Tuesday 21 July 2009

A Surprising First Draft Finish

No it's not the Fantasy WIP that I started working on last week. Actually I just happened to open and look at the first ever novel I completed (Women's Fiction). That was the time when I knew nothing of publication, craft or any other practical matters. I wrote a book and that was that. Obviously looking at it, I know hell of a lot needs to change. But funnily enough, there is also a lot that doesn't. I had initially four main characters, and I realised that one of them was just a preacher. So I have taken out all the scenes with that character. The initial draft was 200K words, and now after that deletion, it's 100K. The structure of the story, and the story itself is already in place. All it needs it editing with my increased (hopefully) knowledge of the craft, and also fleshing out on description as I tend to be dialogue focused. I am well chuffed, because now I have a fully finished first draft. So now I shall leave that to stew, and get back to my Fantasy WIP. Once I finish the first draft of that, I will start editing this one.

2 comments:

  1. That's great! :)

    I had a similar thing happen with my fantasy novel. While the first half is awful and needs a hell of a lot of work, the second half is surprisingly good.

    I have yet to tackle the overhaul needed on it. ;-)

    Adam

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  2. Adam,

    You are making good progress with your WIPS so that's great. The way I look at it, the more first drafts I write, the more practice I get to polish stuff ...eventually :P

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