Editing Leslie Kim Serial #102: Chapters 7-15

One big thing I had to work on with these chapters was length. There was one chapter that was almost double the size of the other chapters. And it didn’t make sense for it to be, so I split it in half and added another chapter.

These chapters include some exciting rising action scenes, so they were very quick for me to go through. I sat down intending to edit one chapter and went through three.

In one chapter, I realized that I had written some notes to myself in the middle of a paragraph, so I was able to catch those and cut them. In another, I realized that the timeline mysteriously went from the middle of the night to the early morning. So, I had to change around the timeline quite a bit. I’m not sure why I thought that many hours had passed but they certainly had not!

I also decided to rewrite part of chapter 11 and into 12. There was a scene where the main characters are going to be executed and after he avoids dying, there is a big reveal with a betrayal. I realized when I read it that it would make more sense to change the order to betrayal to attempted execution, to rescue. I think I was trying to avoid being obvious when I wrote it the first time, but I think it made the story frustrating for the reader to be thrust into multiple circumstances without any foreshadowing.

In the ending chapters, I was able to close the three major story lines in the novella. I gave resolution to the romance storyline, the alien government storyline, and the main mystery. I tried to leave the loose ends with Tai Reed with semi-resolution.

Where do I go from here?

Now that I’m happy with the story, I get to send it to a professional editor.

 While they work on that, I can start editing the third book in the series which I also wrote back in 2017. If I don’t like that draft, I might just scrap the whole thing. We shall see.

I also need to start my search for a book cover for #102. For #101, I commissioned an artist for original artwork. I would like to use that artist again, if they are still working. If not, I’m going to need to look into other artists or styles of covers.

I also need to name #102! More about that later.