Incoming game plan!

Here it comes, the infamous and merciless gameplan. I've been studying this fantastic book by Noah Lukeman, "The First Five Pages", and to my dismay many of the caveats he mentions find an echo in my novel. I've first tried to list everything I should be watching for as I was reading it, and thought with a great dose of arrogance that I could fix it all at the same time... Nice try, Sherine. Think again, LOL! I was getting so confused and had to change so many things at once that I ended up freaking out--unable to come up with good rewritten material; I was losing myself in the process as well.

I found that if I address the problems one rewrite after the other, it works a LOT better. Of course, it means that I'm going to have to rewrite that blasted MS 10 times instead of one. But hey, whatever works, as long as it ends up as good as it can be, right?

So here goes:.

1. Current rewrite. I'm taking care of the changes of settings. The new races, the new beginning, tying up a few lose ends and rewriting a few chapters I'm not happy with. I'm also going to sneak in there to watch out for abusive use of adverbs and adjectives, and change the most common/cliche ones;
2. Rewrite + 1. Dialogs part I. I have to look at my dialogs under the microscope, and make sure they are all relevant, essential to the story and the scene. Eliminate all commonplace dialogs. I also have to eliminate useless descriptions, whether they are between scenes or included in dialogs. 
3. Rewrite+2. Dialogs part II. Same as above, this time concentrating on eliminating unnecessarily informative dialogs and letting the characters show it instead, whenever possible. Also track down overly melodramatic dialog, specifically in the "romantic" scenes... I'm a girly girl and I have to watch myself to make sure I don't tip over the cheesy line, lol.
4. The next step isn't a rewrite per-se, but it's going to be an important and hard thing for me to do. I need to leave my MS alone, I'd say for at least 2 weeks. I can add new scenes or write alternate endings, but after being so immersed in my edits for so many rewrites, I need to give my eyes a chance to be fresh again.
5. Rewrite+3. What have I lost?. I personally think that a risk we take when we do so many rewrites is to lose the soul of our story by cutting a little here, changing a little there. I need to read the story as if it was the first time and ask myself if my characters are still compelling or if I polished the story so much it has no texture left. In which case I need to strengthen my plot and check for improvements I can make on characterization if needed. Make sure that by swapping things around, I didn't end up making the read confusing, or something like two POVs in the same chapter. Make sure my hooks are still powerful enough.

If I make it that far I'll be at least ... half way there LOL! What? You thought that is all it was going to take? I wish--but I have no illusions. After I'm done with the above, I will have a better, tighter MS, but it won't be perfect by any means. I'm thinking another Algonkian workshop after that---not the pitch and shop one, but one we'll actually work on our manuscripts together. I had originally planned to do the April one, but with what happened with my mother, I fell behind the schedule I had for myself. 

So there you have it. That's what my writer's life is going to be for the next couple of months. Am I overwhelmed? A little; am I excited? Most definitely!


PS: A note on "The First Five Pages" - It's not a writer's manual. It has nothing to do with "Story", by Mckee, or "The 20 Master Plots" by Tobias. Both were excellent books, but this one is different. It doesn't even attempt to teach us how to write. It just tells us, in no uncertain terms, what will get a MS rejected. If the examples given are a little exaggerated, they show very clearly what you absolutely have to avoid. Will it stop my MS from ending up in the trash if it isn't good enough? No. But at least it won't be for the reasons he lists ;)