Editing Progress and Writing Advice

Ok, much to my amazement I just finished dealing with the remaining 38 editorial comments in Immortal Guardian. It went quicker than I thought.  I just sent an email to my editor, Tammy, that I am now 100% certain I will have the two books back to her on August 1. However, I told her that there were so many changes that I’m afraid that each book might be something of a Frankenstein if I didn’t get each one put back together perfectly (which I probably didn’t).

My initial Beta readers haven’t reported back on Future Discovered yet. Hope to hear from them by July 15. I hope to take advantage of their comments before the Aug 1 deadline.  BTW, if anyone out there is a Science Fiction reader and interested in being a Beta reader, please let me know.

I am learning that character development is more than just having a good character profile developed before starting to write (which I had). There needs to be character introspection in the body of the work: what they are feeling, thinking and or seeing at any one particular moment. This seems to be especially important in scenes with a lot of dialogue. My editor calls this Blocking. In her words “Blocking is how characters move and react physically in a scene, allowing you to tell the story with more than just dialogue. This can include movement, expressions, internalizations, observations, and thoughts.” I wasn’t doing much of that in the first drafts and it is taking me some time to get better at it. Still working on it.

One last note. Advice often given to new writers is “read a lot” of whatever genre you want to write in. But that’s all people say. What they really mean is that you should analyze while you read. How does the author create tension or conflict in scenes? How does that tension increase as the book progresses?  How does the author bring out the true nature of the characters?  I had to figure this out for myself and with the help of my editor. As a result, when I read or listen to a book I do it from an author’s point of view, not just for entertainment.

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