Editing Chapter 1-6 of Leslie Kim #102… again.

I started this series last October, on my old blog. (You can read those posts here and here.) and I was excited to finally finish editing this book. But other things became a priority and I did not get very far.

So, this week, I opened the old document and read through it again. In one night, I sat down and edited chapters 1-5. It was a good start and I was excited at the prospect of finishing this long-suffering project in just 3 days (at the rate I was going.)

Then Microsoft word disappeared the document. I tried all types of recovery methods but could not get them back. I took the rest of the day to decide if I really do want to finish this project or not. Is it something I really enjoy? Is it good enough?

Ultimately, it was. I really enjoyed reading chapters 1-5 and while they were rough, they didn’t need overwhelming amounts of editing. The plot didn’t need much, I just need to focus on the grammar and pacing.

I couldn’t face the first five chapters again after having spent many hours straight going through them. Instead I started at chapter 6. I added in some transitional scenes and corrected several issues with the plot. For instance, one character was referred to as “Gunny” when his name was actually “Nelly” in book 1.  

Then my solution to chapter one just came to me. In the original chapter, it begins with Leslie, Nelly, and Elena discussing the case. There’s playful banter between the characters, some plot peppered in and some chunky exposition that I wanted to cut out. But the scene mainly takes place in one small office and ends there.

I have never been happy with this as an opening scene, but I was kind of stuck with it because I wanted to keep it. Until I realized the obvious answer, which was to start the chapter at the crime scene. Throw Leslie right into the mess, show the reader the dead body instead of talking to them about it after the fact.

This way, I was able to layer in the details of their surroundings without chunky blocks of dialogue or explanations. The scene in the office didn’t have to be cut either because it did serve its purpose as a transition into chapter two.

I have no idea why it took me so long to consider going backwards in the timeline and starting with the day before it originally began. Sometimes you just need a different perspective to see what’s right in front of you.

Having gone through chapter 6, I was kind of surprised at how topical this book is. A major plot point is the main characters trying to prevent a pandemic when a mysterious disease starts racking up a body count in the center of a large city. I wrote this book two years ago, so I obviously did not intend for it to be a commentary on COVID-19, but our current situation might make this book a bit more relevant now than it was two years ago.

After writing a new opening scene for the first chapter and tightening up the rest of it, I moved on to chapters 2-5 again. These chapters didn’t need many changes since I have already edited them 2-3 times in the last few years. So, after finishing those I was able to jump to chapters 7-15. I will discuss those next time.