Hi, everyone! I hope you enjoy the picture of my kitten. I’m going to attach one to each of these essay posts I make in the future. As a little bonus and because I love them so much.
I’ve been trying to guess how much of Notes from the Deathworld Earth I wrote on public transit. I think it’s probably close to 25%, as that’s the closest thing to down-time for the last several months of the project.
For those who don’t know, summer 2023 was the worst summer of my life so far. I had a messy breakup, had to move as a result, witnessed a neighbor’s death, and lost a family pet to kidney failure all in the span of three months.
It’s a relief to be on the other side, after a couple months of therapy to process everything, and done with the first draft of the novel.
Now comes the hard part though: editing.
Editing is radically different from writing. It takes a lot more brain-power, for one thing, and it can take a lot longer. You have to pay attention to things like character development, detail placement, and sentence structure. On a second or third draft, you really get into the grit of a piece and rip it apart.
But first comes big structural changes: huge cuts or plot redirects you need to make. Which is what this post is about.
The very first change I’m making to Notes from the Deathworld Earth is cutting chapters 17 and 18. These are the chapters from Sandra’s perspective, and I feel like they interrupt the flow of the book and are unnecessary to the overall story.
I feel the same way about chapter 15 and I will be cutting that chapter as well.
So Draft 1.5 is starting three chapters down, cutting roughly 7,000 words. The new total count is 105,000 words. Which is just under the threshold that most publishers will consider touching.
I am keeping the rough drafts of all three cut chapters, and they will be staying up online indefinitely, so don’t worry about them going missing from my blog, AO3, or Tumblr. This change is just for the more polished version of the novel.
My hope is that by cutting fluff, I’ll create a more streamlined plot that’s easier to follow and more engaging. Obviously there is still a lot of fluff in the chapters that I haven’t cut, but I’ll get to that as I make more detailed edits. This first pass is just to prepare for the truly difficult work.
In summary:
Notes from the Deathworld Search Version 1.5 Changelog
- Cut chapter 15
- Cut chapter 17
- Cut chapter 18
- Renamed first chapter to “foreword”
- Renamed last chapter to “afterword”
Thank you all so much for coming on this journey with me! I hope you like hearing about the project. I also hope you enjoyed the short story I published last week and will enjoy the one I write next week.
