Fecundity Old Chapter Revisions: Finished · 3:35am Mar 1st, 2018
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you started to wonder whether I’ve given up on Fecundity. The last time I said anything about it was last year when I said I wanted to go back and do edits, but I haven’t really given any progress updates. I’d originally I anticipated this process to take about a month, but like most of my writing project plans, that wound up being way, wayyyyyyyy off the mark.
I didn’t anticipate several things about this endeavor. I didn’t anticipate how much time it’d take to do a line-by-line, I didn’t realize just how much work many of the chapters needed, and I didn’t realize I had to go through each chapter TWICE to make sure things weren’t wonky. Certain errors wound up being more glaring, and where one section only needed a few touch-ups, there were many others with entire sentences that needed to be redone. Only one scene in chapter 5 needed a partial rewrite (Apogee’s introduction) but even still, I didn’t realize the sheer magnitude of what I was trying to do here.
To give you guys an idea, some of the longer chapters took 10 hours to go through a single pass, and then 3 or 4 on the second. Progress did go a little faster once I got into the later chapters, but those chapters are also longer, so it wound up taking up the same amount of time. Thankfully I have a pretty cush full-time job, but even still, there were entire freaking workdays (several in fact) where I’d just be in GDocs editing with only the occasional bathroom break.
So have I dropped Fecundity? No. No, I have not. I’ve been working on it steadily the past few months alongside Bragging Rights 2, which was walling me hard and killing my motivation to write. There were also some real life things that strangled my creativity, but we don’t need to get into those. What matters is that Bragging Rights 2 is done (needs an epilogue but that’s not gonna be for a while) the old Fecundity revisions are done, which means back on the Gleaming train. All aboard, motherfuckers.
Are there still errors? Of course! It’s never going to be perfect and I understand that. I’ve gone through the story myself with a fine-tooth comb (twice) and gotten the it to a better point, but I’m not gonna put things on hold any longer than I already have. In the time since Chapter 20.2, I’ve written two new stories, done two in-depth outlines for a couple artist works, done a short story for a contest, and performed the entire slimming down of Fecundity. I want to keep going, you all want me to keep going, so let’s buckle up and hit the road.
But while I’m driving, there’s something you all can do for me.
I’ve heard many of you say you now want to go back and re-read the story, which is 100% awesome. However, if you spot some kind of error, could you do me a MASSIVE favor?
-Copy the sentence in question, then paste it as a comment on that chapter. You can also send it to me in a PM, but make sure you let me know what chapter if you do it that way.
-If you spot multiple errors in a single chapter, put them together all in one comment on that chapter. No sense cluttering up the comments with spam.
I know that some authors have a problem with readers doing this, but I’m not one of them. I’ve busted my ass to get this story to a point where I can say I’m proud of it, but I’m still just one guy. I know I could use an editor/pre-reader, but I haven’t had the greatest luck with those in the past, so… yeah. I’d essentially want a pre-reader to do what I’ve just spent the last few months doing with new chapters as I write them, and seeing as no one in their right mind is gonna do hours of work like that for free, I’m not about to ask.
A big reason I’ve always gone back and forth between Fecundity and other projects is because I don’t wanna get burned out on the story. This approach has been effective, but as a side-effect, I’ve slowly but surely losing sight of what made this story so special in the first place.
I'm happy to say not only has re-immersing myself in what I’ve made given me back that sight, but I’ve also started to see from a reader’s perspective what’s attracted so many to it.
Thank you all so much for enjoying Fecundity so far. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to finish, but I promise I WILL see it through to the end. This story already means a lot to me, and I suspect it’ll mean even more by the time I’m done.
I’ll leave you some bullet points of some of the things I did to the story.
- Removed as much repetition as I could (this was the main driving force behind this whole endeavor).
- Made several dialogues less wooden.
- Cut a fuckload of unnecessary adverbs (seriously what the fuck was I thinking)
- Cleaned up several action and dialogue tags.
- Altered a LOT of sentences to flow more naturally.
- Removed tons of unnecessary commas (I might need an intervention)
- Slashed several tell-y sections.
- Cut a grand total of one sub-plot that I hadn't even really started yet.
- Revised the wording of certain scenes in two separate chapters to better reflect later events.
- Changed the wording in several sex scenes to increase unf levels.
- Probably a lot of other things that I’m not thinking of.
- Cut a little over 30k words from the story.
Well, i look forward to future chapters either way.
Oh shit, you made revisions. I'll have to finally start reading then.
What was the subplot you removed?
Higher unf levels are always appreciated.
Yaaay!
Because I rather liked the subplots.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing more of the story, and I suppose I could give it a readover as well.
Are these edits live already or will you be doing that soon?
I'm relieved that you left most of the subplots intact. Subplots make the story world feel larger and more complete.
I'm also astonished that you managed to remove 28K words without removing any subplots. That's a lot of trimming.
An invitation to nit-pick? It's a dream come true!
i will have to re read it once it's complete to see all the changes :)
4807720
The edits are live.