Arcadian – third draft in progress.

Well, my third draft of Arcadian was supposed to be more of a polish than anything, but on reading it through I got thinking about the characters, and parts of the storyline, and now it’s more of a third draft/revision/edit than a polish.

I recently sent out 6 copies to readers to get their opinions on the story. The story was only in second draft at the time, but the responses were extremely positive and the general consensus was that it could compete with other authors in the paranormal romance genre in print, and that the plot and characters were right, but parts needed more explanation or needed expanding on. The good thing was that those parts that needed more explanation or expanding with additional scenes were all ones that I had already written down to tackle.

The story was 129600 words at the end of the second draft. I’ve been spending time layering more description so people can more easily picture the scene/locations, and tackling some of the smaller issues/comments that I had written down to revise. I had 130 comments at the start of the third draft, cluttering my word document, but now I’m down to around 45. Most of the remaining ones are points to re-describe the characters to get them clearer in readers heads, or to add more emotion/extra scene/more oomph!

Even more recently, I gave a copy to a guy I work with as he was interested in reading it and giving his opinion, and also proofing it a little. It was good to get the opinion of someone who wasn’t a romance genre reader, to see if it would appeal to a wider audience too. He came back with places to expand on/explain more (the same places as the other readers), and actually said that it would make a really good movie. I always feel as though I write movies, and I have a lot of readers who come back to me saying that it the story they had read would be a good movie/TV series, and that they could see the scenes playing out in their mind. I always love to hear that from readers. It’s nice to know that you’ve got them so caught up that they’re right there in the moment with the characters.

Today I was reading over my editing books, mostly ones on emotion, characters and view point, and scene, and it struck me that I needed to change the start of the story quite dramatically. It had never quite sat right with me, and I think the way I want to rewrite it will make it a lot stronger. Of course, it’s more time added onto an already long editing schedule, but it’s worth it to get the story right. I’ve also plotted out the hero and heroines emotional arc a bit more so I can address some issues I have with them too. Those are going to be the tough bits to do. Adding in description and giving a little more information about certain things isn’t difficult, but changing a characters emotional arc and totally altering the beginning to make it stronger is going to be a toughie, mostly because I’ll have to check the rest of the story for references to those things and change it accordingly.

Well, enough waffle about the editing. I just wanted to let everyone know how it was going and what I was up to. Hopefully I will have finished this third draft and will be ready to do a polish on it in November when I have been to Japan for a much needed and well deserved holiday!

Happy reading, everyone!

F x

About Felicity Heaton

I'm a NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books as Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton. In my books I create detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, Larissa Ione, Kresley Cole, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will love my books too.

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