Mantis Knights Revision
I felt like I made good progress on the worksheets, including figuring out how to remove a loop-hole in my world and deepening the motivation of my main character.
It never ceases to amaze me that plans and ideas that I have in the brainstorming phase of a story sometimes completely break down when I read over the first draft later. So many obvious errors and holes and ways to shoot the story apart. The frequency of these things has not changed in the many years I’ve been writing, though I think my ability to spot them has improved.
When I was a young writer, from about 9-years-old and on, I thought that my ideas were pretty much brilliant and that the story was basically perfect as-is for first draft, other than maybe some spelling and grammar mistakes. That’s what I thought revision was–just fixing spelling and maybe adding in some better words here and there.
Experience has taught me different. While there may be occasional, small parts of my rough drafts that are brilliant, the vast majority of the story is full of broken bits, dropped threads and plenty of things that defy reason and plausibility. Flat characters move across white, sterile settings amid plot holes galore.
The trick is to keep growing and learning, while understanding that your best work today, probably won’t be your best in a year or five.