critiques and expectations that force me to improve my work when I'm creating something for them. And the internet is a big part of the strength of nanowrimo as well - the online support is amazing, and I have a desire to post what I have written for the sake of completing it - of playing my story against that invisible audience.

But my story is all over the place. I've started on a fantasy with no outline, so I find myself with disproportionate and at times ridiculous amounts of exposition scattered throughout the action. I have light dialogue and not much action in some parts, and the balance needs to be shifted so it's not completely boring to read. I thought of an ending first, so I wrote that and now I'm adding to the middle. What a mess! Since I don't have time for editing during November (and that's not the point anyway), I've decided to devote December through February to editing and rework.

December - Make an outline and organize the major events in the story. This is working backwards because I didn't start out with an overall outline, but I really need to re-organize some of the action and I may need to change some major events that occur in the story.

January - Divide outline into chapters and balance out the exposition. What does the reader need to know when? How can the story stay interesting and keep the reader immersed all the details of the surroundings and the backstory?

February - Chapter-level editing. Grammar, rhythm, transitions, typos, deleting things that are awful and reworking things that don't make sense. (I expect that not too much of what I've written will make sense, so I'm planning for a lot of re-work).

And promising here to an almost-completely-invisible virtual audience will make it all the more likely that I'll carry out my plan of editing action. So thank you, virtual non-readers, for helping me achieve my goals.

:)

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