Fourth Draft progress

I’m over the worst of my jet lag from my trip to Japan. I still woke up at 2am this morning, but I’ve been up and productive, so I’ll take it.

I’ve finished reading the book. And I started the fourth draft. I’m going to try to finish this draft pass by the end of April, though that may be optimistic. More details below.

Reading my book

I focused too much on line- and paragraph-level issues, editing as I go, when all of the advice said to read the book at a high level. But I now have a bunch of marked up PDFs that I can go through.

I am getting a feel for the book as a whole, and its weaknesses overall. I’ll start attacking those.

Also, staying hunched over, writing on an iPad for hours at a time, can be hazardous to your mid-back. I’ve been stretching, using massage balls, and improving my ergonomics.

More Tooling

I’m focused on multiple things in this draft:

1. Resolve any differences between the main outline and the scene summaries, and make sure the manuscript matches.
2. Get the changes from my read-through into the manuscript.
3. Deal with any to-dos that I’ve left myself.
4. Add description for reader immersion.

The first goal required a lot of manual work. Enough of a pain in the ass that I’d either avoid making changes, or I’d find any excuse to procrastinate.

My new frontmatter tool allows me to sync the frontmatter of each scene with the outline. Now I’m actually excited about updating my outline, knowing the automation will handle the aggravating tasks.

Editing + Developmental editing

My fourth draft has quickly ballooned in scope. Now I’ve got to finish it before I can send the manuscript out. In the meantime, I’ve been doing more research on developmental editors. (I even contacted one, but crickets.)

I debated timing: if I send the manuscript out sooner, I may get a lot of feedback about issues I already know about. But their feedback may highlight fundamental structural flaws which I’d like to find earlier. I’m planning on sending the manuscript out after this draft is finished (end of April?).

Also, I wish I’d read Immersion & Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling months ago. The sections on immersion and description have given me direction on how to improve my prose.

I want to re-start the fourth draft from Chapter 1, to add more immersion, and to revisit the early scene outlines with my new tools, but that way lies madness. I’ll continue the fourth draft from where I’ve left off, and leave any more fixes for the fifth draft.

Plans for April

1. Get as far as possible in the fourth draft. (I’d love to finish it by end of month, but I’d have to aim at 2 chapters per day, and some of these scenes need significant rewrites.)
2. Find a developmental editor and schedule a developmental edit.

Stats

I’m still monitoring the manuscript words way too closely. These will likely balloon as I add description, and professional edits are priced by the word, so that isn’t completely ridiculous, but I should probably stop worrying about them so much. Easier said than done.

Manuscript markdown files: 96
Manuscript words: 162370
Total markdown files: 479
Total words: 382937

The number of beats continues to shrink as I tighten my outline.

End of Draft 2.5:      958 beats, 65 arcs, 93 scenes
End of August 2024:    1088 beats, 70 arcs, 99 scenes
End of September 2024: 1804 beats, 70 arcs, 95 scenes
End of October 2024:   2139 beats, 63 arcs, 95 scenes
End of November 2024:  2080 beats, 63 arcs, 95 scenes
End of December 2024:  2063 beats, 63 arcs, 97 scenes
End of January 2025:   2001 beats, 62 arcs, 97 scenes
End of Third Draft:    1865 beats, 63 arcs, 97 scenes
End of March 2025:     1630 beats, 65 arcs, 96 scenes