An Interesting Exercise

I chose the above photo because I've found an interesting portal to Narnia. I am (allegedly) working on edits of an Urban Fantasy that I wrote over a long period of time. At one point, I quit writing it and started over at the beginning. I also abandoned it for awhile. So it has had a few stops and starts to say the least.

After the last edit pass, which I had hoped was almost the very last one, I was still upset with the magic system and the differences between the different kinds of magic. I was also dismayed to find I couldn't quite distinguish them myself. I was also bummed at the lack of notes I'd taken as I wrote, to keep all this stuff straight. Oops. So I printed the whole lot out and spent almost a week going through it, page by page, meticulously writing notes on all the different kinds of folk, magic being done, updating the character cards for each character with intricate detail about their person, magical ability and whatnot. 

It took a week.

And I learned so much. I saw lots of flaws. I found lots of answers. I came up with a lot of ideas. I also filled in all the blank spots, thanks to the magical fiction machine, which seemed to know what it was doing all along. I should never have doubted it. The rules and limitations, the differences, were all there, I just had to study them one by one, and spend some time writing out their bios/anthropological background. Yes, I used the word anthropological. Because that is the sort of thing you need to think about when worldbuilding: you are an armchair anthropologist, psychologist, archeologist (you are just digging it out of your own head, of course) biologist... there are all kinds of 'gists you need to consider.

So there is another edit pass to go - and I think the book will be much more cohesive and clearer than it was before. Now I just have to do it.