Posts Tagged ‘drafts’

Book 2, Draft 3: Done

October 16th, 2013 by pladd

We talked about how much I hate the revision process like three months ago. Luckily Book 2 wasn’t so bad, and I finished yesterday! Well, with Draft 3. There are 3 major drafts in my initial writing process, which I will illustrate with gifs.

Draft 1

is all about building plot. Messy, funny, a little meandering. Sometimes the details at the end don’t exactly match the ones at the beginning, but that’s okay. It’s just important to get a vague shape of the story so you have something to knead into what you actually want. I am a rockstar at Draft 1, which is why my annual NaNoWriMo contest with James isn’t that much of a contest.

This is an accurate representation of my Draft 1 writing process. Including wardrobe. ROCKSTAR

Right now I’m writing a series of 4 books (I guess a quartet, if you want to be fancy about it), and I wrote all four Draft 1s all the way through first. Partly because Draft 1 is the most fun, and partly because I needed to know the end before I could match it to the beginning. Next comes:

Draft 2

is all about rewriting the parts of Draft 1 that don’t fit together. Tightening up the plot, deleting anything extraneous, adding parts that need more explanation. It’s definitely the most work, because you have to think about every piece and how it fits together, if it’s saying the thing you want, and if it could do that better.

Not pictured: lying on the floor in despair. There’s a lot of that too.

Since I’m dealing with four different books, it’s often been at least a year since I worked on the draft I’m revising. This is actually awesome because I can look at it much more critically, with fresh eyes. I usually make a list of the big things I want to make sure to add, either in specific places, or throughout, and then comb through the story bit by bit. This is also when I add chapters breaks.

Draft 3

is solely about language. And any little things I may have forgotten in Draft 2. For instance, one of my notes for this book right before Draft 3 was “Didn’t Percy have a cool watch???” Yeah, and it’s going to be kind of a big deal in the next book, so I can’t forget to mention it a few times. Draft 3 is usually the fastest (proofreading is also a huge part of my day job), but it’s the one I hate the most. It involves a lot of thesaurus searches and fact checks.

Also sometimes I spend like an hour debating capitalization

After Draft 3, I print that sucker out (I still prefer physical books, like some kind of medieval monk, I know) and send it to people who may or may not actually be interested in helping me. Sometimes being my friend is tough. Hopefully they read it and tell me what’s up. And catch all the grammar errors I inevitably missed in Draft 3.

My biggest problem in Draft 3 (that I catch) is commas. I’m always missing like a million effing commas, which is weird because I generally know how English works. I’m not sure what my biggest problem that I don’t catch is, because I haven’t actually gotten any feedback from anyone on Book 1. I assume because they’re too busy sharing it with all of their friends. I know, guys, I’m amazing. Try to calm down.

Anyway, hit me up if you are interested in being a Draft 3 reader. There’s a chance to win fabulous prizes.

I’m not promising a new car, but I’m not NOT promising one either

Tagged: animated gifs, book, drafts, writing

Posted in Let Me Tell You About My Life, Writing |

Book 1, Draft 2: Done

July 8th, 2013 by pladd

You know I’m writing a book, right? Well, four. I wrote them all the way through, and it took about two years. That seems like a short amount of time to write four books, I guess, but I’ve kind of been working on this story since I was 14, so I’ve had a lot of practice. Not that anything from back then is usable, for anything besides laughing sadly at how I thought the world worked, and the way I confused “lose” and “loose” constantly. Pretty much the only similarity between then and now is that a few of the characters have the same names.

Anyway, yesterday I finished Draft 2 of Book 1. Which, to me, is a bigger accomplishment than finishing any of them in the first place. First drafts are easy. I’ve been writing first drafts for twelve years. This is the first time I’ve ever written a second draft, though, so it feels like a big deal. It’s not like I’m done. I’m combing it over again, mostly for language this time, and then sending it off to different people for criticism (YOU??), and who knows what changes that will bring? And then there are three others that get the same treatment. But still. I finished a second draft. I didn’t get bored and frustrated and wander away to start something new. Not that I begrudge past-Patricia for doing that. None of those books she wrote were worth a Draft 2, and maybe she knew it. This one seems to be, though, so I’m happy. I know there’s still a long way to go, but I climbed a mountain I never thought I would so:

The hardest part was the beginning, of course. I know how important first sentences are, and it took me forever to write this one. Maybe a month, I’m not joking:

The day this started, I was eating kettle corn and watching a volcano.

Maybe it’ll make it to the end, I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like this process is some kind of ruthless contest where each sentence has to JUSTIFY ITS EXISTENCE and BE ALL IT CAN BE or risk being deleted forever. Sometimes I imagine them crying as I backspace through them.

Critical Hit! A sentence can’t survive without its verb

I don’t even care that I sound like a crazy person, I finished a second draft alright and that’s all that matters. Draft 2 is 224 pages, at least the way I like to write, with 1.5 spacing (I checked just for you, and it’s 290 double-spaced). Hit me up if you’re interested in reading them for beta review. Some of you will not have a choice and it will just ~appear in your mailbox as if by magic~ because that’s how I roll.

Tagged: book, drafts, writing