… before you write the beginning. Much, much, much easier said than done!
When I started Dawn of Fire I may have finished a good deal of world building, but I had no idea where I was going with the story! I started writing and low and behold roughly six months later I had a first draft! I though it was great, I thought I was done!
Until I went back about ten months later and reread it… YIKES!!
It was not bad, per say, but in my rush to get the plot down, I missed a lot. So thus began ‘The Rewrite’ as I called it. I started from the beginning and by the time I was done the book had increased by about twelve thousand words. Awesome! Now I’m done!
Until I stopped to think ahead. This is a series… what happens in the next book, and the one after that?
So much to my chagrin I begin to lay out the plots of the books that will follow. It ended up being more fun than I thought, but for some reason when it comes to my writing, I don’t like to plan ahead. In most of the areas in my life, I plan ahead – sometimes too much. But when I started to plan out future books, I realized there was foreshadowing that needed to be added to Dawn of Fire.
Ugh, it’s exhausting sometimes!
In past posts I’ve talked about my desire for perfection, so you think I would plan ahead as a part of that right? Guess not!
But, that being said, now that I have taken the time to plan out the next few books – and even wrote the first draft of the series ending – it has seriously helped to advance my work on Dawn of Fire. Each time I dive back into its pages, I feel like I am elevating the story and the characters. It may be good, but can I make it better? The answer always seems to be ‘yes’.
There are lots of songs out there about not knowing the ending of the journey, which is great when it comes to life. But if you’re an all seeing author, it really does help to know where you are going, so that you can properly write where you are!
One response
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