Monsters in California: Editing Process Snippet

I've always been interested in the play-by-play editing process of other writers, so I thought I'd show a bit of my own. Here's what happens between the rough and (hopefully) finished version of a single paragraph.

This is going to be a little embarrassing. For me.

Far ahead is a car parked on the side of the road. It’s a police car, and I can see a man in uniform standing nearby. I’m not sure what he’s doing. It almost looks as if he’s preparing to leap out onto the road.

That's the original, and yes, I wrote an entire book in first-person present-tense; so having a stream-of-consciousness descriptive narrative sounds fairly natural; but on the technical side I have to admit that it's bulky and doesn't do a good job of describing what's going on. Does it sound like a cop is about to commit suicide? Because that's not what I was going for.

This paragraph is supposed to tell you that there's an officer laying down a spike strip, and if you've seen enough episodes of Cops then you'll know that the officer holds onto the strip with a wire so he can pull it off the road right after the target runs it over and keep the pursuing cops from popping their own tires. Because of this the officer is never just standing idly by the road. They're in a runner's crouch so they can get the best leverage when they yank the strip.

And this is all being told from the perspective of someone in the car about to hit said spike strip. So it's not really working. At all.

 

Up ahead is a police car parked on the shoulder. An officer is crouched next to the vehicle, facing the highway. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but it looks like there’s something on the road-

The paragraph is more compact and descriptive, now, and it cuts off at the something on the road part, implying that the something on the road is the reason the paragraph got chopped short (which is a trick that fits comfortably in first-person present-tense).

And while I'm saying that the paragraph is more compact and descriptive, what I really should be saying is that I neutered the narrative voice, which isn't a bad thing. The narrator is presenting less of a stream-of-conscious description in this new version, but on the other hand the reader can better understand it. Which is good.

The first and second sentences don't flow very well into each other...

 

Up ahead is an officer standing on the side of the highway next to his parked vehicle. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but it looks like there’s something on the road -

Let's describe the officer first and mention the car as an aside.
Shoulder sounds funny. How about side of the highway, instead?

 

Up ahead is an officer standing on the shoulder next to his parked vehicle. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but it looks like there’s something on the road - 

Side of the highway sounds funny. How about shoulder instead?

 

Now take those last two changes and do them over and over again because neither of them will ever sound right and congratulations! You now know exactly what it's like to edit a paragraph in "Monsters in California."