Rainbow Method Wrap-Up

We've finally reached the end of the Rainbow!  It's hard to believe that I started writing about this three months ago! Last week, I promised a tally of my own edits to From the Desk of Buster Heywood, and I do try to keep my promises.  I used this tally to find the areas of my writing that needed the most work and conscious effort, and hopefully I'll have different results when I start editing the next book, In the Cards.  For those of you who aren't interested in this sort of thing?  I apologize, and there is already a fantastic anecdotal entry simmering in my brain for next week. So, without further ado, proof of my own imperfection (she said, grinning).  

Sophistication (Original Entry)

• Starting sentences with action (-ing) verbs: 30
• Adverbs: ... I stopped counting and just started cutting the buggers.
• Abundance of short sentences: 0
• Overuse of italics or exclamation points: 1
• Cliches: 1
• Unnecessary Profanity: 0 (Some people swear like sailors.  Jeremiah is one of them.)
• Overuse of mundane  detail: 20  (Sadly, most of these were descriptors of office life.)

Show vs. Tell (Original Entry)

• Summaries of big plot events: 0
• Inability to resist the urge to explain: 12
• Repetition of detail: 7
• Overuse of words/plot devices/effects: 5  (These were mostly quirks that I had to find new descriptions of.)
• Redescription of events: 1

Character & P.O.V (Original Entry)

• Telling traits vs. showing them in other ways: 6
• Backstory that only needs to be known, not shown: 5 (One of these was a hefty 15 pages in the first chapter: a flashback that will probably show up as a short piece elsewhere.)
• Real dialogue vs. pure exposition: 3
• Inconsistent P.O.V: 4
• Description inconsistent with emotion: 2

Character, Pacing, and Beats (Original Entry)

• Details the character wouldn't notice: 4
• Character development disproportionate to plot: 0
• Ineffective or absent tangents: 13
• Overabundant hobbies or mentions thereof: 1
• Beats (poorly spaced): 0
• Beats (mundane): 3
• Beats (rhythmically awkward): 5
• Imbalance of passage length: 1
• Imbalance of chapter length: 0

Dialogue, Monologue & Sound (Original Entry)

• Emotion in description instead of dialogue: 2
• Replace verbs with "said": This is another one where I stopped counting and just had at it.
• Unnecessary speaker attribution: I stopped counting these, too..
• Noun before name: 0
• Inconsistent character reference: Tons.  90% of these were Cam vs. Cameron. 
• Ellipses for gaps: All present & accounted for.
• Dashes for interruptions: Also all present & accounted for.
• Dialogue without room for misinterpretation: 0
• Awkward dialect: 0
• Unnecessary interior monologue: 9
• Unnatural-sounding or out-of-character dialogue: 9
  

Voice (Original Entry)
I could break these down by chapter, since I did make a list of them, but that would ruin so many surprises.  Here are the things a lot of my favorite passages had in common:

• description of strong emotion
• personified concepts, 
  
• witty banter or funny dialogue
• atmospheric scene setting
• tense conversations
• use of foreshadowing or placing of points
• pulling together any of those foreshadowing instances or points

Other Edits & Instances of "Kill Your Darlings"
A lot of my generic edits, done in pink ink, involved tightening up sentences, or reordering them so that they read more smoothly on the page.  A few places needed a little more "oomph" to ramp up suspense, and others needed extra taken out to speed up the pace.  My proverbial darlings, passages that I loved but didn't necessarily need, got highlighted in yellow.  The fifteen pages in Chapter 1 I mentioned earlier were a doozy, since that scene was the first glimpse I had of Buster's sister, Dee, and loved her immediately.  I also had a few funny lines which were pretty good, but didn't fit Buster quite right.  These have been saved and tucked away for later use. One particular darling remains, but in a pared-down and much more subtle form, to help tie the first book to its successors.  I won't give it away, but a couple of books from now, it'll be clear as day in a reread.

That officially wraps up my entries on the Rainbow Editing Method!  Thank you for sticking through it with me, and I hope that some of what I've had to say over these last few months has been useful ... or at the very least, somewhat entertaining.  See you all next Thursday!