Major Surgery

I'm working on edits of my good ol' work in progress, and I have discovered that I'm in need of an operation.

A few of my characters need work. And by work, I mean they need to get completely sliced out of the book. So somebody hand me a scalpel. I'm going in.

I had thought of the prospect of this, sadly, when I was writing the first draft. However, that's not the way I work. I had the idea worked out before hand, and when I'm writing, I charge forward bowling over everything in my path. Sometimes, that includes the common sense of "That really should get changed." I don't make changes when I'm writing, since I save that for the editing process.

But now I'm at the editing process, and this is no small task. There are a couple of characters that just don't fit, so I think they've got to go. On the other side, there are a couple of characters that really need to be involved more - that I think are more important and need more face time.

I am a pretty liberal editor, and that helps. When it comes to my WIP, my hacking and slashing would make Jason Voorhees blush. But this is a major undertaking, chopping people out of a story. I have to make sure I do it right.

I've talked before about how the editing is a painstaking process. Now my next few sessions are going to be filled with removing these characters and patching it up. My vision is better without them, but as with all surgeries, this is probably going to take time before I'm completely happy with it.

I just hope there aren't any scars. But if there are, I hope they look cool.