I’m exhausted!
Hi all! I received a developmental edit of my first mystery, and I’m so glad I went that route. There were a lot of holes, but because this story is a police procedural, I completely screwed up their procedures, and I know why. When developing the story, I was more focused on structuring the mystery itself and left all details of police procedures behind. I have two other completed mysteries that contain police procedures, and I already know I’ll have to make some major revisions on one of them.
It was good lesson to learn, but something else that lacked was my characterizations. I didn’t go in-depth enough. I thought I knew who each one was, but I was wrong. Finally, I lacked creating the tension needed for specific scenes.
With all that in mind, I’ve buried myself in revising the story for the last 20 days, with 1 day off. The story grew from 37K words to 53K words, which took me by surprise. Restructuring chapters, adding timestamps, giving my character beats to show action and stop me from explaining, or telling, readers the actions.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been so focused. Now it’s time to leave it alone for 3-4 months before I reread it. Right now, I don’t want to see it anymore. Now, I can look at the outline of my newest story. I have a lot work to do, but I’ll try to post more as I make progress. Thankx!
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