My developmental edit was sent to me on the fifth, and earlier this morning on the ninth, I sent back my revisions. This was quick, but gosh, was it hard!

I’d written about the major challenge with these in this post, in that the most consistent feedback recommendation I got was to up the tension throughout multiple scenes in the book.

The further into the book we get, the more freaky, supernatural stuff happens. I thought those were pretty tension-filled scenes, but I was advised to do even more. One of the freaky things that happens is someone starts turning into a monster.

Before, the family living with the monster was very chill and only had surface-level worries about the slow transformation. But then I got the suggestion to increase tension, so I decided to go ahead and lock the monster in the basement.

Do you know what happens when you lock someone in a basement?

• They can’t go upstairs to cook a meal for everybody
• They can’t wander the house freely
• They can’t get dressed up, rent a costume, and go to a masquerade
• They can’t get down on one knee and propose marriage

DUH! (Facepalm)

All of a sudden I had a bunch of things that needed switched around, cut, or rewritten completely. This took me many hours to figure out how to do, and I’ve cut some pretty poignant scenes in the name of this one action–locking a monster in a basement. Somehow a dance is still happening, but everything else is gone.

I reread this rewrite a couple times and turned it back in as soon as possible (I can’t remember what my contract says but there is a deadline for getting things back to editors relatively quickly, so I wanted to get on this ASAP, plus, school starts in two weeks!). By doing all of this rewriting, I feel a little guilty because I just created extra work for my editor, plus, I feel unsure of myself given the huge change I just made.

But, after making it, I really feel like I can’t go back and undo everything that I’ve just rewritten. The original doesn’t seem to work for me anymore.

So, lessons learned–if you make a major change, be aware that the ripple effects throughout the book will be huge. But also, don’t be afraid to kill your darlings.