One Liners

So I read all of SAW IT COMING out loud. And honestly, I didn’t make too many changes, reordered some paragraphs, added some ‘thats‘ back in, took out a few adjectives or adverbs that were unnecessary. It was pretty streamlined anyway…this is the sixth revision.

BUT, there is one line that makes me crazy — the very first line in the book. The first two paragraphs read like this:

Sam collapsed onto the cot. Its aluminum frame shifted under his weight, threatening to dump him onto the concrete floor. He was too sick to care.

The Thai soup he’d eaten for dinner was spicy going down, and molten lava coming back up. His nasal passages burned with the acrid scent of regurgitated shrimp and red peppers.

It used to be this:

Sam was sweating.

He took off his soggy shirt and threw it across the room. He couldn’t see where it landed, but from the audible splat assumed it hit the cinderblock wall.

I really like the second version better. The image of Sam sweating, peeling off a soaked shirt speaks to me. I rewrote it to get to the action faster — and it does — but I feel like I’ve lost something in the process.

Here’s your lesson for the day: You can edit too much.

I think I’m at the point where I need to send this off to my beta/copy editor and be done. Any one else ever experienced this? OR, is that I’m just antsy to start the querying process? I know that can be a big mistake if your ms isn’t really ready.

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