Big Changes

Over the last couple of months, I've been 'editing' Honour Among Thieves. By that, I mean reading through stuff and tweaking the odd sentence or fixing a spelling mistake. If I'm honest I've been putting off editing it properly because this is the first novel I have ever finished and that scares me enough, let alone the fact that I have to rip it apart and rewrite probably about sixty percent of it.

That's what scares me.

Yesterday, I decided that it was time. I started playing my dramatic music playlist and read through parts of the novel, deciding what needed to go and what needed to stay. Most of the first half needs to go, along with bits here and there all the way through. There is a character which I love who isn't adding anything to the story and unfortunately needs to be edited out (though maybe I'll find a way to add her back in somewhere) and huge plot points that just don't work.

My novel is fantasy, but the problem is that it just isn't epic. I've planned huge things for the series, but the first draft of the first book is not where I want it to be. It's not unique and only now I realise how much changes I'm going to have to make to it. Huge parts will be scrapped and I'll need to add in new content.

The thing is, I don't know what to put in. The fantasy element of the novel needs to be stronger, but at its core Honour Among Thieves is a heist novel and somehow what I already have doesn't work. It all seems to be a series of coincidences which just happen to get the characters where they need to be and I really dislike that.

I think a huge rewrite is in order, but the most daunting thing I need to do is reinvent the world. I want to make the magic system more unique and I want to really make this book into something that I'm proud of. I've even created an epic editing playlist on my iTunes which, unsurprisingly, features I'll Make a Man Out of You from Mulan (or, as I like to call it, I'll Make a Novel Out of You).

I know what needs to happen later on, but I think I'm back in the planning stage and that's a little terrifying.

Because I doubt that the world wants to hear about my attempts to write a novel, I'll leave you with a quote about revision that'll make me get off my backside and (re)write.

"I have rewritten - often several times- every word that I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers." - Vladimir Nabokov