Mid-NaNoEdMo Report: Radical Changes in Spanner's 4th Draft!

It's the middle of NaNoEdMo 2012, and so far I've been really surprising myself. In the final publication edition I'm working on, Chapter 1 is complete, Chapters 2 and 3 are close to complete, and Chapters 4-8 are being completely reorganized as I fling scenes all over. Especially, the scene order of Chapters 6-8 is now completely different. Not counting the Intro or the Interludes, all these chapters are now so much superior to their third-draft counterparts that the Third Revision reads like a rough draft in comparison, mainly because I've refined the plot so much. yWriter5 has proved the indispensable tool this year. The challenge I'm giving myself for the remainder of this week is to finish editing all eight of the early chapters by the time the coming weekend ends.

Next will come the important middle section of Book 1, Chapters 9-15. Already I find myself completely rewriting Chapter 14, eliminating most of the Third Revision version I posted, though I haven't come up with many replacement scenes yet. The most important part is where the relationship line (the Shira/Leila love affair, increasingly passionate over the course of these seven chapters) and the action line (the increasing tension between the people and private government of the most liberal state in America) meet, particularly in Chapter 12, when in a new cliffhanger ending Governor Brinkman will make the fateful decision that will lead to the disasters of Chapter 15. I want to finish editing this section by the end of March.

That leaves Chapters 16 through 23, though I've been doing a little work on them too (especially Chapter 16). I probably won't be able to finish editing the whole novel this month, but I intend to complete it. But by then, I'll have earned my EdMo victory, and the next question to ask myself will be, what project will I do for Script Frenzy?

Total hours edited so far: 29 out of 50.