Beautiful Books Linkup #3: Let's Talk Editing

The Beautiful Book linkup is hosted by Cait and Sky on their blogs. It's a linkup they created for writer bloggers to talk about their books. Part one was in October for planning and plotting. Part two took place in November, the month of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and was on writing that first draft. This is part 3 and it's on editing.



Let's get started, shall we?:)

1. On a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best) how well do you think this book turned out?
Maybe this is a little unrealistic, but I'm going to say a 6 or 7!

2. Have you ever rewritten or edited one of your books before? If so, what do you do to prepare yourself? If not, what's your plan?
I'm definitely not rewriting! My first draft doesn't need that much major work. Just mainly little corrections.

3. What's your final wordcount? Do you plan to lengthen of trim your book?
51,173 words. Lengthen. Definitely lengthen. I need more description and internal talking to balance out the mountain of dialogueXD

4. What are you most proud of? Plot, characters, or pacing?
Umm...I'm pretty proud of the plot, but I'm probably most proud of the characters. Even the side characters that only get to be in like 1 chapter.

5. What's your favorite bit of prose or line from this from this novel?
Let's see, I really like my last line. It's a recording being aired to the whole world. Maybe it won't give away the whole plotXD

“Essentially it’s a plan for world domination one continent at a time. The end game is to rule the world.”

And this little speech from Gwen to the villain:

“I’m here to burn your kingdom down.” I lifted my eyes from the card house I was building to peer at Silverton.

"Do you honestly think three misfits stand a chance up against the government?"

"Not as a whole, no, but the government is like a house of cards. All it takes is one. Little. Blow." With that I blew on the house of cards I was building and the whole thing tumbled.

“You don’t scare me.”

“Good. That means you’ll underestimate us. Which is good for me because I’m not afraid of you.”

“How do you know you won’t underestimate me?”

“Because I know exactly how far you’re willing to go to stop us.”

“And how far is that?”

“I think you’d go tell some government person that’s not in your little scheme everything in exchange for immunity. Or you’d just omit the little part about how you manipulated, threatened, and murder people.”

“See, that’s where you have underestimated me. I didn’t just murder, threatened, and manipulate people. I was the brains of the whole operation. I orchestrated every detail. And I got every government official, including FBI, CIA, DOD, and all the other annoying initials, in the East in on it.”

“I know. I just needed you to admit it.”

I have a ton more, but I'll stop thereXD

6. What aspect of your book needs the most work?
Probably the description.

7. What aspect of your book is your favorite?
Character, hands down!!!:D

8. How are your characters? Well-rounded, or do they still need to be fleshed out?
I think they're pretty well-rounded, but they still need a little bit of work. Not much, but some.

9. If you had to do it over again, what would you change about the whole process?
I'm really not sure. I'm pretty happy with how it went.

10. Did anything happen in your book that completely surprised you? Have any scenes or characters turned out differently to what you planned? Good or bad?
Yes! my characters dyed their hair halfway through (all 3 of the main ones!). It totally messed me up when I forgot to writing it into my character profiles. And I almost forgot to add one major plot twistsXD And Walter (my characters' hack and tech guy) decided he didn't know how to do this one thing, which delayed the ending. And Sammy turned out a bit different than I planned. And so did Gwen. And Chris. And I added this one character spur of the moment and fell in love with him, but he only got to be featured one chapter. So he shall return in book 2!

11. What was the theme and message? D you think it came across? If not, is there anything you could do to bring it out more?
No matter how bad of a person you think you are, you can change.
And
Sometimes you might have to "break the rules" to get the right thing done.
And
Don't trust the government.
And
Never investigate a series of deaths within the government. Bad things will happen.
I think all of those came across pretty wellXD

12. Do you like writing with a deadline (like NaNoWriMo) or do you prefer to write-as-it-comes?
I prefer a deadline. If I don't have a deadline I might not write for a whole week!

13. Comparative title time! What published books, movies, or TV shows are like your book? (Ex: Inkheart meets X-Men, etc.)
If you take the secret society (Hydra) and Bucky from Captain America 2 you have a bit of the future of the story. But I can't for the life of me think of anything right now! Oh! My MC's "team" later on reminds me of the Leverage team a bit!

14. How do you celebrate a finished novel?!
I text/e-mail all of the friends who knew I was working on the story and get all smile-y and happy and type in all caps and seriously overuse exclamation marks and smiley facesXD

15. When people are done reading your book, what feeling do you want them to come away with?
Desperation for book 2!XD Haha I really don't know. I know I want them to remember all the things Sammy tells Gwen when she's being down on herself. All the encouragement he gives her.

And there you have it!!:D I'm pretty much in love with this book!