https://escapewindow.com/tags/second-draft/ Recent content in second draft on Escape(Window) Hugo -- gohugo.io en Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-08-31-august-in-writing/ Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-08-31-august-in-writing/ Finished Draft 2.5 A little over halfway through the month, I completed draft 2.5! Which I was pretty happy about. On to Draft 3 I updated my scripts: I added epub support to my conversion script. I added a script to parse all the Questions, Promises, Reveals, and Goals out of my outline, so I can: spread out the dissemination of information, and ensure I don’t unintentionally leave any questions unanswered. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-08-18-draft-2.5-complete/ Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-08-18-draft-2.5-complete/ Just a little more than a year after completing the first draft. A few days, or a couple months, or 8+ months overdue, depending on which of my soft deadlines you go by. As usual, I found the final climactic scenes of the third POV slower going than the middle scenes, mainly because it’s easier to tell when it’s not working. I rewrote and re-outlined a couple scenes and wrote slower than I wanted to. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-07-31-july-in-writing/ Wed, 31 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-07-31-july-in-writing/ Tackling the problematic 3rd POV The 3rd POV has been the most problematic of the three. This month, I seriously considered dropping it from the book, and not for the first time. The outline for this POV changed so significantly from the previous draft that most of the previous scenes weren’t worth keeping. As a result, a lot of this felt like a first draft again. Writing completely new scenes. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-06-30-june-in-writing/ Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-06-30-june-in-writing/ Good progress I’m two scenes away from finishing Draft 2.5’s POV2. I’m a little over 72% done by scene count, and that’s after I cut two finished scenes. (To improve the story, reduce redundancy, and reduce word count.) My writing seems to slow to a crawl when I’m writing the climactic battle scenes. But I figured out how to get them to work, and what needs to change in earlier scenes to add impact. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-06-01-may-in-writing/ Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-06-01-may-in-writing/ Good progress From May 25: At this point in Draft 1, I could tell that POV 2 needed some major structural overhauls. At this point in Draft 2.5, I can tell POV 2’s prose needs some rewriting to work, but overall the structure seems to be holding up. Progress :) I wrote 18 scenes in 31 days, not my preferred pace but I’m getting there. I also reduced the total number of scenes down to 96. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-04-30-april-in-writing/ Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-04-30-april-in-writing/ Still slowly but surely From April 23: Since then, I edited 7 scenes from the 2nd POV, bringing me to 37 scenes out of 98 completed for Draft 2.5. At this average rate, I’ll finish sometime in August. But if I keep up the scene per day from the past week, I may finish at the end of July. First person I also dabbled a bit with converting the 1st POV from third-person limited, past-tense into first person, past-tense. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-03-31-march-in-writing/ Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-03-31-march-in-writing/ Slowly but surely I’m drafting again. Slower than I want to be, but I think the quality is higher. (Sometimes I’ve gone back to my first draft to rewrite a scene, and I’ve ended up throwing it out completely. Better to start from scratch on those than try to rescue any words.) The new structure seems to be working so far. The alarm bells that went off during the first draft, warning me that the story just isn’t working, have been relatively quiet. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-02-29-february-in-writing/ Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-02-29-february-in-writing/ I’m back My github activity shows I’m out of my December/January productivity slump :) One outline to rule them all In February I combined all of my small single-arc plot tables into one massive table spanning the entire book. While this was challenging, I now find the story exploding in my mind, a non-stop chain reaction of ideas. I can see the book in its entirety at a high level, and I can dig down to subtle details. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-01-31-january-in-writing/ Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2024-01-31-january-in-writing/ Fixing all the arcs In January, I continued drilling down into each of the arcs’ beats and structure, moving between index cards, spreadsheets, markdown tables, and good old bullet points. (Switching between these media also served as a way for me to review my previous work and ideas, often sparking ideas on how to fix or improve the old structures and scene ideas.) A number of the old Draft 2. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-12-31-complex-plotting/ Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-12-31-complex-plotting/ (December in Writing) My third POV is re-outlined in broad strokes, and I’m working on drilling down into the scene level. It does feel like the story and characters are coming back alive for me. However, most of December has been a struggle in writing productivity and focus. I have been improving my tools and outlines, so I’ll focus this blog post on those. GoodNotes 5 and templates I had purchased GoodNotes 5 for my iPad some time ago. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-12-01-november-in-writing/ Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-12-01-november-in-writing/ Summary I wrote and/or edited 28,786 words for NaNoWriMo before stopping failing. I struggled with my writing for two weeks, then a conversation with Finn helped point me in the right direction. I’m back to the outlining drawing board to try to solve some of the structural issues I’m hitting that are bogging down the second draft. (I could add the outlining wordcount to the month’s total, but I’m still nowhere near 50k. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-10-31-october-in-writing/ Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-10-31-october-in-writing/ Progress Summary The second draft is going slower than I want it to, but I’m making good progress. I now have a pretty good Act 1 for each of the three arcs, a beginning that will help propel each story into the second act. I’m not certain if writing the scenes in chapter order was the best idea at this stage – the first two POVs have gone fairly smoothly, but the problematic third POV kept slowing me down. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-10-01-september-in-writing/ Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-10-01-september-in-writing/ I had planned to tackle the 2nd draft of the 1st POV in September. I didn’t realize how much I had riding on this second draft. I wanted to: fix the overall structure of all three POV arcs, tightening them, increasing conflict, making sure they culminate in a satisfying climax; add description and depth where I had glossed over or skipped it the first time around, including many characters’ names; improve the prose, removing any modern day language, terminology, turns of phrase; adding depth to the world by the way characters speak and think; get into each major character’s head, so I would know how each would react, in specifics, to any given situation; have a better understanding of my world; improve my maps; be able to describe the architecture and fashion and currency and units of measurement; go further in depth in the religions, beliefs, rituals, superstitions, parables, ghost stories, … That’s a lot for a draft. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-08-31-august-in-writing/ Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-08-31-august-in-writing/ As mentioned earlier, I finished my first draft on August 15. I’ve spent the last couple weeks re-outlining my first POV, tightening the story, keeping the mystery intact by making sure every suspect has something that they’re hiding. In September I want to write the second draft for the first POV and possibly re-outline the 2nd POV. Re-outlining I’m going about this using a number of methods… I have an unpublished blog post draft about this. https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-08-18-convert.py/ Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://escapewindow.com/blog/2023-08-18-convert.py/ I’ve started thinking about the book as a whole again. I’m rewriting the elevator pitch / logline / controlling idea first, so I can easily tell if a scene doesn’t fit before I write it. I have this long laundry list of fixes in Things that I need to get to. A new map that fits the story. Non-placeholder names. A stronger sense of progression. I plan on re-outlining the book before diving into the second draft.