Monday, November 1, 2010

Diet

Welcome to my new blogger buddies. I will be visiting you soon.

Check out Lydia and Laura's blogs. Lydia (medical mondays) and Laura's (mental health mondays). They are discussing my research topic from last week.


Well, Halloween is over and I'm still full of sugar. It's pumping through my veins at a high rate of speed. This is when I think--I need to go on a diet. This thought is utterly insane because I still have bags of candy, (chocolate doesn't count because it's always in my house) cookies, and cupcakes. I still will torture myself with this thought till the New Year. I mean really, diet, now. Ha. I will be eating loads of turkey and mashed potatoes next month and then more cakes and cookies in December so who am I kidding.

So I decided to make my WiP go on a diet. It needs it. I still have a little too much telling and well it takes a little time to get to the action. How do I do it? It's not easy. WiP #1 loves to eat so I need to be careful or my MCs may not speak to me. They like to talk and if I don't do what they want, they get cranky. I love every scene I put them in, but to make their story fit into that tiny, attention grabbing, black dress,  I need to take some things out. I'm not talking adjectives and adverbs. I'm talking whole chapters. Kill your darlings comes to mind. I have a lot to explain (remember it's a paranormal, scifi romance) so I have to do it in a smaller pants size.

I've started to look at each chapter and ask--Does this move the story along? How does it relate to the story? Is it important? Can I do it differently- ie. dialogue, show more?

It's starting to help which is great, but I was curious how you trim your baby.

Do you have any other methods to get rid of excess baggage in your WiP?

How do you know what to keep? Gut feeling?

I'm trying to get through one revision without dwelling on certain areas. This is hard for me, but I need to get through it to really make it a decent draft.

I hope everyone had a great Halloween/weekend and good luck NaNoWriMo paticipants.