Thursday Thoughts

Almost done with my initial readthrough of Scylla and Charybdis ...

I am surprised by how clunky some of the writing is. There are chunks I will be taking and reworking, not substantively, but stylistically. I noticed this mostly with the narration, but somewhat with the dialogue as well. It doesn't approach "As you know, Bob," but the characters are ... well ... overly clear at points. ;-)

I am not surprised, however, to find that there are a few sections I can cut and plenty to trim. Less in the description than in the thought patterns - there's a lot of places where Anaea thinks something through, takes a turn from it, takes another turn ... and ends up taking one turn too many for the clarity of the manuscript. Now frankly, this is the way my brain works - I can riff off a worry and my straight line becomes a labyrinth - but it's not great to read.

I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the kearl (a companion animal genetically engineered from cats and monkeys) didn't feel tacked on. Her existence seems important and her presence well integrated. Which ... is startling because several times while writing, I had to go back a couple pages and re-insert references to the kearl. I kept forgetting she was there.

Still working on a Flow-world story (and I may call it Flow-world even if it never exists, because that's conveniently a decent label for the cosmology) and editing on my contest entry. Teeny bits of cutting and some adding in spots where I've realized I didn't explain things quite well enough. There's a huge, implied backstory under the main tale, but I did need to convey a bit more of it than appeared in the first draft.