I've been revising my book for the past several weeks now, changing it from nonfiction to young adult fiction. That in and of itself was a difficult decision, because it was hard to want to rewrite a book that took me two years to finish. It was hard to decide to change point of view, as well as putting others into the situations that I myself had faced. It felt like I wasn't being true to myself. However, I am really wanting to get it published, because I feel like there's some really funny things to share, and so I tried re-writing. It actually wasn't as daunting as I thought it would be, because I have a basic outline. The only thing that really took the time was letting my characters converse with each other. Normally, I've struggled with conversations in stories. So many people have the talent of telling stories just through conversations, and I've always been one to tell stories through descriptions. When I wrote my first conversation on page one, I suddenly realized that it wasn't as scary as I had thought, and I learned just how much a character's development depends on what he or she says. It also creates depth to the story, and can move the plot along without having to come out and say so.
About halfway through my book, I suddenly realized that there was a problem with two of my character's names. One of them didn't work because it needed to sound similar to another character's name (which in turn resulted in a really funny misunderstanding). I then realized that I absolutely hated one of my character's names, Buck, and knew it had to be fixed. As I went about finding and replacing these character's names, I went back to proofread, and found absolutely hilarious typos that resulted from the changes.
*Note: I changed Buck's name to Brent, and I changed someone's last name from Pine to Oakley
"She giggled as she reached into his popcorn Brentet."
"...she suddenly noticed a figure standing a ways off, leaning up against a Oakley tree."
"Brent came by, and ended up throwing Oakleycones."
I've learned that when doing find and replace, I need to select "whole words only." Still, it was pretty hilarious to me to find these typos.
