It’s All Over But the Map-Drawing

Son of Science Novel is fully edited! Huzzah! When we started in on it, we did some serious thinking about how to reorganize the beginning. That work made the novel much better, but no shorter. Once things were in their proper order, we reread the first half to make sure we were pleased (we were). Next up: line-editing. As we nipped and tucked our way through the novel, we found a handful of small points we wanted to clarify and expand. Nothing big. We also didn’t find anything big to remove. All told, Son of Science Novel ended up about 5500 words shorter than when we started. That’s about one chapter, the way we do things.

Looking at the big project board on the wall, the only things left undone are the finalizing of a couple of floor plans and maps. Everyone loves maps in a novel. They’re like catnip for readers. Science Novel Sr has three, one of which can be reused here (and in Grandson when we get there). That leaves us with two or three locations it would be fun to represent cartographically. And if maps are catnip for readers, they’re crack for Kent. His inner-dungeon master gets all twitterpated at the very prospect.

A writing partner is someone who helps you create settings worthy of being mapped.