I just got my copy of Left Behind And Loving It autographed by the author.
Re-reading SNW 7.
Thinking of re-reading Jeff Sharlet's The Family.
Also finally printed out the last four chapters of my own work-in-progress, this past weekend. Going through it over the past few months, I'd been expecting to find more and bigger problems, the further I got, simply because the later chapters had had less review and reworking. And I'd been pleasantly surprised at how little work was needed.
Until now. In four chapters (36 pages), I found more column-inches that needed to be either changed or cut, than in the preceding hundred pages.
All because of scope-creep.
Not scope-creep in the novel itself. That train left the station two decades ago, when what I'd envisioned as around 200 pages about a child prodigy musician growing up in the 1970s and 80s expanded to take her from toddler to doctoral candidate. Expanded again when I realized that I wasn't getting the reader on her side early-on. Expanded again when I realized that her childhood would actually be of interest to adult readers. Expanded again when I realized that there was no logical in-universe reason for a parent-child conflict that I'd put in to show normal youthful rebellion. Expanded again when I realized that the offstage character I'd put in to justify the conflict was an interesting enough character to bring onstage.
None of that scope-creep. This was different.
Scope-creep in my protagonist's doctoral dissertation. Somehow, it had slipped my mind that her original premise had been deemed far too broad in scope, and far too subjective, for even a doctoral dissertation, and she'd scaled back to only a piece of it, still ambitious and high-risk, but at least provable. And somehow, that slipped my mind in the final push, leaving me with over a dozen column-inches to change or cut, including at least a full page in the final chapter.
But (as I learned decades ago, reading David Gerrold's opus about how he came to write "The Trouble With Tribbles") tighter is better.
Re-reading SNW 7.
Thinking of re-reading Jeff Sharlet's The Family.
Also finally printed out the last four chapters of my own work-in-progress, this past weekend. Going through it over the past few months, I'd been expecting to find more and bigger problems, the further I got, simply because the later chapters had had less review and reworking. And I'd been pleasantly surprised at how little work was needed.
Until now. In four chapters (36 pages), I found more column-inches that needed to be either changed or cut, than in the preceding hundred pages.
All because of scope-creep.
Not scope-creep in the novel itself. That train left the station two decades ago, when what I'd envisioned as around 200 pages about a child prodigy musician growing up in the 1970s and 80s expanded to take her from toddler to doctoral candidate. Expanded again when I realized that I wasn't getting the reader on her side early-on. Expanded again when I realized that her childhood would actually be of interest to adult readers. Expanded again when I realized that there was no logical in-universe reason for a parent-child conflict that I'd put in to show normal youthful rebellion. Expanded again when I realized that the offstage character I'd put in to justify the conflict was an interesting enough character to bring onstage.
None of that scope-creep. This was different.
Scope-creep in my protagonist's doctoral dissertation. Somehow, it had slipped my mind that her original premise had been deemed far too broad in scope, and far too subjective, for even a doctoral dissertation, and she'd scaled back to only a piece of it, still ambitious and high-risk, but at least provable. And somehow, that slipped my mind in the final push, leaving me with over a dozen column-inches to change or cut, including at least a full page in the final chapter.
But (as I learned decades ago, reading David Gerrold's opus about how he came to write "The Trouble With Tribbles") tighter is better.
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