CLS Romance: Detail Passes, 18,000 words

I am at 18,000 words with my CLS Romance project, and I am finding myself going back and doing detail passes on what I wrote. I find it helpful to go back and ask the basic questions about a chapter, where are they, what do things look like, or when is this happening? Asking the basic who. what. when, where, why, and how questions will get you looking at your work as a reader, and you will then determine if that extra information adds to the scene or distracts from it.

Sometimes, I find that I wrote something, and it doesn't have a strong sense of place, so I need to pull my narrative and descriptive paintbrushes out of my writer's toolbox and set the scene.

Other times, I will see an info-dump and want to convert that into dialog so the reader can pick up on the information slowly and over the course of a conversation.

These are detail passes, like a painter stopping and going back into a place in the painting to add little pieces of detail to make the picture pop. Now, it's possible to overwork a chapter with too much detail, but never, ever consider your first draft to be a final - chapters always need detail passes and you should ideally never release something raw to readers.

After I am done my pass, there is always room for another to layer in further details and information. You may have forgot about the cold in a winter scene, or forgot to describe the tone and color of the light. You may have forgot to describe what the characters were wearing, or that may not be important. You may have missed a chance for some great dialog or character development.

As for progress? I am not done yet, and I have this feeling I am either halfway or 2/3rd done with this. I do not want this to go 70,000 words though, even though I could sit here and just turn this into an epic. I have my plan, and it shall take me as long as it takes me. I am feeling 30 to 35,000 words is my target based on the outline I have remaining, and my tendency to add in detail and interaction as I go fluffing things out as bit.

Mind you, that is still a hefty amount of post-work. It took me a couple weeks to get On Black Wings finalized, so we are talking a solid week or two of editing work to get this project to a releasable state. This is with those detail passes I am finding necessary and also very fun to sprinkle in.