Finished (or Close Enough)

          Good eve on this fine Sunday, Readers!

          If I seem a little excited, I do have a reason. I have been working myself to the bone and finally finished the developmental part of my edit today! Or at least, mostly. I finished reading the book and taking down page upon page of notes (around 20 pages both sides), but I have two other tasks to do.

          The first one (otherwise known as the easy one), is just putting all the pertinent information from those notes into an excel program. By that I don't mean my notes like, "general tightening of scene needed". I'm putting in each chapter, including ones I've realized I need and deleting the ones I know are disappearing in the correct order. I'm also putting in who the POV character is, what other characters share the stage for that scene, and the ones that are mentioned but aren't there. This way I can try and consolidate characters (do my noble sisters really need three named servants? Probably not) and I can check at a glance whether I am having one character getting way too much air time (one character is the POV for five chapters in a row and its only her and one other guy? Can I add in a chapter of what's happening elsewhere? Time doesn't stop for everyone else just because two characters are in trouble, after all) or not enough.

          Its my hope that, along with the problems I've already found story-wise, I will find a way to make the pacing and pov parts of my novel invisible but much more satisfying to my eventual readers.

          I'm about half way through this part now and then I'll be able to start going through and doing chapter/line edits.

          Developmental edits are less than fun, but I love taking something that isn't good and making it so. Signing off for now. I have to back to it.