Surviving Gravity:
A dark comedy short story exploring perspective, society, and the quest for survival.
(If you're a fan of Pratchett, Adams, and/or Gaiman, you'll probably enjoy this.)
Writer In Motion:
A collaborative effort with 24 writers and...
As a continuation from my previous chapter, this chapter discusses the actual editing of my first draft, over and beyond the developmental analysis.
For the purpose of showing my process, I decided to work in Microsoft Word so I could track my changes for readers to see. I usually write and edit in Scrivener, which has this ability in the full version, but I only have the iOS App and it limits what I can show.
Here's my draft with edits shown (5pages):
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I made comments on the side about what my thought process was and what I was trying to achieve, what parts of the story are which story structure element, where I'm not sure if something is really working, or moving the story along, etc.
After reworking the story developmentally, I ended up at 1,238 words - which meant I needed to cut at least 238 of them (max word count for WIM was 1000 words). I went through multiple times, removing where I could, rephrasing, and trying to cut every darling that wasn't hitting on theme, character, structure, or voice.
All in all, it took me about an hr or so to write the first draft, I spent about 2.5 hrs on analysis, and 4-5 hrs on actual edits.
My final count was 994 words for the second draft.
