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Seeing Is Believing 1st Edit Pass DONE!
Dec. 14th, 2007 11:23 amSo, yesterday saw the sight of a rare event...I finished a novel edit :). Seeing Is Believing has now been edited start to finish (though I have not done the spell check yet).
The final stats are: 72 scenes in 40 Chapters for a word count of 92,146.
I added a paltry 964 words.
The changes per scene were mostly nickel and dime, 5 words added here, 3 taken away there. Only two chapters managed a difference of over 100 words, both in the positive.
Am I happy with the novel? Yes.
Do I think it's perfect? No.
I have great doubts about this one, about whether I've succeeded in the point I was making, whether the point is too heavy handed, whether the story even makes sense.
I'm too close to it...and too far away at the same time. This is not a tale in the story-telling tradition. It doesn't fall into a category even as specific as space opera. There are no rules to follow besides ones so broad they offer no assistance at all, and unlike my other SF novels, this one is not about a culture so much as about a person.
Eeek! I've written an idea novel.
In my short stories, I can tell (though I believe no one else can) which started from a story or a character, and which from an idea. Character and story manuscripts burst out of me fully fleshed with twists and tangles naturally dripping from my fingers, the hope being I can hold the idea long enough to capture them. That's why I outline, actually, because otherwise I can't capture those tangles as well and they become faint copies of what they could have been, forever irretrievable.
With Seeing, I knew the point of the story but not the shape of it. I didn't know how to take characters from point a to point b. I had an outline (though I started writing with it only half complete), but the outline for me is only hooks into hidden corners of my mind where the story pieces lurk. For Seeing, the outline was an attempt to draw out a story that didn't exist in the same section, a story that twisted around the side of my brain usually left for coding.
I suppose if you dig down to the deep most levels, it is, at its heart, a story about culture clash and time of change like most of my SF, but it didn't feel that way, it didn't write that way.
So, now maybe my distant and close makes a little more sense, or no sense at all. I know points of the novel are incredibly strong. I think Paul got the best end of the deal on great dialogue, not that the others are weak, but that he got to say cool things :). I hope people will feel for Brian in his push pull of which step to take, which beliefs to make his own, but I fear they'll find him wishy-washy, rather than understand that his whole world-view is called into question. And most of all, I hope none of the characters will be dismissed as a mere convenience. They each have a role, a purpose, without which the whole is weaker.
Well, at least now you'll see that I have a lot bound up in this story. It's not a matter of it being my baby. If it doesn't work, out with the bathwater it'll go, but at the same time I have hopes. I have dreams tied up with Brian and his aspirations. I grew with him through his confusion and I want to find others who can share that feeling. And so, without any more blathering on, Seeing will take its next step into the world.
The final stats are: 72 scenes in 40 Chapters for a word count of 92,146.
I added a paltry 964 words.
The changes per scene were mostly nickel and dime, 5 words added here, 3 taken away there. Only two chapters managed a difference of over 100 words, both in the positive.
Am I happy with the novel? Yes.
Do I think it's perfect? No.
I have great doubts about this one, about whether I've succeeded in the point I was making, whether the point is too heavy handed, whether the story even makes sense.
I'm too close to it...and too far away at the same time. This is not a tale in the story-telling tradition. It doesn't fall into a category even as specific as space opera. There are no rules to follow besides ones so broad they offer no assistance at all, and unlike my other SF novels, this one is not about a culture so much as about a person.
Eeek! I've written an idea novel.
In my short stories, I can tell (though I believe no one else can) which started from a story or a character, and which from an idea. Character and story manuscripts burst out of me fully fleshed with twists and tangles naturally dripping from my fingers, the hope being I can hold the idea long enough to capture them. That's why I outline, actually, because otherwise I can't capture those tangles as well and they become faint copies of what they could have been, forever irretrievable.
With Seeing, I knew the point of the story but not the shape of it. I didn't know how to take characters from point a to point b. I had an outline (though I started writing with it only half complete), but the outline for me is only hooks into hidden corners of my mind where the story pieces lurk. For Seeing, the outline was an attempt to draw out a story that didn't exist in the same section, a story that twisted around the side of my brain usually left for coding.
I suppose if you dig down to the deep most levels, it is, at its heart, a story about culture clash and time of change like most of my SF, but it didn't feel that way, it didn't write that way.
So, now maybe my distant and close makes a little more sense, or no sense at all. I know points of the novel are incredibly strong. I think Paul got the best end of the deal on great dialogue, not that the others are weak, but that he got to say cool things :). I hope people will feel for Brian in his push pull of which step to take, which beliefs to make his own, but I fear they'll find him wishy-washy, rather than understand that his whole world-view is called into question. And most of all, I hope none of the characters will be dismissed as a mere convenience. They each have a role, a purpose, without which the whole is weaker.
Well, at least now you'll see that I have a lot bound up in this story. It's not a matter of it being my baby. If it doesn't work, out with the bathwater it'll go, but at the same time I have hopes. I have dreams tied up with Brian and his aspirations. I grew with him through his confusion and I want to find others who can share that feeling. And so, without any more blathering on, Seeing will take its next step into the world.
