Endings

So I added back an additional scene that I'd lopped off and grafted it to the ending.

I'm still not 100% sure about it. But it seems to work better than where I'd originally left off and it was nice to retrieve some of those clever lines that I'd tossed away. (Thank goodness for saved drafts.) And now I'm already pondering ways to rewrite the returned lines into something a little more plausible than what I'd put down in the flurry of NaNo.

I think I'll go do that now.

Comments

dj steve boyett said…
I think you might benefit from regarding your opening chapters as placeholders, in a way, because your view of the book's opening -- as the entryway into the heart of the novel -- will undoubtedly have changed by the time you reach the end. In fact the end itself will not only color the beginning, it will likely give you ideas for clues and themes to plant early on when you revise. But regarding it as placeholder text can free you up to not be married to the words you've set down. Letting it be rough for a couple of passes can be liberating.
June 2, 2009 at 6:44 PM
Sheila O'Shea said…
I suppose my worry is that by prolonging the beginning, I run the risk of taking too long to get to the point where things start happening and losing the interest of the reader.

Then again, from what I can calculate, the new beginning adds less than a thousand words, and they're less than a thousand words of scene-setting and character establishment, so perhaps I can be forgiven such indulgence. I'll ask that of the few folks who will be reading the completed version.
June 2, 2009 at 7:12 PM
dj steve boyett said…
I'd bet that your sense of what to cut, add, alter, move, etc. out of the beginning will be much clearer when viewed across the explored territory of the finished novel itself. :)
June 2, 2009 at 7:20 PM
Sheila O'Shea said…
It IS finished, technically. I have a beginning, middle and end written down; I'm now in the process of refining the result to the point that I can show it to people without blushing.
June 2, 2009 at 7:40 PM
dj steve boyett said…
Hell, don't let blushing stop you.
June 2, 2009 at 8:00 PM
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