A Preview, and Some Retrospect on Editing
So I’m revising Book 3. And for the most part, I’m laughing my ass off about a great many things involving this particular manuscript.
The interesting part about all of this is that there’s always at least a year’s gap between the first draft and the final one. Between formatting the pages to layout, editing the storyline, and having Gayle (Super Editor!) clock through the line edits to polish up the conventions, it takes at least a year. Lineage had, thus far, taken much longer.
If you’re one of the old-time readers of this blog, that is to say, you’ve read it since I started it back in 2009, when I was still having the pre-first-book-release jitters, then you know that I was struggling to edit Book 1 at the same time that I was trying to wrap up the first draft of Book 3. When Mages got released, I threw myself a party, and immediately put my nose to the grindstone to wrap up Book 3. I finished it roughly in late August, and threw myself into writing Revival - that is to say, Book 4 – almost right away.
In editing Lineage, I saw both the benefits and the flaws of what has happened. In multitasking on my books, I have created a plot that, frankly, I am proud to have. It’s intricate, it’s maybe a little cliche as far as fantasy/science fiction goes, but it’s character-driven and fraught with potential for spin-off arcs. It’s also deeply psychological, dealing with issues in day-to-day life that people don’t ask themselves often. I’m delighted to have come up with such a plotline for my series, because the readers adore it, and keeping up with the plotline is a challenge to me as a writer.
The flaws are just as weighty as the good things. Editing a plot of that intricacy, especially in the first arc, is incredibly daunting, and that makes me doubly glad that I have Gayle as an editor. It didn’t take her very long to read into the plot and catch where it was going. Having edited Book 1 – which is almost purposely cluttered in relation to the storyline of the other books – I would never again write a manuscript and attempt to prep it for publication on my own. Book 1 took me three years to prep, and even now, I re-read it and think of what other edits to make. Re-release of it isn’t out of the question. As far as Lineage is concerned, it’s definitely one of the cleanest-plotted books I have written for The Index Series so far, but it is obvious now, especially when I’m adding the subplots in, that at the time I was writing it, the story was not yet set in my mind. It was finished hastily, and it shows. However, that’s exactly the motivation I need to refine the story as I am doing now: hastily written, yes, but there’s plenty of potential even in those hasty scenes.
One of the new scenes, which I’m including here, cracks me the hell up.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned the character of Jason Watson before. I based his personality on a close friend of mine, and considering that most of my characters, battle-worn and hardened, aren’t used to his brand of perception, or his penchant for well-pointed getting-on-nerves, the result effectively wrote itself. But, if I have to describe Jason’s personality….I will say that he’s likely the most lovable little shit you’ll ever meet. In Secrets (Book 2), Jay’s a peripheral character, who takes center stage with his abilities in Lineage. But his personality…well, have a look. :)
K.G.
——————
