May 6, 2009
First Draft Vs. Second
So this month I’m really working to get Blood and Bone finished and ready to submit. I should be able to do it too, provided I stay focused and meet my daily goals.
For me, the second draft is much more work than the first. The first draft is a freer process. I might try to be sure I’m starting with an understanding of who my characters are and a vague idea of where the plot will go, but beyond that, I just sit down everyday (in theory) and write. I like to watch the story unfold and my characters grow as I go along.
The second draft is where I have to pull it all together. It’s not just a matter of polishing the prose, either. The second draft is where I have to add or delete subplots. In the case of Blood and Bone, I dropped a secondary romance that served no purpose and beefed up a villain to fuel the hero’s conflict.
The second draft is also where I double check details to make sure my educated guesses in the first draft are correct, and if they’re wrong, I need to come up with a write-around. In Blood and Bone a perfect example is some early research I did stated that a victim or victim’s family wouldn’t be informed when the perpetrator was paroled. Now, when I double checked this with the my wonderful cop friend who so patiently answers all my questions, he informed me that it was absolutely false. Now, I had a great blindside scene and confrontation for my hero and heroine based on that information, so I had to rework the whole thing while still maintaining the emotional impact. In the end though, I think the rewritten scene is far stronger than what I had originally.
So yes, the second draft is more difficult than the first, but the end result makes it all worth while.
Mood: Focused.
Music: This is Your Life – The Killers
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Best of luck with the second draft, Dawn. I’m right there with you!
May 8th, 2009 at 1:24 pmThanks!! You too!
May 8th, 2009 at 3:23 pm