Finished the book yesterday. Revising took a little longer than I thought it would. I saw near the end how abrupt and weird it would be to give short shrift to the funeral, so I let it unfold a bit slower, and it ended up taking four scenes instead of one. So, yay, I got the extra pages I needed, too!
I worked the last scene over carefully as well, adding details from the many threads of Eve’s story to give things a sense of richness and closure. Probably the most important thing I did was expand on the downfall of Jane. Before I had sewn up Jane’s plot thread with a couple of throw away lines Eve delivers to her mom saying that the cops didn’t quite have the evidence to bust Jane yet, but they were close.
Boo. Hiss.
It’s never a good idea to leave the antagonist hanging like that. As a reader/critic I hate it when authors end things this way. (I read a “mystery” the other day that never revealed whodunnit!!! Instead everyone dies and the author says “we’ll never know…” Arggg.)
It was just plain laziness on my part. Well, laziness and not knowing how to tie it up. I did try to think of ideas, but kept coming up dry, and finally, in frustration, just did a lousy job. But an idea of how to do it in a more prominent and final way came to me and I was able to give Jane a very satisfactory and visible punishment for her evil deeds.
I was relieved to have the revision finished and only a little chagrined when I woke up this morning with the idea for an addition/correction. Just a tiny tweak. I’m sure when I read the entire ms. next year (hee) I’ll find plenty of other little tweaks. But on the whole, I’m happy with the finished work. I think.