La Vie Boheme

When the going gets tough, the tough... websurf

A fairly productive morning, but I realized that I have three scenes that cover very similar emotional ground within close proximity to each other. However, all three provide important information, both about the characters and about the world. So, after rewriting another scene, I realized that I'd need to combine the information from these three scenes into one, more likely two, separate scenes that didn't overlap quite so much.

I did some basic organization, and then my brain got mushy. I had to fight my tendency to go find something else to do when the writing (or rewriting in this case) gets hard. I was mostly successful. I have an idea how I'm going to tackle these scenes, but I don't have the mental capacity to do it right this second. Possibly this afternoon, more likely tonight or this weekend.

There's SO MUCH dead weight in this novel. I think there's far too much transition between scenes, and not enough scene. I'm very tempted to step all the way back and replot the whole damn thing using the notecard system from Holly Lisle's site. It worked for Mer, and worked damn well.

I'm starting to think this draft isn't so much a second draft as another first draft. There are plot and worldbuilding issues to fix before I can even worry tremendously about pacing and such. If nothing else, once those are fixed, maybe I'll just go through and strip out all the transitions, see what happens. I'm afraid to try it right now. It'd be like messing with the mirrors and stripping the chrome while I'm trying to fix the engine.