Hello all! Just a quick update. I am now at roughly 20% of the way through draft 2. I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but I had taken about a week or two off to let the story sit and marinate for a bit before going full bore into revision mode. Even considering that, I feel like it’s taking a bit more time than I initially expected to revise this beast. I wanted to share a little snapshot as to why:
This right here is actually a relatively clean page compared to the rest of the book so far. I’m slashing the story down and revamping a good portion of it, especially the first half (where, to be honest, I didn’t really have the clearest idea of the direction I wanted to go to get to where I needed to). So the first part of this draft is going to be pretty intense.
As a further update for my plans, once I’m done with draft 2 I’m going to create another clean copy and then go through the various comments from the few people I gave a pre-alpha version to. Whatever is still left that matches up with their comments, I’m going to weigh whether or not I need to make some changes. Then, if all things go according to plan, I think it will be ready for beta readers on draft 4!
I’ve already had a couple people interested in being beta readers, and I thank you so much for your interest! It’s a little terrifying to think about giving something I’ve spent literal months crafting for it to be torn down and judged, but such is the path of writing a novel, right? I plan on writing a post about beta reading and how to be an effective beta reader/comment provider for those that may be curious, but that probably won’t be until I’m closer to the actual beta version. I’ve watched several lectures and read articles on effective criticism and I found it really interesting, so I wanted to share it here as well.
Stay tuned for more updates!