As promised, one complete chapter (and one complete tool) in the Plot Clinic. As voted on by you folks, that chapter is: Chapter 11: Theme and Concept.
All the usual disclaimers apply: spellos, typos, copyright, no reprint, yadda, yadda.
Things will be getting hectic later, so I want to post this now before I forget.
Ian–Yeah, it’s a lot harder to find them and weed out the chaff from the grain once the book’s already written. Best of luck–you have my sympathy.
Excellent stuff, Holly, and as far as I’m concerned, perfectly timed – I’m struggling to pick out the clear themes in the mass of my 150k first draft.
Zink—The processes are pretty similar. It’s just easier to write the book in first draft if you have a grasp of your themes and concept beforehand. If you have to figure it out afterwards, you end up doing a lot of retrofitting.
Retrofitting–getting right the second time things you shouldn’t have screwed up the first time.
😀
LOL, hockey- a sport to conquer all others. I’m guessing, though, that a lot of the advice of finding themes both before and after a book is written is similiar, because I’m pretty sure a lot of that awesomeness was also touched upon in 1st stage of One-Pass Revision. Of course, I loved it and read both of them over anyway. 😀
This is so awesome. Again, your tone is so approachable. Businesslike, but fun and full of realistic expectations. I think that’s especially important for this section (although it’s important to all of them) because identifying themes can be so damn daunting!
And wow, a character named Annalise? That’s actually my real name, so it’s pretty cool to see it used in a book of any kind. That’s never happened to me before. Yay!
Thank you, Holly. It’s just like xmas. Drool.