Progress on ‘Restless’:

After sitting on ‘Restless’ for a few weeks, I gave it a read this weekend with my critical reviewer’s hat on. Overall, I’m still happy with it. The story is doing what I want it to do.

I decided to cut a few large sections. I cut the entire first scene, which might leave the reader in the dark about some of the main character’s motivations, but in a way that might work out. I also cut out a section of the scene that I initially liked when I wrote it, but upon a cooler reading found it to be an obvious button pusher bordering on melodrama.

With those scenes cut, I gave it another read and then added a very small section to help give the ending a little more believability. My last bit of criticism was the prose. I used so much passive voice that I’m now in the process of writing a whole new draft.

I think I did a good job of capturing the character’s voice in the story, but if you’re going to read a 10k story, it shouldn’t feel like 25k. Additionally, I’ve found with the redraft that I can leave a lot of the description out.

I’m beginning to feel like the part of me who wants to get story down and deal with conflict is completely different than the part of me who wants to write pretty words.
So I think I will always need a prose draft. And that’s ok. It lets me relax a little more when writing my first draft.

Progress on ‘War Dogs of Mars’:

I’m still working on pre-writing. I have a pretty descent looking outline taking shape. I should say outlines, because I build an outline for each POV character. I have four POVs in this story.

I’m taking my time with this phase. I usually don’t. I normally rush to get an outline, knowing it will change while I’m writing. I know this one will change as well, but I’m not really outlining the plot, I’m outlining the various character journeys and how these journeys will change and shape the characters and their relationships.

Fly by the seat of their pants writers probably think that sort of preplanning is crazy, but it does work for me on a certain level. What I’m attempting to do is get myself down to three drafts. The first draft will go to my experts. I’ll take their feedback and make revisions based on their suggestions and then write a new draft [this is more of a cut and paste rewrite].

That’s the draft I’ll likely get a workshop member to read. I might make some changes based on that reader’s feedback and then start the actual redraft. That’s the one I do for prose. I have a plan for the prose in this novel. The separate POVs will all have their own distinct style. Nothing too gimmicky, because honestly, I hate it when the writing isn’t somewhat transparent, but I also hate it when the characters aren’t distinguished in some way through the language and writing. I know, picky bastard, aren’t I?

So I’m making some progress.