Textual revision

[igenlode]

Rewrites: working on the graveyard scene to try to clarify and get the impact I wanted.

Original (after editing at time of writing) text:

Another fireball, this one hot enough to graze my cheek. If his aim shook enough, I thought I'd shaken his aim enough, perhaps, that he might kill me without even meaning it.
My knees gave way, and. I sank down, not gracefully but in a clumsy overbalanced fall. lurch, caught my heel against the kerbstone of a grave and fell sidelong with bruising force. A deep, griping pain ran through my belly, and a deeper pang of terror cut through swimming senses.

Current, supposedly final revision:

Another fireball, this one close enough to graze my cheek. It dawned on me with sudden force that if I’d contrived to shake his aim enough, he might kill me without even intending it.
Panic turned my knees to water, and I sank down. But it was not a graceful movement but a clumsy lurch, and one that caught my foot against the kerbstone of a grave behind me. Taken unawares, I overbalanced and fell sidelong with bruising force.
For a moment, all breath driven out of me, I was numb. Then a deep, griping pain ran through my body, bringing with it a deeper pang of terror that cut through swimming senses.

The manuscript... is a mess of ink in three colours and tiny inserted bubbles and lines :-p

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You know I love your rewrites, and I thoroughly enjoy the glimpses into your editing process. This one is such a tough scene to write!

[igenlode]

Rewriting your *own* work is always a very different feel (and something I try to avoid having to do!)

But then I don't normally do anything like this amount of change in the editing process; my normal level of edits consists of stuff like altering "to blunder down" into "to go blundering" (it's an ongoing process), or replacing "It seemed a very long way back" with "The return journey seemed to take forever" in order to avoid repetition both of "back" from the preceding sentence and "long" from the following one -- oops!

Line-editing I can do. Rewrites to make sure that the motivation I'd originally intended was a bit more obvious than I'd managed to make it on the page are another matter :-(