Friday, March 20, 2015

Early Update

Whew! My writer's life has gotten kind of busy lately. Let's see...how many writing classes am I going to be in during April? 

Five?! 

Well, one I can finish this month if I work at it. Another class will come to an end during the first part April, but there will be a final project for that one that will be due a month later. 

And that's not even counting Camp NANOWRIMO starting April 1st. OY!

Yep. Life is going to get even busier. I do believe I'm busier now than I ever was when I was working out of the home. But I'm enjoying the daylights out of my life right now so that's the important thing.

Then there's the novel to keep working on and I am making some progress on that front. 

Just got back from writer's group. It was a short one today but productive. I now have a finalized outline for each of the three acts in my novel and I'm almost ready to commence the writing part of the third draft. This third draft will include scenes from both the first and second drafts and probably some new scenes. I'll be spending some time stitching scenes together to start with then filling in the gaps with new writing. I find I'm actually looking forward to getting started. 

So far this week I have spent about five hours on the novel doing the preliminary work. Possibly six, I'll have to go back and check. I'm planning to spend the rest of today pulling scenes from the first and second drafts and plugging them into the new folders I made on Scrivener for each of the three acts. I thought that would help me locate some key plot points that I'm learning about in the novel writing class: the trigger - which is the moment when the protagonist's flaw gets the better of him; and the epiphany - the moment when the protagonist overcomes said flaw in order to reach his goal.

Though all of this, I am beginning to see the benefits of doing outlines. I had already done a synopsis of the entire third draft and when I did the outline for each act (from scratch, I might add), I was surprised to find that the outline matched the synopsis, for the most part. Must mean I now have a good grasp of  the entire plot and story arcs. I do want to go back through the outlines again and make notes of anything additional that pops into my head.

I sill need work on a few more backstories as well as complete a setting sketch for one of the places that will be featured. 

So, still lots more preliminary work to be done but I'm closer now to having that third draft completed than I was. 

I'm surprised to realize just how much work actually goes into writing a novel. I can remember the time when I thought all I needed to do was sit down and write until the novel was finished. While that is still the best way to get a first draft completed. in order to end up with a polished novel ready for public consumption, there really is a lot more to it than that. 





No comments: