Editing

I just finished the third round of major edits on my first manuscript and I can't even describe how happy I am now. I was dreading these edits because I knew I had to do a major overhaul on my book. In previous posts, I've mentioned how I went astray from my original plot because of some feedback I had received. Recently, I decided to incorporate that feedback in another way and return to my original plan. Now that I've done that, not only have I shaved over 1k words off my manuscript (which I needed to do), but doing so has also made me fall in love with this story again. I was so tempted to trash it because it had morphed into something I no longer recognized, but now? It's exactly what I wanted to be. It was worth the frustration and time it took to get it back to what I wanted.

The main thing I wanted to change was a character who was always meant to be an antagonizing presence in the story. He does eventually make his way onto the page, but in my original plot, he remained the antagonist. Due to the feedback I received about not having enough "redeemable" male characters, I gave him a redemption story that just did not fit within my plot at all. I tried to change things to make it fit, but since he was always meant to be the antagonist, it never worked. Going back to my original plan of making him the antagonist throughout without any sort of redemption fits so much better. I've also brought in a side character earlier in the story and a love interest for my teen character that I believe helps address the feedback I received. 

Of course, the book is far from perfect and I'm sure I'll go through more polishing edits over the coming months, but at least the major rewrite is over. I'm planning to take a break from this manuscript in September and work on writing my second one. I like to take that time away, so that when I come back to it later, it's with fresh eyes. However, through the rest of this month, I'm using Autocrit to try to tighten the writing before I send out the story to beta readers and start querying again.

I wouldn't use this program as my main writing software because it doesn't play well with Word. What I've been doing is editing both within Autocrit and within my Google Doc. This way, I can see the progress I'm making in Autocrit while at the same time saving my work in a program I'm most familiar. One day, I might move my stuff over to Scrivener, but for now, Google and OneDrive are working pretty well for my purposes.

What's your favorite writing software? What made you choose it? Please share your thoughts and experiences!