My latest short story "The Night the Lights Came On"

Thursday, May 11, 2017

I Finished My Book!


Well, writing every day in March and April rewarded me with a finished manuscript. The first draft of my novel "Haunted House Flipper" is complete! I wrote this in the last blog post but this is more of a hurrah let's celebrate post because it's done! I'm currently going through it to clean it up and change the mentor character into the mentor/love interest character.

Obviously A Work In Progress :)
Other than that I haven't been changing much. Just a few awkward sentences here and there. A bit more description in a few places, but my changes are pretty minimal! I'm very happy about that and Dean Wesley Smith would say that's a good thing too. He's all about first drafts, a little cleanup - and call it good! I'm even more happy that I don't think I'll have the problem with this book that I've had with every other novel I've written. When I got to the end and reread it or gave it to beta readers I could tell the story was broken. No good structure, flow, plot or pacing.

That's because I was new and didn't really know much about story structure or how to outline. My outline is pretty sparse and mostly consists of story beats that are like tent poles that hold up the major parts of my story and it's up to me to fill in all the gaps between. I figure those out as I go, but I like to try and write what happens next with a few sentences because that helps me write way faster. I learned that trick from the book 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron. By the way, if you click on that link and buy the amazing book that really helped me write faster it gives me a little kickback so thanks!

So yeah. It's done! Time to revise it so I can get it to Beta Readers and get some feedback on it! If you would like to be a beta reader just let me know. Thanks for stopping by!

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks JR! I appreciate it man. Right back at you to! You're having a super productive year and it's cool to watch.

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