valor of the healer

Y’all know how I mentioned the scene at the beginning of Chapter 15 was destined to die? Well, I killed it–and added in a bit of extra content in the new first scene of the chapter, tying a bit more in to how the previous one closed. This means that all told I’ve killed nearly 2,000 words from this one chapter alone.

And that’ll do me for now with this chapter, I think. I’ll be moving on to Chapter 16 as of tomorrow night to see what I can do to it. Now I’m moving out of the rough middle stretch into where the editor was saying the pacing started working better for her, but I’m still on the Word Count Reduction mission. So we’ll see how many more words I can kill in the remaining chapters. (Of which there are nine, since I’ll also be punting the epilogue over into the second book.)

As of tonight’s efforts I’ve killed 7,346 words total from the draft, and of the words killed, big chunks of them were in that one scene in this very chapter. (As well as shorter interstitial sorts of scenes in the last couple ones as well.) The total word count is down to 111,012. I think I’m on good track to kill 10K total out of this draft, which is smack dab in the target range.

This does not suck.

Beta readers who aren’t done looking at Lament of the Dove yet, just so y’all know, the Great Word Count Reduction Pass (read: the fifth draft) is currently on Chapter 15. It’ll be a bit yet before I finish so you still have time to get me your feedback. If you feel hard-pressed for time, please do keep in mind that I do not require a hardcore copyedit pass! Most of the things I’m asking y’all to look for are bigger picture stuff. Feel free to focus on those questions if you are busy.

I wanted to do a post though to cover some of the overall issues I’ve already heard back on. To wit…

Continue Reading

Three of you have checked in with me, but I haven’t heard from the other five…? (Many thanks to cow and gerimaple and mamishka for keeping me apprised of your various levels of ability to deal with the reading, I much appreciate the updates!)

As an FYI to y’all reading, I’m currently in chapter 9 of the word count reduction pass so you have a bit of buffer time still before I really need the feedback. It’ll be at least another week or so depending on how fast I can charge through the rest of the manuscript. As of Chapter 9 I’m now into the main area that the editor at Carina advised me about, so it may take me longer to get through on the grounds of needing to think about what I want to do to implement her requests.

Do check in with me if you can, if nothing else just to let me know if you’re still up for finishing the reading? (“No” is a perfectly acceptable answer, I just need to know if I’m going to get feedback from you.) Thanks again!

It’s the 21st and if possible I’d like to start hardcore revisions in October, so if you can get me feedback by the 1st I’d very much appreciate it! (I’m still working on the word count reduction draft, having finished chapter 6 of same last night, and I hope to have that done by then.)

Many thanks to cow for being the first reader to check in as of this morning! And thanks again to all of you who are going through the novel!

It is ON. Oh my yes. Well, not too impressively quite yet given that I’ve been smacked upside the head with a cold all weekend, but in the state of mind I’ve been in, it’s oddly easier to do a word count reduction pass than it is to write actual new content.

Which means of course that I’ve officially decided to go ahead and do a word count reduction draft while I’m waiting for the beta readers (all eight of you, like, WOW) to get back to me. This will also be doubling as an opportunity for me to review the manuscript in depth and lay down the game plan for what I want to change to tighten it up for Carina Press.

I found a couple hundred words or so to remove in both Chapters 1 and 2, and I’m leaving off tonight in the middle of Chapter 3, with about 300 words removed. So far it’s about 800 words down, and closing in on the first K. Given that the target range is between 6 and 12K, this is a promising start. I’m going to try to avoid making any big changes on this pass, but I may tweak a few smaller things as I go.

Beta readers, when I send out the editor’s feedback to those of you who haven’t gotten it yet as well as the overall gameplan, I’ll note the stuff I’ve already changed. But don’t let that stop you from reporting anything you think is worth reporting, even if I might have already tweaked it on this fifth draft pass. And, again, many many thanks!

Edited this weekend: -818
Chapter 1 revised total: 3,163
Chapter 2 revised total: 3,040
Chapter 3 revised total: 4,181
Lament of the Dove revised total (fifth draft): 117,540

cow very kindly created an EPUB format file for me today out of the fourth draft manuscript, and I completely forgot to mention that seattlesparks made a PRC file for me at one point. Many thanks go out to both of these nice folks for this assistance! And, either file should then be convertible in Calibre or other tools to other formats as desired.

If anybody else wants to take a crack at the manuscript and finds either of these formats Relevant to Interests, I shall provide them! Same for anyone who’s already volunteered. Please let me know!

Ha, glancing back at the big revise and resubmit post, I realized I actually didn’t say what the editor’s big issue with the story structure was. Oops. Clearly, the post needed an edit pass. 😉

Anyway, I’d said that the structure of the The Dove, the Rook, and the Hawk is supposed to be “one big story in three parts”, akin to Lord of the Rings. However, what the editor said about this was that she’d prefer to see less setup for Book 2 and more of a sense of resolution for this book.

I get that. Certainly in Fellowship of the Ring, the biggest plot questions are of course not resolved, but there is a local resolution of sorts with the dissolution of the Fellowship. With my story, the idea here is that Book 1 is supposed to be Faanshi’s local arc, Book 2 is Julian’s, and Book 3 is Kestar’s. But clearly, I need better closure for Faanshi’s local arc.

The editor has given me several thoughts about how to tackle this, and I’m already thinking about which bits at the very end of Book 1 may be shifted over into the beginning of Book 2. This would serve nicely for giving Book 1 a less open ending while at the same time opening Book 2 with a sense of “okay, things are darker now, get ready”.

I’m also thinking that perhaps, structure-wise, I should think less “Lord of the Rings” and perhaps more “Star Wars”. (Which is kinda lulzy, given that I’ve got a bit of a Han-Luke-Leia dynamic going on with Julian, Kestar, and Faanshi, only without the Wookiee. Because Nine-Fingered Rab would take issues with being compared to Chewie, I fear!) The ultimate defeat of the Empire of course doesn’t happen until the third movie, but in ANH, you do have the nice big local resolution of “YAY the Death Star is asploded!”

Much thinking to do. And I’ve already had five, count ’em, five people volunteer to beta read; many thanks in advance to mamishka, jennygriffee, gerimaple, joelysue, and mari_mac1109! Thanks as well to apel who signal boosted me over on Twitter.