Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Story Update: Castella Episode 2

            As mentioned in a previous post, I have finished writing the second short story in the Castella series and am now editing and polishing it. This process is slow and very in-depth. So, with this update I want to present the stages of the process, information on what the stages are, and completion percentage of each stage.
            The Polishing and Editing Phase I (PEP I), consist of the six following stages.
1.      Surface Level Editing (SLE): 100% complete. - 4/16/11
2.      Rereading: 100% complete. - 4/17/11
3.      Implementing SLE: 100% complete. - 5/13/11
4.      Rewriting and Redoing Select Scenes (RR): 100% complete. - 6/08/11
5.      Implementing RR: 100% complete. - 6/11/11
6.      Next Wave Check: 100% complete. - 6/14/11
  UPDATED 6/14/11 ~ Woo! I'm done!!
            First, the Surface Level Editing (SLE) involves me going over the entire story, page by page and doing quick checks and edits and rewrites on my printed draft. This part is very, very time consuming, but I am making very good progress in making the story more readable and sound more natural. I am also trying my best to shorten this 40 page behemoth. This stage is now about 100% complete.
            Stage 2 is simply Rereading the story beginning to end to get a scene of the complete picture for the first real time outside my head. The reason this isn’t the first stage is because when I tried, I couldn’t stop editing it and it was taking a really long time just to read a page. It is very important that I do these things separately. Currently 100% complete.
            Stage 3, Implementing SLE is taking all the corrections, additions, and subtractions, and adding them to my master copy on my computer. I have so far done just a little of this as I am not done with the first two stages. It is now 44 pages (sorry). I am 100% complete.
            Fourth, Rewriting and Redoing Select Scenes (RR).  There are a few scenes that are just too big to fix during the SLE stage, so I am going to save them till this stage to do independently from the whole. There are about four of these scenes that need this treatment. Completion percentage is 100.
            The fifth stage, Implementing RR, is just that; adding the redone scenes to my master as well as putting a few more fixes on the redone scenes and check over some other related scenes. Also, some other stuff I didn't realize until I got here. This stage is 100% complete.
            The last stage of PEP I is Next Wave Check. This is the final check of the phase. This involves me rereading the story again and checking over the story for any problem - new or old. Also, to see what I will need to do for the next phase. Obviously, this is 10% complete.
            So that is my progress so far.

            Now I also would to talk about something new pertaining to this story and Castella as a whole: The Mental Prison Trilogy. Basically, three stories about characters trapped in a sort of mental prison and how it affects different people in various ways. This is not the only focus of these stories, but it is definitely a connecting theme of the stories and it plays a noticeable part in each. The first was Follow My Lead, the second is this story, and the third is a combination of two stories, one I planned to do originally back in the summer of 2010 and one I just came up with within the past week or two. They fit somewhat nicely together. The third story won’t be next because I need to do something more simple and upbeat or at least happy.
            That’s it for this update. God bless and wish me luck.
            P.S. I will update the percentages as I make progress.

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