Brainstorming Book Two

 

Well, I managed to rewrite more of The Dragon  Hunters this week. I'm up to 25% rewritten. I was hoping for 30% this week, but I ran out of energy and time.

 

The big thing that happened this week was a critical brainstorming session that I had with my writer friend Patrick Tracy. We spoke for two hours about the book. I'm re-dreaming the dream, that is, changing certain parts to make them more exciting. At this point I'm making a certain segment that was fairly tame into a really nasty part that shows a lot about the world and the characters. I had ideas in my mind already, but Pat helped me refine them and just talking about them was really helpful. When you speak out loud about the ideas they become more clear and concrete. You also see where you need to do more work. I highly recommend brainstorming with a writer friend to improve your work.

 

The overall story arc has not changed, but how events progress, the setting, and the execution is changing big time. The manuscript I have is old and I was doing a lot of point of view shifting in the same chapter when I wrote it over five years ago. I was writing the third person omniscient then and I've abandoned that to write third person limited. The reader only knows what that point of view character knows. It works well, but with this story I'm needing to break away and show a few other POV characters from time to time. Not that much, but often enough.

 

I will reveal that the big villain, Draglune, King of the Dragons has a point of view chapter in this book. As well as a few other new characters--at least three more. None of them have a lot of POV chapters, just a little to give the reader a taste of what's going on with them. I think it'll work well.

 

The story is progressing well and the tension is attaining very high levels now. I was worried about a certain character's motivation, but now I have that all figured out. Also, the villains in the book have had their story altered a little as well, making it even nastier.

 

This is a very complex part of the series and I'm really into showing the reader in small doses what's really happening. There's so much going on behind the scenes and the stakes have really risen now. The fate of the world is at stake and is being influenced by seemingly small events.

 

Also, writing a sequel is a challenge because you have to recap a little of what has gone before, but you don't want to overdo it. I think that's going well, and I'm bringing up certain information only when necessary or when a character would really think about what happened recently.

 

I'm going to plow ahead and go for 35-40% rewritten by July 13. My goal is to have the whole book rewritten by the end of August. I'll get the first part of the manuscript to Patrick before that, then after Patrick is done reading it, I'll get it to my writer buddy Brad Beaulieu. Once Brad's comments are done, I'll do another big rewrite, clean up the text, then get it to my editor. I don't have a deadline yet, but I think it'll be late 2008. I hope.

I'm meeting with my editor the second week of August, and hope to have lots of the book done by then.

Good luck with your own writing and don't be afraid to cut scenes that don't work. Just delete them and start over!

 

Best wishes,

 

Paul Genesse, Author and Editor

Author of  The Golden Cord

Book One of the Iron Dragon Series