I finished Draft 1 of Book 4… and it didn’t go as expected!

When I wrote my debut novel Seelie Princess, my process was all over the place. I had no idea how to plot, how to structure a story to make it engaging, or how to write prose that grabs a reader’s attention. Draft 1 of that book was a mess, and I went through so many revisions that I lost count. All I know is that my writers group was relieved when I gave them the final draft to read.

Once Seelie Princess was out in the world, I decided to write its sequel Unseelie Queen during NaNoWriMo 2019, which was a challenge I hadn’t been quite prepared for. When it was time to write Goddess of Light, the last book in the series, I decided that I would go at my own pace while still aiming to finish Draft 1 as soon as possible.

Now, for Book 4 I had to start over… sort of. While Book 4 is still set in the same universe as my Crown of Tír na nÓg series, it follows a different group of characters. So a lot of the worldbuilding was already there, but I still had to work out the characters and the plot itself. I did a lot of planning ahead, and I created character sheets, a list of plot points, and an extensive synopsis. With all this in place, I was certain I’d fly through Draft 1!

Well, it didn’t go quite as expected. I knocked out over 30k words in the first four weeks, but the issue was that by then I was already 2/3 through my synopsis. And I started to suspect that I’d written a glorified synopsis rather than an actual Draft 1. In mid-May I took a week off to travel to Ireland, and when I returned, I decided that I needed to read and revise what I’d already written. I pinpointed all the plot points I’d rushed through and polstered the story to include some slower scenes as well. After all, a good story needs both fast and slow parts, and my main characters need some room to breathe and grow.

Once I’d revised what was already there, I continued writing the rest of Draft 1. So now, three months after starting to write this story, I have a Draft 1.5 that’s almost 65k words and is already partly revised. When I set out, I expected to end up at around 80k, and that it would take me three months to merely put all the words to paper, with any and all revisions saved for Draft 2.

So I guess the lesson that I’ve learned (once again) is that I can plan and plot as much as I want, things usually don’t go as expected. But that’s okay because Draft 1 is where I get to meet my new main characters, where I get to see their story unfold. Everything else will happen in the drafts that follow.

Now, on to Draft 2!