Splitting Butterfly in Two

Image - Butterfly over the Grand Canyon

Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on April 15, 2014 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] My first completed novel, If a Butterfly, was EXTREMELY long. The first draft was well over 300,000 words, about 1,300 double-spaced 8.5 x 11 pages; but — in its defense — …

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Editing Butterfly in Scrivener, Part 2

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Once I started using Scrivener it became obvious that it could do a number of things that I was using several other programs to accomplish. Here’s an example. In an earlier post, A Milestone, I mentioned one method used to keep track of which characters were in what scenes, and how often they were appearing …

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Genesis of If a Butterfly – Part 5

Image - Butterfly over the Grand Canyon

Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on December 10, 2013 The Plot Thickens (A Little) In the last post I established that I thought my cast of characters was complete, but was it? They were all lined up neatly on the butterfly’s route (a teacher in Canada, a rock deejay in Virginia, a scientist …

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Trimming the Beast Down – Part 1

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Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on September 15, 2012 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] When I finished the second draft of If a Butterfly, about eleven weeks ago [early-summer 2012], it was 280,762 words and 1,093 double-spaced pages. After I returned from the 2012 WLT …

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Pitching a Novel

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Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on July 21, 2012 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] During the past two years [2011 to 2012], because I thought my novel, If a Butterfly, was nearing completion [silly me], I started writing (and practicing) pitches for it. I wanted …

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