The third daft of Danny Chaucer’s Flying Saucer is proceeding – well, I want to say at light speed but that would be exaggerating somewhat. Let’s just say it’s proceeding. As a result I’ve been posting here less frequently – the old story of more writing equals less blogging.

Anyway I’ve fixed the main issues that were highlighted in the recent critiques / beta-reads. I say fixed. I’ve done something about them, but further time and review will hopefully establish how successful I’ve been. In particular I’ve cut down on the over-expository dialogue and ensured that the principal villain doesn’t just mysteriously disappear from the action two-thirds of the way through the action. And, speaking of action, there was the small matter of making sure there actually is some in the last third.

Having done the above, I’m now going to read through the whole thing again, start to finish, and probably make more (hopefully more minor) changes as a result. Less radical surgery and more of a spit-and-polish. (That’s the idea anyway.) (Probably including the removal of excessive parentheses, which as you can see I’m rather prone to.)

However, one slightly surprising thing has already become apparent: the book’s got longer. You know the general rule that, as you redraft and edit a manuscript, it inevitably gets shorter as the flab is removed? The unnecessary scene, the superfluous character, those pesky adjectives and adverbs clogging up your silken prose? You might even say that ever-reducing word count is proof positive that your manuscript is heading in the right direction, i.e. soaring up to fiction heaven rather than being dragged down to the other place by its own ponderous weight.

Well in that case Danny’s flying saucer is dropping like a stone towards the underworld. Because whereas draft 2 weighed in at just under 27,000 words, draft 3 has so far rocketed to near 30,000. In other words, about a 10% increase. So what the flipping heck is going on? Have I gone start raving bonkers and forgotten how to edit? Do I entertain the delusion that my prose is so completely dazzling it cannot be touched?

I think the reason lies in the nature of the problems that draft 2 had. As I’ve mentioned, one of its major faults – probably it’s most fundamental one – was the premature exit of the villainous Captain Frost. The result of which was a distinct shortage of plot in the supposed-to-be-climatic section of the book.

So Danny and his friend Natalie voyaged into space and saw lots of amazing things. Lots of numbers and stats were thrown around to illustrate the vastness of the cosmos. But beyond that not much, like, happened. I mean, flying into outer space is quite an exciting event in itself (have you ever done it? Me neither), but in my book it became too much of a science lesson and less of a story. I needed to keep the wonder but add at least a dash of action to the mix as well.

Therefore, the obvious solution: Captain Frost joins the voyage. Which means more dialogue, extra happenings, a bit more back story. I also have to explain how, having seen and experienced the flying saucer, the bad Captain is not ultimately able to carry forward her dastardly plans for it. Hence I have to solve a problem that I’d previously sought to avoid entirely by cutting her out before she’d ever even seen the saucer – which was a cop-out, I now confess, on a galactic scale.

Of course, as I go through the next read-through, I probably will find the odd thing that needs re-writing, simplifying or cutting out. As a result, I believe draft 3 will end up a little bit shorter than it is now. But it will almost certainly still be longer than draft 2.

I also like to think that, DCFS being my third book, I’ve learnt to write more economically than I used to. The first draft of my first book, Falling Girl, was a lot flabbier, cursed with unnecessary exposition and surplus characters. These are things I was looking to avoid in DCFS right from the start of the first draft. I made a conscious effort not to write too much. So, compared to my earlier books, there was less to cut out. Of course I made other mistakes to make up for it …

Which all goes to show that, as with all writing ‘rules’, the ‘edit makes shorter’ dictum does not always apply. It depends what kind of changes are being made, and it all comes down to doing – after careful consideration and listening to good advice – what needs to be done for that particular book, even if looks like a particular ‘rule’ needs to be broken (or at least slightly bent). (And there I go with the parentheses again …)