I completely understand why having a developmental editor is a huge asset. I'm now up to around Chapter 30 (yes, I really need to rethink my chapter lengths) in my editing process, and I find myself falling into the trap of thinking everything is great.
Well, that's impossible. I attribute my terrible judgement to editing fatigue. I need another pair of eyes on the manuscript, but not just any pair of eyes; I need a professional editor. While an everyday reader could certainly point out the boring parts, they're not going to offer me guidance. "This part is bad" just won't help me.
I think everything was pretty okay until I reached the main character's "return to Nashville" section. I had that same suspicion when I was writing it, that the story got bogged down. That could be the dreaded "sagging middle" everyone opines about. I'm not even sure it's the middle, because I have no idea what my word count is, but it seems like a safe bet.
All the advice is the same, and it all makes sense, but only if the entire story hasn't yet been written. If I were to, for example, introduce a new conflict, wouldn't I have to completely revise the rest of the novel? I'm not willing to do that. This thing is written!
Potentially I can cut out some of the chaff, the mundane minutia that I wrote because I didn't know what to write at the time. When Leah finally acquires the money she needs to get back to Nashville, her only goal is to face the consequences of her actions and to pack up her apartment. My thought process, though, was, is she just going to accept the fact that her ex-manager stole all her money? She's not even going to try to fight? That's unrealistic in itself, without even factoring in that she has to pay her record label back for her advance that is now gone. That's a lot of money to just say, "Oh, well."
So, the first thing she does is try to find either an attorney or an agency to help her. Granted, it's not the most exciting scene in the world (read: not exciting at all), and I suppose I could just summarize her efforts (which would be even less exciting), except that's not the only boring scene I wrote. Now, get this: She gets a job at a coffee shop. Why? I have no idea. I think there was some rationale behind that; maybe that any money would be better than no money at all. Except she knows she has to move back home, so why the stalling? She hasn't met with her record label yet, but I certainly could have moved that up in the timeline.
I think I remember why I kept her in town ~ the awards show. That was a "big idea" I had and didn't want to discard. Her mentor is being honored with the "Legend" award and she invites Leah to be her guest. It isn't even so much that the awards show scene is exciting, but its aftermath is what I was intent on portraying. Thus, I had to find things for Leah to do while I was waiting to get to it.
It's inevitable that she has to meet with the label to arrange a payback of her advance, but she also wants a chance to talk to the A&R guy; once again try to apologize for abandoning her tour and going off the grid. She had called him, but he cut the call short (well, he hung up on her). So, she arrives for her accounting appointment two hours early in order to try to catch A&R guy in his office, but he's not there, so she now has two hours to kill. What follows is a long, pointless narrative about her killing time (seriously!) Exciting! Even when I was writing it, I knew it was terrible, but I figured I'd fix it in the edit. Well, here I am!
I can't simply let this all fly by in editing and pronounce it "great", when it's awful. That's what I mean by editing fatigue. I'll need to take each of these scenes one by one and rewrite them, and I'm so tired of writing!
All the established tips about the sagging middle aren't going to apply, because I refuse to change the direction of the story. This is why I could really, really use an editor. I get that editors don't make story suggestions, but they can certainly point. ▷◁▽△
Unlike one of Leah's least attractive traits, I'm not going to cry over it, but damn, I just realized that this process is never-ending.
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