I’ve finished the first editing round for The Quisling Orchid, and I can’t say I’m surprised to find that the book is only 2000 words shorter. I’ll catch a few more stray words and lines of noncy prose in the next read through. My editor has been a star; she’s highlighted areas of extreme literary weirdness, and praised parts of the book that worked very well.
But I still have a lot of work to do 🙂
A little dialogue practise.
Every so often I like to have a go at a short script. I don’t have any great desire to be a script writer, but I think working in different forms improves your writing overall (which is why I sometimes subject people to my attempts at poetry).
Script writing requires precision, brevity and, obviously, good dialogue. The writer needs to get the plot and characterisations across using just speech and short passages of action, so it’s a good exercise in cutting out the needless fluff.
I began writing Foetal Peter while working on The Quisling Orchid. As well as providing the warm-up exercises, it also helped with honing the erotic prose, something I wasn’t all that familiar with when I started out.
Anyway, hope you enjoy it 🙂