I have so many high expectations for this novel, even though it is my first one. I want so much to come out of this experience, that if I only sell one copy (possibly to my mother, lol) I will be happy. Hell, if I only print one copy and put it on my bookshelf for myself, I’ll be happy. I want to be able to say that I accomplished that one thing in life. I pray hard about this all the time, for this to be a great experience for me. For me to build a fan base, for people to say “Hey, you wrote………” and I say “Yes, I did! :)” Lol….yea, that’s my dream. Call it whatever you want, but everyone has that one thing they want to accomplish out of life. I hope this is the one thing for me. 🙂
I must say I am having an awesome time charting these scenes out. It has sparked so many more ideas. I am so glad that I didn’t go with my first rewrite and sat down and talked to some people and realized that I could make this so much better if I just sit down and really dissect each part of the book. I did a full analysis of where my book was at that point and realized, it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Now that I am going back and charting the scenes and really getting into it, I have seen it in a totally different light. I have a few more scenes to go before I go back and read through all my scenes, edit and add where necessary. Then and only then will I go back and do an edit and rewrite. I am hoping that by the beginning of the summer, I will be ready for a few test readers. Can’t wait for the next step in this process!
I know the feeling of wanting so much from your first novel. I live with that feeling every day.
Much like you, I finished mine and while at first I was happy and had some people tell me it was good I wasn’t completely satisfied. At least you’ve taken the time to make sure it’s at its best. I made the mistake of rushing and I burned a few book querying bridges with a sub-par product.
I found what I was lacking, what needed fixing and I did it and now I have something that is at least 20 times better than what it used to be. Since doing that I’ve only received good feedback from my beta readers, but I’m still waiting on one of them, one with a critical eye on scene flow to give me the full feedback.
I’ve been and still am where you are and the one thing I do recommend is taking time off when you’ve finished one stage of your re-work. Write something else and focus your mind on it, otherwise you’ll most likely miss things when you edit. You’ll have gone through your stuff so many times you’ll start to gloss over things. Taking a break is sometimes the most important thing you need to do, to get a new and fresh perspective.
I’d love to know what genre you’re writing. Mine is Urban Fantasy, a market I know is pretty difficult to get into lately. Thankfully for me I don’t have even a page’s worth of vampire romance, so I’m good and happy hahaha
Lovely post and I can’t wait to know more!
I don’t really do scene charting but I do write a full outline, first in general and then as I get into it, I start breaking the outline to know what bits go in which chapters. But we all think differently.
I’ve started a guide on novel writing on my site and my next article’s on the outline and I’d love to include a bit on what you mean by scene charting. Could you explain it a bit further for me?
Sure! My novel is urban fiction (best way I can describe it lol), but I have considered getting into the murder mystery genre also. I have some ideas brewing for that as well. What I get from scene charting is it’s basically like an outline, but it’s more like a grid that lays out the chapter, scene, location, time, POV and characters involved. Then there is a box off to the side that basically lets you summarize each scene. I think depending on how much detail you put into an outline, it could possibly elaborate more. It definitely helped me I prefer to lay everything out on the table. When I was writing the first draft, I felt like I was putting things in the wrong place, or getting things mixed up. I should have done this prior to starting to write my first draft, but I was so anxious to get it on the computer, I didn’t really think about it. Once I started going over things and realized they didn’t make sense, I took a step back and was like “hey, you need to sort all this out first, then move forward!” So, that’s what I did! 🙂 Thanks so much for reading! I’ll definitely keep blogging about my journey through writing my novel!
I made the same mistake with my first. I wrote straight from my head without any planning. The result was so inconsistent in tone, prose and pretty much everything else.
I wrote the second one with an outline and a plan and it was beyond the first in every single way. It made it seem amateurish to be honest. So I made an outline for the first after it was already written and through it found and fixed everything that was wrong with it.
It’s why now the outline is extremely important for me. It’s also why I’m taking extra care to make my next novel writing guide issue as good as it can be, because it’s all about this!
Thanks for telling me about the charting, I’ll definitely get it in there and of course give you the credit 🙂
You’ll sell two, because I’m buying it too.
Lol thanks for the advanced support!! 🙂