Thoughts on Revisiting my Own Work.
As I’ve been working to promote Pain Center: the Novel! within the Goodreads community and on my own personal network of friends and colleagues, I have recently taken some time to re-read my work again.
One of my favorite movies of all time is the John Carpenter classic, Halloween. In it, serial killer Michael Myers has been rotting away in a mental institution, staring at a blank wall, not speaking to anyone in 15 years after the brutal killing of his older sister. At one point, he escapes, driving a car away from the hospital. Now, for a moment, this is a HUGE plot hole. How does he know how to drive? He came in as a child and hasn’t talked to anyone?
This is seemingly a problem that threatens the logic of the whole movie (such as it is.). But it gets solved with the inclusion of one line :
Dr. Wynn: Now, for God's sake, he can't even drive a car!
Loomis: He was doing very well last night! Maybe someone around here gave him lessons!
It does not answer the question, but it addresses the question. It is a band-aid that keeps the story moving.
I’ve kept that example in mind when I edit, especially with late edits. I try not to insult anyone’s intelligence when I fix small errors with band-aid dialog.
Things I’ve Noticed/Easy Fixes.
• So…Yeah, Downtown Steve is a vegetarian. Early in the book I have him being a daily fixture at “Harden’s Fast Food restaurant.” Which doesn’t jibe with being a vegetarian. Easy Fix: Include the words “a salad” to the text and we are good to go!
• I have a squishy name/dialog attribution issue between the 2 principal characters in one scene. The conversation is meant to be free flowing, “Before Sunrise” fare (I make fun of that movie quite a bit in the story.) Not so easy fix: eh, I think it’s kinda minor…maybe???
• There’s a section later in the book where I make a premature correlation between two of the major parties in the book (Ok, now I’m just being torturously vague.) This kinda hurt me when I re-read it. In a perfect world, I would rewrite it so that it wasn’t this way. But in reality…the “correlation” that I make gets made a few pages down the road anyway, so… Easy Fix:one little line of dialog has been added so that in the second printing, this gets fixed.
Anyway…I'll probably find more. Stay tuned...
One of my favorite movies of all time is the John Carpenter classic, Halloween. In it, serial killer Michael Myers has been rotting away in a mental institution, staring at a blank wall, not speaking to anyone in 15 years after the brutal killing of his older sister. At one point, he escapes, driving a car away from the hospital. Now, for a moment, this is a HUGE plot hole. How does he know how to drive? He came in as a child and hasn’t talked to anyone?
This is seemingly a problem that threatens the logic of the whole movie (such as it is.). But it gets solved with the inclusion of one line :
Dr. Wynn: Now, for God's sake, he can't even drive a car!
Loomis: He was doing very well last night! Maybe someone around here gave him lessons!
It does not answer the question, but it addresses the question. It is a band-aid that keeps the story moving.
I’ve kept that example in mind when I edit, especially with late edits. I try not to insult anyone’s intelligence when I fix small errors with band-aid dialog.
Things I’ve Noticed/Easy Fixes.
• So…Yeah, Downtown Steve is a vegetarian. Early in the book I have him being a daily fixture at “Harden’s Fast Food restaurant.” Which doesn’t jibe with being a vegetarian. Easy Fix: Include the words “a salad” to the text and we are good to go!
• I have a squishy name/dialog attribution issue between the 2 principal characters in one scene. The conversation is meant to be free flowing, “Before Sunrise” fare (I make fun of that movie quite a bit in the story.) Not so easy fix: eh, I think it’s kinda minor…maybe???
• There’s a section later in the book where I make a premature correlation between two of the major parties in the book (Ok, now I’m just being torturously vague.) This kinda hurt me when I re-read it. In a perfect world, I would rewrite it so that it wasn’t this way. But in reality…the “correlation” that I make gets made a few pages down the road anyway, so… Easy Fix:one little line of dialog has been added so that in the second printing, this gets fixed.
Anyway…I'll probably find more. Stay tuned...
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