Since I've been revising and/or re-editing, and/or rewriting The Vase, Heart of a Zulu, and Second Chance, they are already tons better. One of the reasons is that I redid all the things my previous editors didn't want in there. For Second Chance that includes a few scenes or a few parts of a few scenes. For John Dunn, it only includes rearranging some parts, and for Second Chance it includes returning an entire scene in the beginning.
They were still great, but in my opinion, they're better and it's because they are back to the way I wanted them to be. Of course when you go over something again after a while, you always think of new ways to make it better and that's especially true for a novel. I'm making the story and the writing a lot better for the John Dunn book because I'm thinking of new ways to make it better.
For one thing, I made a bigger deal with Dunn's acquisition of the Snider breech-loading rifle than I did at first. And I made note of another Zulu chieftain who appears in the beginning and ending. I put him in the middle too, so as not to have forgotten about him, only to see him return in the end.
In Second Chance, the initial scene that shows Tony in the alley is returned. The story ends with him in the alley, and in the way it was published the reader is surprised to find him there. But now it's back and the reader will know why he's there in the end because it's where he was at the start. At the story's conclusion we return to the scene, so to speak.
With The Vase, there were all sorts of changes that I changed back to the way I wanted them. For example, when Captain Mathias and Mary Levin fight the terrorists, I had it so that the terrorists had found Mary's gun and threw it off into the night before they engaged her in a fight. That had been deleted. But now it's back and better than ever.
So yeah. For the next few months, I will keep on making these three books better. But heck, they're already much better. Well, they'll be getting better still. All the better!
No comments:
Post a Comment