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5 Reasons Why Editing a Novel Can Be a Struggle
Writing is rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting, and…
Editing a novel, or screenplay, or even a short story, hypothetically, should be easy.
I mean, most of the hard work is already done. You’ve created the world of the story. The main characters. The central conflict. The secondary threads. The theme. And likely had a hell of a time writing out some of the best scenes in the story.
But why is it that editing a story, trying to get it to the “next level,” can sometimes be so hard?
This is something I noticed while editing my second novel. Though it was easier than my first one, which proved a mess.
Way back in 2007 I wrote a lengthy door stop of a novel. A “thriller,” of sorts. A kind of Chuck Pahlniuk-inspired messy tome about an office worker fed up with his bosses, who discovers he’s a part of a secretive organization that runs the world. Kind of like a half-assed Matrix. Or like a less sexy, less exciting version of the graphic novel Wanted.
It was a disaster, that first novel of mine. And not just because of a wonky narrative and witheringly boring characters. But because after I’d finished writing it, I sat back, and realized all I had on my hands was a giant compost heap of words with…
