{"id":516,"date":"2011-03-13T02:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T02:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/2011\/03\/13\/the-second-drafta-stranger-came-ashore-2\/"},"modified":"2018-11-04T18:15:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T18:15:37","slug":"the-second-drafta-stranger-came-ashore-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tdspeirs.com\/oldblog\/2011\/03\/13\/the-second-drafta-stranger-came-ashore-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Draft\/A Stranger Came Ashore"},"content":{"rendered":"
I just finished the second draft of the book I\u2019ve been writing. Overall, I\u2019m a lot happier with the second draft than with the first one. However\u2026and that\u2019s 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\u2019ll have to rewrite that part. Oh well.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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Then there\u2019s the whole dialogue versus narrative debate. For the most part, I avoided information dumping in the second draft. That\u2019s a good thing except that the further in I got, the more my story began to occur in the dialogue. I\u2019m sure that makes no sense – how I can avoid info. dumping while increasing the quantity of dialogue? I\u2019ll have to find a way to change that.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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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\u2019s 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\u2019t mean to imply that I\u2019m only writing three drafts).<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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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\u2019m writing for children. So I changed the character\u2019s age to 12 because I don\u2019t think someone who\u2019s 10 would want to read a book about some adult. Well, the writing doesn\u2019t even convince me that he\u2019s 12. So that needs a lot of reworking as well.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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But enough of my book.<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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I somehow stumbled upon a book whose title I\u2019ve spent the last 5+ years trying to remember. Something on the internet directed me to the word \u201cselkie.\u201d 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?<\/o:p><\/div>\n
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