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"Praise Be" and "FFO" progress updates
Mar. 18th, 2010 04:24 pmCurrently 17,000ish words into the second draft of "Praise Be", which is more than I managed in all of NaNoWriMo. I finally figured out this morning how the story will end. Usually I start my projects with an ending in mind, but this one was a long time in coming.
I've spent the last day and a half heavily reworking Chapter 4 of "Facing Fearful Odds." I hit a growth spurt as a writer while Chapter 5 was in production and it's very clear that Chapter 4 is a gawky teenager. It's easily the worst chapter in all of Book 1.
Around the time I started writing Chapter 3, one of my two core betas recommended that I split up my earlier chapters into smaller sections for ease of reading. Chapter 1 is a little over 10k and he felt that was too long for casual readers. I didn't think so at first, but when I publish Siege of the South a few reviewers surprised me by mentioning that it was too long for a one-shot. I chalk it up to different fandoms, different standards. But returning to my point, I split up Chapters 1 and 2 after I had written them. Chapter 4 was the first chapter I wrote with the intention of splitting it up. I did a terrible job of this. There's no proper pacing. Unlike later sub-chapters, there's no self-contained mini-story in Chapters 4-A and 4-B.
Random observation on revising the whole of Book 1? I seem to frequently identify my characters by their hair and eye color in Chapters 1-4 of FFO, then stop doing that entirely starting in Chapter 5 onwards. It's a very lazy writing technique. I'm refraining from removing too many of these weakass hair/eye references, though, because I don't want to get stuck revising this story forever. My goal for March is to finish the first draft of FFO and by God I intend to do just that.
I've spent the last day and a half heavily reworking Chapter 4 of "Facing Fearful Odds." I hit a growth spurt as a writer while Chapter 5 was in production and it's very clear that Chapter 4 is a gawky teenager. It's easily the worst chapter in all of Book 1.
Around the time I started writing Chapter 3, one of my two core betas recommended that I split up my earlier chapters into smaller sections for ease of reading. Chapter 1 is a little over 10k and he felt that was too long for casual readers. I didn't think so at first, but when I publish Siege of the South a few reviewers surprised me by mentioning that it was too long for a one-shot. I chalk it up to different fandoms, different standards. But returning to my point, I split up Chapters 1 and 2 after I had written them. Chapter 4 was the first chapter I wrote with the intention of splitting it up. I did a terrible job of this. There's no proper pacing. Unlike later sub-chapters, there's no self-contained mini-story in Chapters 4-A and 4-B.
Random observation on revising the whole of Book 1? I seem to frequently identify my characters by their hair and eye color in Chapters 1-4 of FFO, then stop doing that entirely starting in Chapter 5 onwards. It's a very lazy writing technique. I'm refraining from removing too many of these weakass hair/eye references, though, because I don't want to get stuck revising this story forever. My goal for March is to finish the first draft of FFO and by God I intend to do just that.
