Royal Novelist Adventures - Part 1

Can you spot the book for our June Book Review?

In my writing this past week, I have been doing a lot of cutting, rewriting, and rearranging as I'm dealing with issues with plot and the overall narrative of my story. The plot is still something I struggle with, and at times it makes me want to curl up into a ball, cry and throw the whole thing in the trash. Nevertheless, I persist.

I thought I would share with you some techniques I have for rearranging and rewriting. There are 4 basic things I use: Carets, Arrows, Letters, Numbers.

Here an early draft of my piece for our May Writing Prompt, which was inspired by Prince Harry & Meghan Markle's Wedding (AKA the new Duke & Duchess of Sussex).  You can see me using each of the 4 techniques, and I explain more about them below.

Carets ^

Carets (pronounced like "carrots") are little proofreading marks ^ used to indicate something should be added here. There are some technical rules about when they should be placed above or below the line, but I just put them where I have room.

As you can see in the example if I'm crossing something out and inserting a word or phrase, I often leave out the caret mark ^ as it is obvious the word or phrase is replacing what was crossed out.

Arrows  -->

I like to use arrows to move thing around on the same page. I either circle the part I want to move, or enclose it in parentheses, and draw an arrow to when it belongs. When two arrows go to the same place, the high one goes first.

Letters (A),(B),(C), etc.

Letters function a lot of arrows, they help me move things around. But I use letters when I have to move things to different pages. I circle the part I want to move and give it a letter. I then put the same letter in the place I want to move that text to. If I'm moving things to and from a different chapter, I usually include a little note with the letter.

Numbers (1),(2),(3), etc.

Numbers are used a lot like letters, but I use them when I'm including something new that is written on some spare paper, or the back of the page.

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