You reduce the sauce on the stove and it thickens. Wait a while longer and it thickens even more. I found the same principle in my writing. Time spent editing, re-writing, with more input from beta readers, etc. and the plot thickened.
Now, I have reached the point where I am ready to take my manuscript “off the heat” and send it out to a few select literary agents. Has anything changed? Yes, plenty – and especially the main plot. It is far better and brings together the key elements of my story in a more powerful and complete way.
It’s a common problem – the writing is flowing and the ideas are getting put down onto your draft manuscript. However, when editing, you come across awkward text – difficulties in the character development, plot or setting. What I have learned (the hard way) is that the best action in this case is to cut the text. That’s right, by cutting the text you eliminate the obstacle and help the flow of the book. If it’s not necessary, then get rid of it! From my experience, authors need a good editor to point out what is not working. When they do, it’s time to erase the culprit, 
It’s been a while since I last posted, but a trip to Europe and some more professional editing has taken up much of my time. I should be ready to try querying agents next week for my new thriller. Until then, I thought it worth mentioning character perspective in a novel. Perspective is, per the definition, a point of view. However, I think we often ignore or gloss over perspective in our writing. For example, perspective changes with age, gender and upbringing. When my wife and I were in France, it was easy to spot the tourists – they were the ones trying too hard to look French! How so? By wearing berets and looking ‘different’. From their own perspective, they were trying to fit right in, but from our perspective, they were decidedly foreign. So, I have been working harder on correcting the perspective of my characters and fleshing out details to engage the readers’ interest in the plot.
The more I write, the more I find myself believing in the inverse parabola. What do I mean? It’s like this—writing a novel keeps adding words and as the words increase the number of chapters grow too. words–>chapters–>book. At the peak of the writing output (the vertex if you like) the book is finished. But when the editing takes place, the number of words decrease again, like a descending parabola. From my own experience, this editing reduces the word count and often the number of chapters too. This reduction is sometimes painful, cutting out unnecessary dialogue/action/description. What is left is tighter writing, more immediacy and greater tension. Show me a writer who is increasing their word count and I can guess they are still working on an unfinished draft; show me a writer who is reducing their word count, and I know they are heading for a finished finished draft, ready for their literary agent and/or publisher.
There is much debate and mystery to the idea of having to turn wine bottles to improve their flavour and consistency.
“Incremental improvement means taking small steps consistently. This can lead to massive growth and change.” I share this to explain what I am doing, as a writer, to improve my book each day until it gets published. My recent editing has been taking time to make small changes to improve each paragraph, page and chapter. But, and it’s a big but, I have to do this consistently in order to see the results. I just hope my readers do too :-).
When writing, the plot and characters are uppermost in my mind. It’s a subconscious thing and I find myself thinking about events in my novel while drifting off to sleep, only to have them punctuated by fresh thoughts. These make me force myself awake and make the necessary changes while they are fresh – “I’ll forget them in the morning,” I tell myself. There a catch though. In the morning, have to check that the new thought fits the storyline and doesn’t detract from it or overwhelm it; it has to enhance it to be effective. Ah the joys of ruminating – just going over and over my novel, like cows chewing grass: