Promises, promises…

...is the title of lesson two in How To Revise Your Novel, and it's so interesting.

The basic issue is that whatever we spend a lot of words on leads the reader to believe that this item or person is important. If you've plotted first, you will plan to do this for your main characters and items, but in the course of actual writing sometimes things of no significance at all somehow leap off the page, and when it turns out to serve no purpose, makes the reader feel cheated.

Not good.

So I am four chapters into discovering all the places I didn't mean to 'lead the reader on', and filling in worksheets accordingly. Happily, having worked from good plot cards, I'm not coming across too many over-described bits, but it's still time consuming. It's so interesting to go over the whole thing with a fine comb again though, and pay attention to these kinds of details.

So I'm not terribly far along, but the process is under way. I hope to get a lot more done this weekend on my LOOONG bus ride, at least once we hit the prairies and it's a smoother ride.