The first draft of my Author Quest submission is starting to shape up. Last week I came up with a much more exciting beginning to the story. With that in place, I’ve had to rework a lot of the other pieces I’d already written but it’s been well worth it. Everything is now reading a lot better.
The main thing that I added was a new character named Keefe. Well, he isn’t really new per se, as I had planned on using him later in the story. But originally the opening was very bland, full of a lot of exposition and very little dialogue. Bringing Keefe into the story right from the beginning has given me a lot of room to draw out character and move things along without having to be bogged down in explaining everything. Of course, adding him to the beginning has meant I’ve had to change a lot, which has been a really good thing for the story.
So with that said, I originally had four sections which I wanted to keep but knew needed very much to be fixed. I have since “fixed” three of them. The revisions are by no means perfect, and will themselves needed to be worked on, but the story is now flowing much better since I have reworked what I have. I’m also currently up to 6 sections and just over 4000 words (although I’m not sure where the word count will be once I make the necessary revisions to that remaining unfixed section).
One thing I’m not really sure about yet is whether to submit my story in chapters or not. So far I’ve just been separating the different sections and not worrying about it, but I have identified one place where I could easily put in a chapter break. I’m not too worried about this right now though; I’ll just have to decide when I’m getting closer to submitting this story.
An Acquaintance with Letters 