Day 368: Progress Update

So I edited up to the end of the first draft ... and it needs a lot of work still. I mean, I expected that. Doesn't really feel like much of an accomplishment when there's so much work left to be done. I think there are a few major spots I want to further improve.

First I want to rework the ending. While editing I had a few ideas that would make it hit home a lot better. Reading the whole story back will do that I suppose. When I read it back it was kinda weird and wishy washy and didn't come to the conclusions I wanted. I edited it in the state that I had it, but I think I just need to rewrite most of it. Unfortunately that's like a solid three chapters I'll have to go back and completely redo.

The pacing is also strange. I don't think it's an issue of faster or slower, but rather I need to rework some of those parts in a way that makes it more natural for them to feel fast or slow, if that makes any sense. This should be a more minor adjustment, some tweaks here and there that help set things up earlier for a more streamlined payoff later.

Finally, I need what I've been saying I need for a long time, which is someone impartial to read it and tell me what they think. That part will probably be the hardest. As soon as I've reworked the ending I'll go ahead and start querying. It'll be in decent shape as long as it has a beginning, middle, and end, and the end is holding it back the most at this point. After all that, I'll just have to whittle it down over time. Slowly improve one scene or another as the ideas come to me. I'll probably end up reading it another ten times or so. Should be fun. And grueling. Yay.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley