Hi! Isabelle Knight here again! So this is another writing update! The past few days I have been working hard on revising book four of the Enchantria series. The first draft was a mess but now I feel like I’ve managed to turn that into something pretty good. I am currently at 15,208 words in the second draft of the book. Yay! The first draft was only about… let’s see, 56,269 words. So about 56,000. Now, I feel like this second draft is going to be way longer.
I have just finished with writing a really, really emotional scene in the book. I absolutely love it and it even got me tearing up a little bit. I really hope I don’t end up cutting that! I really hope I don’t! Because that would just be awful. I am into Act Two of my book right now. I am a pantser but my book does (vaguely/sort of) follow the Three Act Structure. Sort of. Act Two is gonna be way harder than Act One or Three. I don’t know about Three since I haven’t done that one yet. Act Two is just all the middle, all the sweat and tears that go into the middle of the book. And so many times I have just felt like the middle is just boring, missing a touch of action or a touch of magic, and just sagging. Sigh. I am not a fan of revision.
There is some good news. The revision has really made my book better and given my characters a lot of depth and emotion which is good because I was starting to feel like my main character was flat. Now she’s not. So that’s one good thing about revision despite how tedious it is.
Great. Just great. So this is the writing update for 5/30/2024. Why am I putting those two writing updates together? Well, I was too lazy. Okay, not really. But no one can really blame me for being tired after a whole day of writing, classes, and struggling to get Owlie out of a coffee can (long story). And I just didn’t have the time to get the featured image for that post so…
Anyway, this is a writing update so let’s get to it! Also, I’m pretty annoyed right now. Okay, so, I was revising book four and I needed a quote from book two. So, I went back to book two to find the quote. And then I realized something. That the book needed a lot of revising, and I was just so annoyed! Anyway, I had to cut 13,000 words from the book, rewrite book one, push the inciting incident to the beginning. The inciting incident didn’t happen until page forty on LibreOffice (about page eighty in a regular sized paperback). So, yeah. Now I have to revise book two. The pacing in the beginning was way off and there was nothing magical happening. It was just plain and boring. So that’s gonna need a rewrite. I think I might have some scenes I need to cut. I just hope that it doesn’t involve the scenes of the griffons (yes, there are griffons in book two!) because I absolutely love those. But I have this sinking feeling that some of those scenes will wind up getting cut.
Good news though! Summer vacation is coming up! So, I’ll have the whole ten days to write (I’m homeschooled and the work is not as demanding as regular school, so my summer vacation is only ten days long).
Anyway, I think that wraps it up for this writing update. Thanks for coming to my blog and also, the cover reveal for Enchantria: Warrior’s Daughter is coming out tomorrow along with the Book of the Month!
Isabelle
Oof, I feel you Isabelle! When I first started rewriting my first draft (I wrote it at nine and ten years old) I had to cut so much exposition and started with the inciting incident in the next draft. Actually, I cut pretty much everything from the first draft. I know you hate revising, lol, but it’s so important! Keep up the good work!