I just finished the second draft of the book I’ve been writing. Overall, I’m a lot happier with the second draft than with the first one. However…and that’s where things become tricky. For starters, I think the end chapter of my second draft is a lot weaker than the first draft. Yet because of the way my story has changed, I can no longer use the first draft ending. I’ll have to rewrite that part. Oh well.
Then there’s the whole dialogue versus narrative debate. For the most part, I avoided information dumping in the second draft. That’s a good thing except that the further in I got, the more my story began to occur in the dialogue. I’m sure that makes no sense – how I can avoid info. dumping while increasing the quantity of dialogue? I’ll have to find a way to change that.
On the flip side of things, I cut nearly 10,000 words from my first to second draft. That would be a good thing except for the fact that my novel is short even for a children’s book. As I add appropriate descriptions, thoughts and whatnot, the story may increase again so that the final draft will be a decent length (no, I don’t mean to imply that I’m only writing three drafts).
Right now, the biggest problem I see is the shift in age of my main character. The first draft makes him and adult, but I’m writing for children. So I changed the character’s age to 12 because I don’t think someone who’s 10 would want to read a book about some adult. Well, the writing doesn’t even convince me that he’s 12. So that needs a lot of reworking as well.
But enough of my book.
I somehow stumbled upon a book whose title I’ve spent the last 5+ years trying to remember. Something on the internet directed me to the word “selkie.” That may sound strange, but when I explain it will make more sense. Many years ago, I read a book that I loved. What could I remember about that book?
- the cover had a shadow on a shoreline
- the book dealt with an unknown man showing up
- an animal similar to the seal played a huge part in the book
- some Halloween type of holiday featured as well
I loved the book, but back then I hadn’t yet considered the importance of remembering book titles, meaning that I didn’t know the title down the road. Well, I saw the word “selkie” on the internet and thought, “That might be what the seal-creature was.” I followed it to Wikipedia and ended up with a list of books that have selkie. And what book did I rediscover? “A Stranger Came Ashore.”
Yay for the internet! It was really great luck to stumble back on that book after all these years. I had nearly given up after my last attempt to find it. Suffice it to say I’ve begun rereading the book and still enjoy it.
But I’ve bored you out of somebody’s misery, so that’ll be all for now.