Skrikare WIP Update: New Revelations

I was on a roll, more than halfway done with draft four of my work in progress novel, and then I remembered that back when I was in college, I had the original first five chapters workshopped in novel writing class. So of course I read through the feedback my fellow classmates had given me.

And what happens?

I FIND A MILLION THINGS TO FIX OR ADD OR CHANGE.

Of course, I expected to find a couple things, but I have a list of 10 or so aspects that either don't make sense or would work better if it were done a different way, or if more details were added. The most major ones include adding chapters in another character's point of view, and getting rid of an entire race. Currently, there are werewolves, in my story, but they don't really serve a purpose, and I already have elementals, vampires, vakt, and my skrikare.

So goodbye werewolves. Most, if not all, of them will simply shift into vampires, but there are some action scenes I'll need to tweak, since a vampire isn't exactly going to shapeshift into a wolf mid-battle.

Those are pretty big adds and changes, but those aren't the only ones. Others include adding a whole new character, fixing some magical mechanisms, adding details to certain things to explain them better, and so on. I've got a ton of work ahead of me, and to be honest, I'm a little frustrated at the setback.

But I'm also EXCITED. I know this will mold my WIP into something better, more fleshed out, more complex, by the time I'm done with all of these adjustments. This is just another part of the writing process that's proof that writing is hard work. It will just take time.

Lots of time, and maybe some swearing along the way.

But that's okay. :)

On to the Second Draft!

FINALLY! The first draft took a super long time, but it's on to the second draft of Skrikare: The Living Weapon! The goal is definitely to take fewer than 5+ years to finish it. ;) So far, so good - I'm already almost at 8,000 words since I started it a week ago, and I have plenty of time to write more this weekend.

Some of those 8k words are reused - though tweaked and rearranged - from the first draft, but I already know there's going to be way less content to reuse the further I go. I guess that happens when you add more complexity to the plot and have to change the whole ending and add entire chapters in order to get to that new ending. The things we do for our WIPs . . .

But what's in store for the new draft? An important hidden object, near death, actual death, deleted extraneous characters, technology used for evil, et cetera, et cetera. Yup, it's gonna be a fun time.

Now to get cracking!