“Codename: Jungle” went through an intensive second draft in the past week. It was one of those painful situations where the publisher threw a major curveball my way and asked for changes that sort of flew in the face of the six months of groundwork.
There was much arguing followed by some gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair (I’m referring the imaginary hair that floats around my shaved melon like the ghost of Elvis) before I finally buckled down for the rewrite.
It turned out to be a lesson in the malleability of story, which is something I constantly need reminding of. For me, rewrites have been tough. There?s quite a high level of anxiety involved in cutting away plot threads when you know that pieces of story are attached to those threads. And as you jeopardize those story pieces, other threads start to snap away as well. Each cut conjures images of your story structure crumbling to rubble.
That anxiety breeds uncertainty and indecision, which can be the death of writing. What I found with the “Jungle” rewrite is that the most important thing is just committing to the action of the rewriting. Just trust yourself to be able to break the story apart and rearrange the pieces into a new story?perhaps even a better story.
And so, there were a few days of struggling through the rewrite before I could confidently see the story coming back together. I wrapped it up last weekend and talked to the publisher on Wednesday. He loved it and they?re committed to publishing it.
I understand that the format of the books (mine is one of several that will launch this new publishing imprint) will be quite a nice format: small-page under a hardcover. They?ve told me some of the illustrators they?re talking to and most all the names I’ve heard are known in the comics world.
The second issue of “Codename: Human” needed some reworking as well, as it was lacking a certain quality that I couldn?t quite put my finger on when I turned in the first draft. On that project I have a great, supportive team that I really enjoy working with. A phone call with the editor and publisher helped me zero in on what was missing with the issue.
Within 24 hours I had a completely new take on the issue that everyone was quite happy with. For me, it felt like a real accomplishment because, like I said before, rewrites have oftentimes occurred as being very difficult. In this case, the fact that I was able to tackle it so quickly, and not really suffer that analysis-paralysis that has plagued me in the past was a real confidence booster.
Just to keep my life interesting, Narwain asked me to cut my “Horrorama” story down from ten pages to eight.
It didn?t seem to be a difficult task at first, until I learned they had already drawn pages 1,2,3 and 5, and I was expected to string my abridged version around that. It would have been much simpler if it was pages 1-4 that were locked and I could just work on condensing the second half of the story.
Again, simply committing to the rewrite is what got the job done. When you read the story, you?ll notice a couple of glaring, text-heavy panels, which are my solution to the problem.
And this week, my partner and I will resume the rewrite of “Codename: NW”…