Category Archives: vampires

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

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