Revise, Revise, Revise, and then Revise Some More

I’m actually a pretty fast writer.

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Given thirty freaking minutes of free time (usually before the rest of the family wakes up in the morning, or after my classes when I’m chillin’ in a coffee shop), and I can usually bang out about 1,000 words. (My college students think this is impossible. It’s not, my young padawans.)

But writing the first draft is the easy part, at least for me. After that comes The Revisions, when I stare at my computer blankly for ten minutes, then go to thesaurus.com, and then seriously consider abandoning writing altogether.

So what the hell am I doing during The Revisions?

Lemme show you, my friend…

Here’s a line from my WIP (work in progress). This is the Fenris story, which you won’t be seeing for a long time – as I said, I’m slow!

Fenris eased back slightly, allowing King Nøkkyn to scramble to his feet. He was pale and angry.

Okay, not terrible, right? But not great. The first sentence is solid, but the second sentence needs work.

First of all, how does the first-person narrator know King Nøkkyn is angry? We can’t get inside his head. And second, angry is a little weak. Nøkkyn is a bad dude, the closest thing to a villan I’ve written. Angry just doesn’t cut it.

So this is what I changed.

Fenris eased back slightly, allowing King Nøkkyn to scramble to his feet. He looked pale, and almost incandescent with rage.

Yeah, better. But still not good enough. It’s a bit clunky, and that “almost” weakens the awesome “incandescent with rage” line. How about…

Fenris eased back slightly, allowing King Nøkkyn to scramble to his feet, his pinched, white face incandescent with rage.

Alright! Now that’s a sentence!

I just need to do that with the other 45,000 words – oh, and finish the story – then line edit, and we’re good to go.