Revise, Revise, Revise!

So Chapter 5-B of Facing Fearful Odds has petered out this past week. The problem is how to tell the story I want without it being boring. Also, 5-B is burdened with a HUGE exposition dump... it's necessary to the overall story, but I can't force that on my readers without figuring out an entertaining emotional angle. So I've walked away from 5-B for the time being until I can come back to it with fresh eyes.

In the meantime, with the aid of my wonderful betas, I've been doing an overall line-by-line edit of Chapters 1 through 4. And good Lord, there's nothing like revising your own stuff -- even from only a month ago -- to realize how bad you are as a writer. The three most common problems I've encountered are dropped articles (the / a / this), overuse of commas, and unclear sentences. It's good to iron all these flaws out but now I'm too scared to read over, say, the early chapters of Taking Sights.

  ( Original Scene )

( Revised Scene )

And there will undoubtedly be more revisions and edits after this round of them. But it's been insightful to observe how the story I originally wrote is slowly being shaped into something cleaner and stronger. Good betas really should be measured by their weight in gold, and mine are worth every ounce.