[Plotting About] Editing and writing groups…

The current work in progress went through a few revisions recently all thanks to feedback from writing groups.
Feedback from someone not related to you is worth it’s weight in gold. It can also be a nice ego boost when 1/3 of the group are not avid sci-fi readers but enjoyed the story and found it easy to read.
Sure, it means more revising but revising is good too since the first draft of anything will always suck. Look no further than Transformers 2 or in my case the first two chapters of my work in progress.
The first chapter worked, the second chapter sucked. So out went the second chapter, I kept the first, moved it and after feedback about what the hell was going on I tried to explain what happened before but that sucked due to too much exposition. Another chapter one was started and it felt right. Example: A family of Salvage Operators find our protagonist and it leads to chapter 2 and so on.
More feedback came in about the space aged nuclear family of 4 let’s call them the Reynolds for now, why not drop Mister Reynolds and let Missus Reynolds lead the family instead. So, slicing off the fat off your prized baby is a good thing.
Now, I have five print outs to go through to check for grammar also a good thing since I suck at that and hopefully the other reviewers don’t.
I also have Chapter 3 to worry about since sorta starting to suck too.
So, over all, I’ve had a good experience with all this and I highly recommend finding a group if you’re looking for feedback since they will give it to you.
If you are looking for a writing group, I’d recommend checking meetup.com first, they have their act together.