1, 2, 3 What are we fightin' for

So what am I doing this last full day of real vacation? I'm rewriting the frame for War Stories. It's a little darker and the character set is greatly reduced, just Bobby and Fenny now (and an unnamed nurse or two). Most of it was from handwritten notes I had made, some of it came from the original frame. The middle, Bobby's story, isn't changing (until I get edits), but the editor (::waves toward Michigan::) made a comment earlier about how the frame wasn't working for him, and in review I agree. Most of the characters, who had some part to play in the full story (where they told more stories) now are just guys in funny hats. So out they went.

Most of the concepts have transfered over. I don't think I'm as fair to vets as I was in the original, but it's a story. And to make the story, Bobby needed to have more problems. Sorry about that.

Current word count, (for frame and middle) is 5130. So I'll need to get rid of another 140 or so words. I think it's doable. I cut out 200 on the first run through. I think the new frame has some of my better writing, but there's also soft parts. Heck, while bouncing back and forth (yeah, I do that, call me Mr. Distractible) I'm down eight words. So yeah, there's some poof that can be cut, some redundancies to eliminate. Keeping under 5000 should be easy.

I should probably do an entry over on Genre Benders about the first paragraph. It's a pretty good example (if I say so myself) of including small details that fill out a whole scene. How in 30 words you can include all the senses and paint a picture of where the story takes place. In the original frame it took two paragraphs to get it all in.

Anyway, now I've got meetings to go to and errands to run. Hope you all are having a good start to the fresh year.