Third Draft and Beyond

It was a good February.

I finished my initial 3rd draft manuscript edit pass on the 23rd, likely the first time I completed a milestone before my soft deadline. I had thought the 3rd Point of View would take the longest, because I had massively altered its outline and arc, but it turns out I had already addressed most of those changes in draft 2.5.

I had planned to go back and address some egregious issues before calling the 3rd draft finished. But I was drained, and I desperately needed to switch to a different sort of task. I’m calling the 3rd draft finished, and this next pass something else. Draft 3.1, draft 3.5, and the 4th draft are strong candidates.

Reading my book

I’m currently reading my book in chapter order for the first time. I’ve read it scene by scene, of course, but always one PoV at a time. So while I’ve guessed that I’ve woven the PoVs together in a way that makes sense, I haven’t verified.

I think I’m taking too much time on each scene, catching line-level issues and rewriting large chunks by hand. I need to play the role of a reader, just noting large level issues (this doesn’t make sense, the pacing is slow/fast, this contradicts something earlier in the book, etc.). I’d like to finish this read-through by early/mid March, so speeding up would be good.

Formatting Tools

During my research, I realized that editors and agents might want my manuscript in a specific novel manuscript format.

My manuscript is in markdown currently, and I convert to epub and pdf via a convert.py script. I decided to try adding support for .odt (Open/Libre Office) and .docx (MS Word) with the necessary formatting for submission.

I’ve largely finished the former, starting with these instructions, then doing a significant amount of tweaking and debugging. But I probably have to submit in Word format. I might have to actually use Word to do this properly; converting to and from LibreOffice loses some formatting.

I’ll revisit if and when I need to.

Pen name

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing under a pen name for a while now. This month I made concrete steps toward that goal.

(There are at least a couple of famous people who share my name or variants of it; and I’d like to maintain some semblance of privacy and anonymity, should my book somehow become successful.)

Now I’m wondering if I should keep posting about writing, here and on social media, under my real name…

Developmental editing

My goal has been to send my manuscript out at the end of March, for beta reading and a developmental edit.

Last month I had settled on The Novelry’s Big Edit course. It has two sessions with editors, access to writing groups, and it’s way cheaper than a la carte editing. Why wouldn’t I go with that?

… Except, it doesn’t seem to include a full manuscript review. The first editorial session is let’s check the plan (BIG EDIT FIRST SESSION). That’s going over the plan, not the manuscript. The second is reviewing your pitch letter, synopsis and first three chapters. That’s less than 5% of my manuscript. I can still get a full manuscript review, with them or elsewhere, but that would be a separate service.

I found two independent developmental editors I like, but their prices are 2-3 times higher than I’d expected or hoped, and I likely won’t get their feedback for a number of months. I began wondering if I really wanted and needed a developmental edit.

After reading my initial 7 chapters, I was elated and full of myself: of course I don’t need one. I’ve got this. This book is awesome.

After reading further, I realized, oh yeah, I’m too close to this. I want to elevate the manuscript from good and decent to great. A professional would help me quickly identify what to focus on first.

Also, should I fix what I can by myself first, so they don’t point out the exact same issues I’m already aware of?

I plan to make my decision by the end of March, after reading the entire book.

Plans for March

As mentioned above, I’ll finish reading the book, then get the changes I’ve identified into the manuscript, outline, or my to-dos.

I’ll fix the most egregious issues I identified during the 3rd draft, and possibly the ones I found during the read-through.

I’ll send out a copy to a friend for feedback, and decide whether I want a developmental edit, and who to go with.

Also, I currently have a lot of information in each of my markdown scenes’ frontmatter. I’d love to write a tool that:

• lets me copy in a given scene’s outline into the summary section of the frontmatter (I’ve been doing this manually), and
• allows me to query all of the scenes’ for, say, location or cast of characters. It would be easier to see that I have a character show up once or twice and then disappear, or the like.

I have a trip planned in March, so I may take a productivity hit, but I’m hoping I’ll get even more work done in the airport and airplane.

Stats

I was certain I’d hit 165k words… I came close. I still want to add more description and worldbuilding detail, so I might flirt with 175k when I’m done with the book. On the positive side, while reading the book, I’ve been crossing out words and improving clarity. We’ll see where I get to.

Manuscript markdown files: 97
Manuscript words: 163747
Total markdown files: 475
Total words: 441131

I’ll streamline the outline for the rest of the book, then track more things related to conflict-, relationship-, and arc-intensity- levels and the like, so the beats will shrink then balloon again :)

End of Draft 2.5:  958 beats, 65 arcs, 93 scenes
End of August:    1088 beats, 70 arcs, 99 scenes
End of September: 1804 beats, 70 arcs, 95 scenes
End of October:   2139 beats, 63 arcs, 95 scenes
End of November:  2080 beats, 63 arcs, 95 scenes
End of December:  2063 beats, 63 arcs, 97 scenes
End of January:   2001 beats, 62 arcs, 97 scenes
End of February:  1865 beats, 63 arcs, 97 scenes