The Close Edit

The block party earlier this week must have helped, because on Thursday I cranked past the scene that was troubling me, zoomed past the next one, and ended up getting through four chapters. Yesterday I took the day off to go for a 6K walk with Ibis along a path in Ixtapa (sadly, no pictures) and today I plan to get back into the edits as soon as I work out.

I'm in the middle of a scene that requires more shuffling than rewriting, but I am adding a small detail that will hopefully make the antagonist's actions a little more plausible. The action will take place away from the scene -- and beyond where the MC can see -- so I really just need to set it up. There will be torture involved, but I'll only have to write how the two guys appear when they return to the main group.

After that, I have one more big scene to rewrite. I changed one detail at the end of the first chapter that affects the rest of the story, so that's mainly what I'm fixing right now. I'm also watching for waffling on my MC's part, because in my effort to show him "growing" I think I made him TOO wimpy at the beginning, and he does a lot of flip-flopping between courageous and cowardly.

After this round, comes the close, detailed, poring-over-every-line round of edits. I've never done this before, so any advice would be much appreciated!