Rewrites

Today, I got to do my first rewrite. It sucked. And then it didn't. Explanations coming...

When I first introduced a significant charcter in my book, I had a vague idea of what I wanted him to be. By the time I got to the final third of the book, however, his entire motivation had changed. What I wrote in the last part of the book was fine, but I always knew I would have to tweak the character's earlier chapters.

I finally made it to that chapter today. Knowing I would need to ensure it was foreshawdowed correctly, I read the entire chapter before making a single edit. As I mentioned, it sucked. Not "the writing sucked" (although it needed editing as bad as the rest of the book), the entire chapter was pointed in one direction and I needed it to point another, for I realized this was one of the four major pivots in the book and it didn't set up the next section correctly.

So I dove in. But now I was doing it with the gained knowledge of my editing course. While it was painful to slice whole sections of the chapter that were terribly fun to write (and provided at least one of my favorite one-liners), it also was much easier to write towards a goal. With the knowledge of where the character was going, it was quite fun to hide some hints in his  dialogue and actions that the reader could go back and say "Damn, THAT was what he was thinking!" I always love those moments when I come across them in the books I read. I love it even more when I get to write them.

So the rewrite of that chapter didn't suck as much as I thought it would. But it also brings on worries. With such an important pivot chapter being rewritten, will I have to rewrite several others that reference that chapter? I don't think so as the rewrite was more about tone and motivation, not events. But I can see how writers like GRR Martin must have a devil of a time with items such as this and I have a much greater appreciation of why it can take years for someone like him to write a book. Not only is he trying to keep all those references in the book consistent, but he has to do it over the whole series. Yikes.

In any case, it was fun to go through it once I knew a 'rewrite' didn't mean starting over and rewriting an entire chapter from scratch (though I could see how that could potentially happen). Now, the book is leaner, meaner and much tighter. I have about 20k words and ten chapters done. The first fourth of the book has been edited to very close to a 'final' version (whatever that ultimately means) and it is on to the next section.