What I Did On My Holidays

The BIG NEWS is that I was able to complete the first draft of the current writing project over the weekend:

Working Title: The Arrows of Artemis
Word Count: about 68,000 words

That means that I was ahead of my self-imposed deadline by a couple of weeks (good) but as you can see, that word count is low (bad). I was originally estimating a word count up around 90-100K so this is short by quite a bit.

Well, it's not as bad as it might sound, it turns out. As I've been reading though each scene I've noticed that there's something missing. Not one specific thing; it's more general than that.

This time around (as opposed to when I was writing Pavonis) I have a review checklist that I'm applying to each scene as I review; this helps me make sure that each scene is polished to a high shine. It has things to check for each scene: Is there enough description? Does the scene start too early or late? What about the end? And so on. There are eight or nine things I check for each and every scene, and so far each and every scene has needed some editing to make things right.

For example, so far I've reviewed perhaps 10% of the book and I've found quite a few places where the text could definitely use more description - of people, clothes, buildings and so on. Adding that in will make the book more readable, do a better job of getting across the atmosphere of the setting and so on.

More importantly, though, I noticed that the story would definitely benefit from some more scenes. I have one character who just sort of disappears for a long stretch in the first third of the book, and I really need to add a couple of scenes focussing on her to fill in the gap in her side of the story. I have another character whose story simply fizzles out, and we see nothing from him after that point (which was originally intentional, but reading it back I now think it's a mistake). Some more scenes showing his perspective on what's happening in the City would give more depth as well as not leaving his tale as a kind of loose end. There's a (missing) funeral scene that really should have been in the original storyboard, which would give me a chance to explain some things about the workings of the City's government (which might sound dry but it becomes important later, when a conflict erupts between the City's factions).

Altogether I've identified seven new scenes that are absolutely essential; they'll improve the continuity and the flow as well as add depth and richness to the story. I also realised that I could use about three more scenes close to the end to tie off the storylines of some characters that are not exactly major but still significant. Not doing so would, I think, leave the reader with a vaguely unsatisfied feeling, wondering whatever happened to these people.

At the moment, with a little guesswork and a bit of thumbnail calculation, it's looking like adding those scenes and also some more description and so on, should get that word count up around the 80,000 mark while at the same time making the book better and without any deliberate padding.

I have to say that this book has been an absolute joy to work on. I think I've learned something here; some scenes in Pavonis were very hard to write, and I think that had a negative effect on those parts of the book. There's been nothing like that with this one - the writing itself has just flowed, and I'm really, really pleased with the way it's coming along. I have a good feeling about this one - I think people are going to like it a lot.