I couldn't start in on July's revision count on the very first day of the month. That would have been far too sensible. Instead I started today and after polishing some of the 11th scene I began on the 12th. It is a complete cut and paste from two scenes of the previous draft. I kept the dialogue almost intact but had to rewrite the internal dialogue and some actions so that the scene would make sense where I've put it.

I remembered something from when I edited the first third of the last draft in hard copy. Should you write: "Join us!" John said. Or: "Join us!" said John. I don't think there is a right answer to this, I think it's mostly a matter of style but I wasn't using them consistently and it was bugging me. I decided that because the tag 'said' should go mostly unnoticed by readers, the purpose being to identify who spoke, that 'said' should come before the person's name. When reading the dialogue the reader is looking for a clue to who is speaking and is more likely to pass over 'said' in search of the name than to pass over it when looking for the next sentence. It would almost be like a double full stop in a telegram: stop stop.


Number of revision hours completed: 1 hour.