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Hello and welcome back to my newsletter! October has flown by in a whirlwind, and I can hardly believe another month is upon us. Things have been a bit too chaotic for my liking, but I'm hoping the pace slows down for November!This month in "A Writing Journey: When Shadows Fall", we will explore the drafting process. It can take many rewrites and revisions to get a story ready for editing, and for a discovery writer, this step is especially important! Previous newsletters and prior segments of my writing journey can be found here at my website's exclusive email archive. As always, a bonus kitty picture (or two!) is waiting for you at the end of this newsletter. 😊 |
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October has been a crazy month. I decided to teach a drawing class at the school where I work and planning it has been a gong show! Nearly every step of the process proved troublesome, from scheduling to materials to enrolment. However, the class itself has been loads of fun, and the students seem to be enjoying themselves. While I will continue to teach the class throughout November and into December, I am hoping that with most of the prep work done it won't eat into my time quite as badly now!
What writing time I had was divvied between going over the edits from my editor and trying to find cover art. The edits have been going well—I've powered through roughly 70% of the feedback I received, and have been pleased with how polished the book feels thanks to the suggested edits!
Cover art, on the other hand, has not gone as smoothly. My tendency toward indecision and hesitancy has made the process difficult, as I waffle between options and worry about what route will be the best fit. My top choice was a book cover company named Miblart, but I kept chickening out of committing to the decision.
I recently posted on a Reddit forum for hiring artists in hopes of finding an option I could feel confident about, but did not have much success. Although I received a flood of responses, I quickly realized how many people will throw their name out even when they lack the experience, skills, or style asked for. Despite a few promising responses, in the end, Miblart feels like a safer and simpler route. As such, I've decided to finally bite the bullet and commit to getting my cover art done through their platform.
As a bonus, I was able to snap some photos to use as my author pic when I publish When Shadows Fall. Thanks to a willing father who took dozens of pictures and traipsed around the yard with me looking for the perfect spot, I now have a handful of good options to use in the book. Here are a couple of my favourites:
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Unsurprisingly, we had some help from my parents' very sweet kitty, Brandy Bean, who followed us around for the whole photo shoot hoping for love!
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The first goal is to get the ball rolling with Miblart for cover art, and work with the artist as needed to get the cover designed. I also need to write an author's bio for a writer's event I have been invited to in February, where I will get a chance to read an excerpt from When Shadows Fall!
The rest of the month will be dedicated to finishing the edits for When Shadows Fall so I can send it back to my editor for proofreading. I have to finish going through her suggestions and making changes based on her feedback, and then I hope to read the book out loud to make sure everything is in tip top shape before committing to the proofreading phase!
I also hope to dip my toes into formatting once the book is ready for proofreading, and focus a bit more on marketing so that I can continue to grow this subscriber list.
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Miss the previous segments? |
Part 4:Rewrite, Revise, Repeat
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As we discussed last month, feedback is an essential part of the writing process, however, it is only beneficial when it is paired with revision. Once a writer has identified problems in their story thanks to input from their readers (and from their own observations of course!), they must then make changes to the story to address these issues.
There is a vast range of problems a story may have, such as unconvincing or unsatisfying character arcs, pacing that is too slow or too fast, plots that don't make sense or feel contrived, lack of stakes, lack of compelling motivation for the characters, and so on.
When I think about the changes I make to my books, I usually divide it into four categories: rewrites, revisions, edits, and proofreads. Although there is some overlap between these categories, each performs a different function. For today, we will focus on the rewriting/revision part of the process.
A rewrite is where I start the book over from scratch and, as the name implies, rewrite the entire book. I start a fresh file on my computer and save it as a new draft of the book, for example, WSF D2 (second draft of When Shadows Fall). I keep the old draft open for reference as I write, and though I may keep many sections the same and even copy and paste some lines, for the most part, I make myself retype the entire story. This allows the book to change and grow in ways I might not have considered, even though the content often ends up being quite similar. It also allows me to work in foreshadowing and cut out redundant or unnecessary information as I go.
A revision, on the other hand, is where I duplicate my last draft and make changes directly to the text. I may go through the whole story, making small tweaks as needed, or I might jump straight to whatever problems I know need addressing. For example, if readers found a particular character too bland, I might focus exclusively on that scenes, rewriting them to make the character more interesting. Or perhaps I've made changes to the magic system or world-building, so I'll go in and revise those elements specifically.
It is important for rewrites and revisions to come before serious editing, as you don't want to waste your time polishing something that may end up being rewritten or deleted. Just as you wouldn't want to paint a sculpture before you'd finished carving it, it is important to get the ideas and story structure sorted out first. The drafting process is a time to address the fundamental issues in the story, starting with the biggest issues and working your way down to smaller problems and plot holes as you go.
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I wrote three full drafts for When Shadows Fall, and did at least that many revisions. (To be honest, it gets quite hard to separate what is a revision and what is an edit, so I don't have an accurate count on this!)
In the second draft, in addition to adding scenes and fleshing out the world-building, I changed the story from third-person (she went to her house) to first-person (I went to my house). Upon rereading my first draft, I found third person didn't lend itself well to Ara's story, as it put too much distance between Ara and the reader. Her fears and struggles felt less relatable when described as happening to someone else, while first person puts the reader right in Ara's head, allowing them to experience what she experiences.
In the third draft, I focused on adding depth to an important character who didn't have a compelling enough arc in the story. I also gave Ara more agency and more successes, as some beta readers had expressed disappointment that she hadn't grown as much as they'd hoped. I made heavy changes to the ending, increasing the tension (which one reader felt was lacking) and rearranging events in a way that each big moment could be effective without taking away from something else. I also added an epilogue to lay some groundwork for the sequel.
Once I got to revisions, I focused a lot of attention on the ending, as I finetuned the order of events, focused more on characters who had been forgotten by the plot, improved upon the climax as the solution I'd used in previous drafts felt too contrived, and added new concepts to the world building.
Of course, the ending wasn't the only thing that required revision. There were several other sections that saw a lot of work as I continued to make changes to the story. One of the biggest changes was to emotionry, the machinery used in the story which is powered by human emotion. I always loved the concept, but it took a LOT of reworking to get it to a point I felt satisfied with. In fact, we will be taking a closer look at that process next month...
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Stay tuned for Part 5: Problem Solving and Despair
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With preparation for the drawing class eating up most of my time, it was hard to fit in adding new art to my Redbubble store. However, I did find time for three new drawings in the manga profile style I've been enjoying recently, and for the final week, I used a re-colour of a previous work that I had waiting in the wings.
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Clicking on an image will open the sticker version of that drawing. Scroll down and click "view this design on +(number) products" to see all available products for that design! |
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Bonus Round: Here is some of the concept art I did for the When Shadows Fall cover!
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Watching: I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed with my to-do lists, and so haven't had much energy for playing games, reading, or getting invested in fictional TV/movies.
Instead, I've been trying some light reality TV shows to unwind before bed, namely "Is it Cake?" (a baking show that has contestants trying to fool judges with their life-like cakes), YouTube snippets of British shows like "Taskmaster" and "Would I Lie to You?", and most recently, "Old Enough!", a Japanese reality show where toddlers are entrusted with solo tasks and errands. The episodes are short, cute, and funny, and I am surprised at how invested I get in the success or failure of three-year olds!
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Thank you once again for following me on this incredible journey. If you've made it through all that yakking to the end, then you deserve some snuggly kitty pictures!
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This is what you might call the literal lap of luxury! |
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#11 1305 23rd Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan, S4S 3S4, Canada |
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