Season 2, Episode 8: Secondary Characters, Google Maps, and Revision Logistics

IN THIS EPISODE

• Mel works on her secondary characters.

• Mel felt pretty good about this submission in other respects, and that made it easier for her to focus on beefing up the characters. They called it “putting the dressing on the salad!”

• Mel has a pile of post-its, notes Mel’s mom leaves for her as she reads Mel’s draft!

• Mel focuses on the details. She and Kemlo discuss incorporating actual locations into your work and how Mel uses Google Maps to research!

• “There's nothing worse than reading a book where someone is characterizing a place or a person or whatever that you actually know and getting it all wrong.”

• Kemlo asks Mel how she is going about putting her revisions on the page. They take a few minutes to talk about Mel’s self proclaimed “jacked-up” process! It involves a list of things to look for in each chapter.

• We also talk about how sometimes using dictation to write is the equivalent of trying to decode a text-to-speech message from Siri!

• This is the episode where we find out Abby and Mel are approaching revision very differently. Mel is working with the words on the page, and Abby opens a blank document and works from memory.