Writer Wednesday – Rewriting WIPs

This has been the year for FINALLY figuring out the plot gaps in my stagnant WIP.

FOR AN OMEGA

My first project of the year was the For an Omega series (previously Call Me…)

I decided to get Book 1: Lucky ready for submission, to try a new publisher, because my current publisher is really busy in terms of editing schedule. I can only reasonably release 2-3 books a year and I’d like to increase that, if possible. Though it will make me busier, I want to try. So, I thought Lucky was a great place to start, because it was completed, had a solid plan for the future of the series, and it was in really good condition.

…or so I thought.

Once I started prepping it for submission, I had one big problem: word count. The publisher I’d like to submit it to has a word count limit of 100k, which is a huge problem because Lucky is 200k. TWICE the word count.

So, I had to get creative. I began with a line read – this meant reading it on my computer and trying to find creative ways to reword long or wordy sentences, deleting paragraphs or entire chapters, and saving anything I cut for a potential short story. During this process, I actually got the book down to 120k, which was a massive achievement but still not enough.

Using my editing process, I got that down to 117k words, and then read it again from the start, to see if there was anything that stuck out as excess or that I’d mistakenly left in, related to the cut scenes. Well, it was a mess! I’d cut so much that it no longer flowed or made sense.

Back to the drawing board!

I took the first 90 pages and deleted them. I started from scratch and rewrote the entire 90 pages, then went through the rest of the book, looking for any conversations or mentions of the cut scenes. I also re-inserted some of the old cut scenes that really felt missed, when I first read it back.

As I was putting these new pages through my editing process, from scratch, I realised that all I really needed was to get EVEN MORE creative in my word choices. Sometimes this meant replacing 4 words with 1 or deleting an entire sentence that, when read as an entire paragraph, really wasn’t needed. Simple things like removing a person’s name from the start or end of dialogue added up, sometimes removing 20 words from the entire book; removing dialogue tags from the end of a paragraph or in the middle of a long speech could also cut another 5-20 words just from that pagagraph.

In the end, I got the story down to 103,303 words.

I intended to go straight into reading it back, to get those last pesky 3k removed (if possible), but as I was already deep in the world-building and I had a new plan for the plot of Book 2, I figured it made more sense to start writing that first. I hate submitting to a publisher with a book that’s part of a series, with only one book written. I know that if the book gets accepted, they might want to publish the first two close together, to make the most of any hype there might be. So I decided to write Book 2 as a bit of security and time-saving for the future. This way, if I did get accepted, I could say that I already had the second book ready to go.

So, I started writing book 2 and to my surprise, I started it on the 10th and finished it on the 18th. That’s the fastest I’ve ever written a book, with my previous best being The Boys Who Didn’t Love Me (recently renamed The Death of Rowan Copry) which I wrote in 18 days.

With Book 2 complete, I thought I’d stay in the zone and start Book 3. It didn’t flow as easily, but I found that working without a secured plot made it easier to adapt to the plot and the characters. I’m currently 1/3 of the way through it and it looks promising. Depending on how long it takes to finish – I’m already starting to feel a little mental burn-out – I might take a week off to read something unrelated, then come back and work on Book 4. I have 6 books planned for this series, but that’s already changed from 12 to 8 to 6, so it all depends on how the characters behave and how the plots develop. I have a solid plan for Book 6, but Books 4 and 5 are very vague at the moment, so it may be a case of having to end at Book 3 until inspiration strikes.

Either way, I feel like I’ve made a really good start and as soon as I’m finished with Book 3, I’m going to read Books 1-3 in a row, editing as I go along, then submit Book 1 to the publisher and keep my fingers crossed.

LIFEBLOOD

My next project will be Lifeblood (previously Nynnyaw)

I actually didn’t intend to work on this project so early in the year, but as I was writing new scenes for Lucky, I came upon a thought that made complete sense for Lifeblood. I ended up writing a few notes, then forgot about it. A week later, I had a weird dream that I actually remembered in the morning (unusual for me). By looking at my notes for Lifeblood, the dream made total sense, and I like to think that the dream was just my brain building on my previous notes.

So, I had a new plan for the book, which will mean rewriting the ENTIRE first book of the trilogy, which is only a slight problem because Books 1 and 2 are supposed to be complete! Book 3 is already started, but so far the only things I’m intending to keep are the characters, names, back story and their future fate. What happens to the current completed books is a mystery, right now. I might keep parts or move scenes around. Who knows?

THE ELEMENTALS

My next project after that is to revamp the Evanders series into a single novel called the Elementals. I want to make it more of a 16-21 year age range, rather than the 12-15 it’s currently at. I also want to make it a bit darker, a little more like The Boys Who Didn’t Love Me (now The Death of Rowan Copry) – more older teen, a little gritty and I’d like to remove some of the characters. The original Evanders has about 8 central characters, so I’m planning to limit that to 4-5 and change the sequence of events.