I’ve Just Started Draft 2.2 of ‘Project E’ and Feel Very Positive About It

Well, after a slightly longer holiday than I had intended I have now finished reading through and marking draft 2 of my novel WIP, known to all but the chosen few as ‘Project E’ (real title TBA) and am ready to begin work on draft 2.2.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘what’s draft 2.2?’

Well, I like each of my drafts to accomplish very specific purposes:

Draft 0 – not a full draft, just loose bits and pieces I write to get to know characters etc.

Draft 1 – Tell the story from start to finish. Doesn’t have to be perfect, just get it done.

Draft 2 – Tell the story from start to finish, this time fixing all plot holes, shallow characters, etc. so the story is good.

Draft 3 – Polish the writing style.

As a consequence, I might sometimes have to write more than one of each draft. So at the moment I’m on the second draft 2.  

I’m pleased to say the first draft 2 is actually a lot better than I thought it was when I was writing it. There is definitely still more work to be done but I’m delighted to say that the story was pretty coherent and accomplished everything I wanted it to. No obvious plot holes or anything and I think I successfully eradicated some of the tropes that were annoying me in the first draft. My main gripe was the pacing, particularly in the second half of the story, which felt a bit rushed at times.

This is okay though. It gives me a bit of scope to expand the romantic sub-plot and the rivalry between my protagonist and minor antagonist. Besides, I would like to build slightly on the word count (73,886 words) so all of these small improvements should complement each other quite well and be easily achievable.

The writing style will also need thoroughly polished but I’ll focus more on that in draft 3.

If I really go for it, I might even have this book licked by next year. That’s a trifle ambitious given that I do most of my work on the bus into work but I think it might just be doable.