Drafting: 3
Hi everyone,
I’ve finished my novel!!!!! It’s 119, 513 words and has 49 chapters (including a short epilogue). My aim after revision is for it to be 100K words but I’d love it to be 95K words.
I’ve let it sit for a while during my holiday and spending time with family. But I’m back at it this week, and I finally did a hands-free read though, which is the necessary and nerve-wrecking first stage of revision. When I was starting my read-through there was this thought—what if my novel is rubbish. Quite natural, I think. However, I actually enjoyed reading it so I was worried for nothing.
I am very happy with my structure. No big plot holes. Yay! My biggest issue is the antagonist and side characters. I made up characters half way through the novel, some even at the end. I have to go back and introduce them earlier. I also have to flesh them out.
Basically, there are gaps and things that need to be added. This isn’t surprising to me. Even with an outline I wasn’t able to keep everything in my head or get everything on the page at once so I chose to focus on my romance and fantasy plot. I figured I’d focus on the other subplots and side characters in draft two. I did put in some side characters as I wrote, but sometimes they were a name of a person who didn’t speak or interact much, or had zero wants or needs. Their name was like a place holder—this character is in this chapter and is important to this main character or a subplot I’ll add in later. I also had a subplot that I only put in half the scenes for as I went, knowing that I’ll need to add more scenes for it later. I knew what impact this subplot had on the main plot at certain points but not how the subplot elements got there, if that makes sense. How they got there was always going to be a draft 2 task.
I have two glaring missing scenes that I intend to write this week as it’s very clear to me what’s missing and I want to have a completed story before moving on to the next stage.
For my next stage, my intention is to do a reverse outline. I intend to make a new outline based on exactly what I have written. A fully fleshed out summary of each chapter/scene.
I, of course, want to be published. That’s the goal, but what I’m goal setting for this book is the process of writing and revising it. I have control over my process, not over someone liking my book enough to buy it—except for writing the best book I can, of course, but you know what I mean. Also, before I’m published is the best time for me to find and hone my process, away from the stresses and deadlines that come with publishing a book.
So far, I’ve outlined (22K) this novel when my first novels were fully discovery written. However, this (discovery writing) made the revision process brutal and slow. This time around I outlined my novel in the hopes that my revision time will be a fraction of what it was in the past. I don’t think that’s enough. My outline will speed up revisions since my story structure is more solid going in but I want to go further. I want to do a complete reverse outline and then do two drafts on this outline, so that I’m not tweaking the words or falling in love with the words in my manuscript.
I’m starting the reverse outline on March 1st. I intend to do 1-2 chapters/scenes a day. I’m not sure what will be critical in the reverse outline as it is my first time writing one. Since my goal is to find my process, I’m going to do a few different kinds of summaries of my novel and determine later what kinds were the most useful to me.
My intentions are to do 7 reverse scene outlines:
A 400-600 words faithful summary.
A goals and obstacles summary.
A brief save the cat (6 major beats) summary. One line per beat.
A turning point summary: where in the scene does everything change and what thoughts come just before it. What is the new direction.
Emotion summary (start-end emotions, warring, conflicting emotions etc)
Setting summary: atmosphere and senses, important images etc.
Subplots mentioned and how it is advanced in this scene.
I think by the end of this, I will know my story really well and have a good idea of what revisions need to be done. I might change some things here and there in my manuscript as I go if it’s every easy, like adding in the smell of something in a scene that is short on senses so that when I revise the scene I know to work it in.
My aim is to get this done by the first of April so that in April I can be revising these outlines. I have 64 scenes so I have to do 2 scenes a day (some scenes are short) but I’m happy if I get one scene done per days as I have 7 different outlines to do. Let’s see how it goes.
Wish me luck! See you at the end of March.
Happy writing,
Joanne.
