Adventures In Editing

Now that I’m on the tail end of my first round of edits (the hard part, as a lot of it involves rewriting), I’m starting to feel really good about my novella as a whole. What amuses me most is how I went from 45k to 40k, and 25 chapters to 20. I had to delete two chapters to make that happen, and combined the rest.

My average chapter length is around 2500 words, but was closer to 1500 or 2000 in the early chapters. I’m currently debating on adding a bit more to the slimmer chapters, but I don’t want to do so at the risk of useless fluff or disrupting the flow. I’ve gone over the idea several times and have few solutions, though it is tempting to combine another two chapters.

I’ll table the idea for now and give it some serious consideration for my final round of edits. I still have a chapter and a half to figure out, and that latter one needs quite a bit of work. I had a plan for it, but my outline has changed a bit since I last touched it. What I have in mind no longer works, but the end game remains the same. I’m saving that for tomorrow; I edit a chapter or two a day, as time allows.

I’ve been at it for three weeks now, and will take another break before combing over everything once more. There are other projects I’ve been itching to get started on, more novellas and short stories, and eventually my much neglected novel. Editing that last one will take me longer, I imagine. It’s sitting at 45k or so right now, and it’s only half-written. I expect it to hit at least 80k, but I’ll worry about that later.