Revising "A Doll's Life"

[rowyn]

Remember where I said that "I bet I could trim a lot of words out of 'A Doll's Life' and not change anything substantial?"

tuftears has proved the truth of that for me. He trimmed it from 10k to 7.5k and took out nothing of substance. He snipped one rambly bit from early in the story and moved it to a much shorter bit later in the story; tht's the most noticeable change. I swear, if I hadn't written the original I would not have even notice the differences. I'm blown away by what an amazing job he did with it. I need to, like, take notes on writing briefly from him.

Anyway, I'm going to consider further cutting -- there are still some "non-essential" scenes that I could trim out without changing the plot, but I'm not sure it would improve the story. But for now, I'm stunned and grateful to Tufty. And I tend to be pretty possessive about my writing, so having someone chop a piece up like that -- and do it so well that I can hardly tell-- simply amazes me. Thanks, Tufty! :)

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Whoot! Way to go, TuftEars! (And congrats to you, Rowyn, for being the sort who can take your story being hacked up by someone else! That's a rare sort! ;) Though, I haven't seen the "hacked" version myself, so I can't form an intelligent opinion on it.)

[rowyn]

I'll email the "hacked" version to you. I've gone over it once already and tweaked a few more things, including putting back in a bunch of commas that Tufty had taken out. I've since been persuaded that I am probably too comma-happy as a writer, so maybe I'll do another comb-over and take the commas out again. I don't want to make myself nuts over it, though. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well, I'll have to take a look myself. I realize that sometimes I'm too "comma happy" ... but it's not that I need to just take out commas. It's that I make too many parenthetical statements, too many digressions in a single run-on sentence. A lot of the time, when I'm combing through a story to deal with "comma-happy" sentences, my solution is to break a run-on sentence into two parts. I've seen some writing, however, that really could benefit from a few more commas to clarify things. They aren't THAT fattening. ;)

[rowyn]

Heehee! No, in this case, I'm thinking of sentences that are short already, but have two or three commas in there. For instance, Level_Head pointed out that:

"His last thought, just before the bullet hit his chest, was Man, I hate this part."

reads just fine as:

"His last thought before the bullet hit his chest was Man, I hate this part."

It looks a little rushed to me like that, but, then again, a bullet impacting ought to be a rushed event. ;)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

My preference would be:
His last thought before the bullet hit his chest was, Man, I hate this part.

[rowyn]

I know. If I read it aloud, though, I don't put the pause in. It's only if I think of it as dialogue that the pause goes in.

[rowyn]

And congrats to you, Rowyn, for being the sort who can take your story being hacked up by someone else! That's a rare sort!

Funny thing: I don't think I'm that sort at all. I was prepared to take this like a trip to the dentist: it's not that I'm not grateful, and it's not that I don't think it's important, but I sure don't expect to enjoy it.

So finding that I did enjoy it was definitely an added bonus. :) Whee!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

If I'd known you hated your stories being cut up, I'd probably have been more hesitant, but I'm glad things worked out and that you found the rewrite satisfactory! I tried to preserve the sense of the original writing, so maybe it's more tightening up than rewriting.

[rowyn]

Yeah -- it really doesn't feel like someone went in and re-wrote my story, which probably would annoy me. "Tightening up" is definitely the right phrase. In any case, I'm glad you did it -- and I'm glad I didn't say anything beforehand that would've made you reluctant to! :)

Besides, even when I don't *enjoy* criticism, I still *appreciate* it, if you know what I mean. It's just that sometimes it takes some time before I can look back and enjoy it. ;)