Sunday, 17 November 2019

Monkey Off The Back

At last, the fourth draft of my novel is done.

It's been a monster. By far the largest draft yet, in the end it clocks in at 145,000 words (which roughly corresponds to 580 pages) - and in spite of that there are still little bits that I've missed. The fifth draft, which I'll probably begin to write in early January, will be where these missing sections are added.

I started this draft in March this year, having spent some time thinking about the various plot points. There was a significant reduction in the amount of POV characters, as to do justice to all of those storylines would require a figure closer to 300,000 words - this time, Chris Ballard, Mark Bradshaw, Jessica Edwards, Tomer Eyrin and Eva Renet do not have plots from their perspective (two of them - I won't say which two - will very definitely have POV chapters in future instalments, while others will be major supporting characters). All of these characters have undergone changes. Chris is no longer the ideal, flawless leader from previous versions; Mark isn't a bad guy with no redeeming characteristics. Jessica (renamed in this draft) is a stablehand and Eva a domestic maidservant. Tomer Eyrin no longer has any presence at all.

Writing it has come on in bursts. After a slow start I hit my stride in April, which carried on through to the beginning of June. From then until October, though, my progress was slow. It wasn't until last month that things really kicked in to high gear. Since then I've been writing at a high pace, averaging about 1500 words a day - and the closer I came to completion, the more I wrote.

1 comment:

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Monkey Off The Back

At last, the fourth draft of my novel is done. It's been a monster. By far the largest draft yet, in the end it clocks in at 145,00...