Just a brief scribble to catch you all up on the progress I continue to make.  With the first draft complete several weeks ago, I have moved on to the editing phase, pushing the word count nearly to 66,000 in the process.  Scenes needed to be moved and then coherence restored.  Lost storylines of minor characters needed to be restored.  Typos needed to be corrected.

With that work behind me, I am analyzing the structure of each scene, using Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s Story Structure Architect: A Writer’s Guide to Building Dramatic Situations and Compelling Characters.  She lists some very useful heuristics for each of the 55 prototypical dramatic situations she describes, and I’ve already made some minor yet important changes and additions.

Once this process is complete – which I hope will be within the next week – I will chug through all the “tk” in the document, and then shift to hardcore proofreading.

For those of you unfamiliar with “tk,” it’s a shorthand for “to come,” meaning a detail that needs research to be filled in later.  So, why not “tc” then?  Well, that letter combination does appear in English (“catch,” “watch,” “catch,” etc.), whereas “tk” never does, making it easier to find in a document using the “Find” function.  There’s lots of “tk” in the draft, so even thought each one may take only a few minutes to flesh out (How far is it from the Greek isles to Alsace?), it may add another week to the process.

But, with “tk” and proofreading behind me, the draft will be ready for readers again.  I have three waiting with baited breath (so they assure me), and will be looking for a fourth (so don’t be surprised if I hit you up!).

I’ll keep you apprised of my progress in the coming weeks, and also fill you in on the next project.  Till then, cheers and Happy New Year!

JFH