More on Revising

I'm currently editing my first novel, Gaia's Hands, for perhaps the fourth time. Most writers would have delegated this to a drawer forever, but I'm going to use it as a learning tool. And, damn it, I'm stubborn.

The biggest thing I have had to do so far is remove two main characters, Annie and Eric. Not completely, mind you -- they remain in the story, but not as main characters. I had read somewhere that more than two main characters distracts from the story, because we experience the story through the main characters. So we're down to the seemingly mismatched couple I've mentioned before -- Josh Young, the English major exploring his Asian American heritage and Jeanne Beaumont, the much older college professor who lives in the world of science.

Removing the first person POV for two characters resulted in removing two subplots, which I could do. But it also lost maybe 15,000 words, and publishers in SF/Fantasy now expect 75,000-110,000 words in their submissions. (Tea with the Black Dragon, which was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula the year it came out, would not pass in today's market).  Adding 15,000 words to an existing novel without it looking added on? Slapping two chapters in won't do it. However, I've gotten the opportunity to look through the document with wiser -- and older -- eyes, identifying places where I erred in the following ways:

• Loaded Chekhov's Gun and dropped it (foreshadowing wasted)
• Left plot holes (or as my grad advisor said, "I can't grade you on what's in your head"
• Missed opportunities to develop secondary characters (although they're not primary characters, they deserve not to be two-dimensional)
• Added more menace (poor Jeanne. Death threats, rocks through her window, and a break-in at her greenhouse.)

The writer will never catch all of these in the writing stage, because the writing stage is about unabashed writing without the burden of editing. Of course, the writer can exercise some constraint -- such as paring things that are out of character for a character. I've told you readers that I love the writing stage because I can restrain the part of me that says "flying robots? Really?" and write the flying robots in. (Ok, no flying robots, but I am inspired by the lack of restraint in shoujo anime.)

Lots of work, and I have temporarily abandoned a work in progress right after a major dramatic point to do so. Wish me luck -- I need it!