Ya know, maybe my current draft of book 1 isn’t as much of a mess as I thought it was. The three thirds of the story are all even in terms of chapters- the first part has 10 to the middle and ending’s 9, but that’s really close. Plus I think after this draft I may end up condensing a bit more at the beginning anyway. Considering my first draft was something like 38 chapters and I’m down to 28, that’s a start, lol.
Even my characters are balanced. My main-main character (Adair) has 10 POV chapters, as does Firedrake, while Blythe has 8. Firedrake isn’t more important than Blythe, but Dray’s storyline does frequently affect Adair’s while Blythe is frequently in scenes with Adair or Dray.
I still feel that after this rewrite I’m going to need one more rewrite before I get to where I can plain edit, but this is a lot of progress since the beginning. I’m not entirely sure how some of the chapters play out in this draft, but they seem to be happening in the right order. Finally. Er… until I go back and try to condense the beginning again. Or realize the middle is still as messy as I’d feared.
I am loving the idea of ending the book on a Firedrake chapter instead of an Adair one, like in the previous drafts. Technically this is Adair’s book, but book 2 is more Dray’s, so (fingers crossed) it’ll leave me with a kind of hook to bring the readers into the next one.
Now that I have this sorted out pretty well, it’s time to dive back into the rewrite. I always need a good outline before I start any draft, but my characters often like to change things up on me without warning. An outline at least corrals them slightly. ;) … crud, and looking at this I just realized that I didn’t resolve one of my storylines. *headdesk* Guess I’ll stick that somewhere near the end in one of the last index cards.
~Meri
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