The Plunge

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Columbus, Ohio

Palmyra, NY

Editing Joseph Smith

I’m in this spot now where I keep editing and tightening up the first 100 pages of my Joseph Smith book which is a good thing to do but bad feeling because I’m not making progress on the page count, only chopping sections out. Here are some random pages from the chopping block.

The book will be about 250+ pages long, but the story needs to be tighter and stick to the straight forward narrative without spinning off into unnecessary information or the book will be a slog to get through for a reader. It’s easy to get excited about details when you’re working on a passion project and learning things that excite you, and to lose sight of the basic plot. Especially with a historic project, finding and sticking to the story you want to tell can be tricky. It’s easy to get lost.

What information the reader needs and what’s too much is the tightrope walk….