Neverending story

I've gone through and listed all the characters in both books...

With everyone mentioned, it comes out at 104. It includes the characters-in-passing. You know, the bit players: drivers, dead people, historical people, soldiers, assistants - those who either don't say much or nutin' at all. I don't think I need to put in their life stories.

But I've got character sheets to fill out - lots of 'em - then the time line, the settings, the time periods (and there are a few) and finally, go through the manuscripts scene-by-scene, paragraph-by-paragraph and each sentence. When all that's done, it's another read through with the word colour changes to make sure I've lessened the impact of passive voice, show versus tell, adverbs, name changes, descriptions, action sequences and anything else I can think of.

I have PBWs The Novel Notebook, Holly Lisle's Mugging the Muse and various posts from the Left Behind and Loving It workshops as my able assistants. All it will take is time... oh, and patience. Lots of patience.

I might even get it right this time.