Author Archives: Felicity Heaton

The self editing phase of my paranormal romance novel, codenamed Arcadian, is well underway now.

Last weekend I gave it a first read through on paper. It reads well and I enjoyed it, devoured it, couldn’t put the damn thing down (hubby was very understanding), but I spotted things that needed changing and words that I overused. I’ve spent the week having a good think about that read through and doing basic grammar and spelling checks, and putting together a running outline of the story. The more I think about it, the more I start to gain perspective and figure out what needs to change.

I don’t think anything needs to change with the plot but I might up the tension and flesh out the bad guy more. The characters are all pretty good at this stage. I have a few things to address with the hero and heroine, but that’s mostly repetition of feelings and thoughts rather than them as characters.

I have also found a few scenes that could be cut down to increase the pace and drop the word count.

All this means that I now have a list of stuff to work on in this second draft phase that is as long as my arm (excuse the cliche). I have allowed 5 weeks in my schedule, 4 remaining after this week, but I might give myself more time so I don’t feel pressured and can work on this one properly.

Today I tested how long it would take me to sit down and give the story a thorough going over, cutting out unnecessary words, phrasing things better, and looking out for repetition (as well as too many ‘-ing’ and ‘as’ sentences). I did it on one chapter and it took an hour and a quarter. I did a second chapter and again it took an hour and a quarter. There are 34 chapters in this story. That’s 42.5 hours to do this kind of edit. I only get 3 hours a day to work on the story (if I’m lucky, and if I don’t do any Japanese), which means that it’s going to take me roughly 15 days to edit the story this way once I’ve fixed up the things I’ve noted down to address. Phew! Three weeks solid work only inching forwards 2 chapters a day is going to be hard, but it will be worth it. I might have to break off and do other things sometimes just to keep sane 🙂

My trimming and hard work on these two chapters cut out 644 words though. If I cut out 300 words per chapter on average, it’s going to chop a much needed 10,200 words off this story. That will bring it close to 120,000. That would make me very happy indeed! I think the story would benefit from having the pace increased to that extent.

It will be hard work though. Time to adjust my writing schedule again! I might just have to free up my time until end of May. Thankfully I’m in a position where I can focus on editing this and getting a good second draft done.

Well, now I need to crack on with finishing the new look for my website. Lots of work still to do on that. I can’t wait to get phase one of it done so I can get it off my mind for a month or so.

My archery class has finished too so I don’t have that to keep my stress-free now. I’m trying to join a local club but no word yet. I really want to continue with archery. I was doing quite well at it considering that we only had 9 hours in total lesson time.

It’s my birthday on Tuesday. I have Monday and Tuesday off, but will likely work most of the time I have off work. I want to finish this website and get moving on the edits for Arcadian.

I’ll keep everyone posted on my progress!

F

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! I hope you have a wonderfully romantic day. I know my day has been wonderful so far, with my husband giving my roses, chocolates and champagne–everything cliche but sweet all the same.

I’ve had a long week with Arcadian, battling through a hard-to-write patch because I’ve reached the mid-way mark and I always lose my flow around this part a little. I have next week off work so I can hopefully get more written for the story, but normally I end up filling my time with other stuff and not writing when I’m on holiday.

Every time I complete a few chapters, I go back to my outline and see how many more I think there are to come. At this moment, I think I have another 52000 words to write, but it might be less (or more!). That would make the story around 135000 words, which is a relief. Now I just have to wait and see what really happens.

I added a new character in yesterday. It was a necessary addition and might make the story more interesting as it’s on the antagonist’s side. He could use a little company right now.

I’m trying to think about what I can post to give everyone a hint at the story, but I don’t want to give too much away. All I can say is that it involves numerous people with different powers–including the ability to manipulate electricity, a necromancer, and a psychic–and two immortals, one born of a Greek goddess, along with vampires and werewolves. It’s complicated, fast paced, and very romantic.

I had to write a fight scene yesterday morning which went better than expected. I had put it off on the way home the night before, skirting around the issue and playing games on my laptop instead of writing, but finally started it and it turned out good. Not too slow. The trouble with fight scenes is that writers have a tendency to drag them out and bog them down with detail. It just slows the story. Must keep the pace!

Here’s my tally so far:

Arcadian
82,679 / 125,000
[66.1%]

Not too shoddy. I’m glad that I’m past the halfway point now and I have some great scenes coming up so plenty of motivation to keep writing!

Will keep you all posted.

F

I haven’t written for over two months, so when it came time to start Arcadian in earnest, it was difficult to work up the energy to get going, especially since I have to carry my laptop with me to London everyday if I want to write. The lazy side of me wanted to put starting off until this weekend, throwing out the schedule, but I managed to get going and once I did, it wasn’t so difficult.

Whenever I have a break in writing, it’s always difficult to get back into it. My mind seems to ask why I have to write and then my heart argues that I love to write, I enjoy it, so get going! It’s war, but with a peaceful outcome once the muse gives me a royal kick up the backside and I finally start writing.

I have hit a snag already though. Something which I feared when I had written out the plot outline and seen the length of it! The other day when my laptop had succumbed to a lack of battery and died on me (after around 3.5 hours of writing. good laptop!) I went through the plot outline for the novel and roughly divided it into chapters. I was a little unnerved when I found it might be another 30 chapters. I had already completed 4 at this point, and my average length for a chapter is around 5000 words in this story. That means the novel is looking at coming out around the 170,000 words mark. Far too high if I want to get it trade published by approaching publishers and agents. When I made it home, I checked some of the first novels of other paranormal romance authors and they all varied between 90,000 and 130,000. Most publishers state they want a length of 70,000 to 100,000. If I can get an agent, I might be able to get away with 130,000… or perhaps if my submitted three chapters are good enough, then a publisher might overlook the length… but 170,000??? I’m really hoping that my chopping up of the plot into chapters is wrong and it does come out nearer to 130,000. When I had finished writing up the plot outline, I had an inkling that it was no longer a 100,000 word story as I had first anticipated, but rather one nearer to 130,000. I’m still hoping that my instincts are right on that one!

So, the word count so far (and pretty much for just this past week) is:

Arcadian
27,791 / 125,000
[22.2%]

I’m going to stick with 125,000 as the target. I’m almost at the quarter mark in that case and probably 2 chapters from the first gateway/point of no return.

I also realised on the train home last night that we’re seeing a lot from the heroine’s POV but not a tremendous amount from the hero. He’s had around 1.25 chapters so far, and she’s had around 3.75. Right now it’s important we’re with her though, and I know there are a lot more chapters with the hero to come in the 1/4 to 1/2 way point in the story.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to keep these posts regular. I’ve been so focused on editing and improving my stories recently that as I write, I find myself thinking about previous chapters and things that might need to be changed or chopped to keep the pace. I’m just writing them down in a notebook for now and I’ll address them when I get around to the second draft. I’m not one for tinkering as I write. I’m of the “get it written, then get it right” school of philosophy.

Time for house stuff now – washing, tidying, a bit of exercise, and installing a new shower with my dad!

I really want to keep writing. I haven’t felt the writing bug like this for a long time. It doesn’t help that I almost missed my stop on the train last night because I was so engrossed in writing and I left the hero on the verge of a rather swoon-worthy speech to the heroine!

🙂

Well, it’s taken a while but the planning phase for Arcadian is almost over. I’m just putting the finishing touches to the character bios and printing out some information that I typed up so I can put it into a binder with all my bios, plot outline and scene notes.

It took almost two weeks to write up the plot outline in my non-work time. Sometimes having to work really gets in the way of writing. Still, it’s done now… but I have this feeling that the story isn going to be longer than I expected it to be. I had a feeling that it would be around the 100,000 words mark, but now that I’ve written up a comprehensive plot outline, it feels as though it’s going to be closer to 130,000 words. It might not be, but normally my inklings about these kinds of things are pretty close to the mark.

I can’t wait to get writing again but it’s going to take quite a lot of psyching up as it’s been a while since I’ve done any writing and I have become quite comfortable with just learning Japanese and doing other things in my time to and from work on the train.

I’ll let you know more as I progress. Probably weekly updates so I can see how I’m getting along and track my progress, and so you guys can see how it’s coming too!

Speak soon,

F