The Completed Second Draft

The Completed Second Draft Manuscript

One of, or perhaps the only upside of still hacking up lungs, has been a disinclination to do any work outside. This has now put me in the unexpected position of having completed revision of the manuscript into its second draft.

Go me!

It isn’t going to be simple plain sailing, though, as the first read-through and revision made plain. Unless I want to go through an almost infinite number of read-throughs and revisions, I’ll need to be a bit more organized in the attempt next time.

What to Look out for?

• • I wasn’t overly concerned during the initial write-up about the layout of the house, so now I need to be certain that rooms are consistently described in their location and layout as well as their presentation.
  • Also, it is entirely possible that the physical descriptions of the characters might have changed, so I need to be more attentive in the next read through to that as well.
  • It’s possible that the first and last chapters may not work as intended, perhaps they don’t open and close the story as well as I’d like, or perhaps they read like first draft attempts because, well … that’s what they are.
  • During the initial draft I broke up the chapters by major ‘plot points,’ but this felt too cumbersome during the first read through so I’ve now tried breaking it up by scenes. It is very possible that some scenes don’t work so well as stand-alone chapters and they may need to be reincorporated.

    For instance, the dinner party was originally a long four-scene chapter: the meal, the intrigue, the drinks and then the staff clean-up. Breaking the staff clean-up into its own separate chapter chapter makes sense, but having removed the intrigue – because it was seemed convoluted, unnecessary, and really didn’t add anything worthwhile to the plot – it might not flow well if I leave the dinner party effectively broken into two parts for no real reason. Additionally, there’s another short chapter, where a guarded secret is discovered, which might work better if, instead of having the reader there for the discovery, if it were alluded to in a short introduction paragraph in the next chapter instead.

– I’m not convinced on that last one though.

There’s more I’m going to pay attention to, but again at this stage the spelling and grammar aren’t as important. Besides, I have a tendency to tidy that up as I go anyway.

Up Next…

Blooming Christmas Cactus

For the next few short weeks I’m going to be distracted by Christmas and other things, which is great because I’ll keep the manuscript on the back burner until January 3rd.

That leaves a few blog posts that won’t be dealing with The Old Man at all, but there’s still a lot that I can write about. It’d help focus my mind for the second edit cycle if I went through the plan in better detail before getting on with the job, plus there are plenty of other projects I need to be working on in the New Year that I haven’t mentioned.

But, before all that, today is Friday and it’ll be a good night to relax after completing the second draft. A six-pack of cider and a few hours of either Élite: Dangerous or Civilization 6, or perhaps even both…

Only two more posts before Christmas. I hope everyone has a safe and healthy week!

Categories: Revision, The Old Man, Work Update, Writing