The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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2:22pm on Sunday, 30th December, 2012:
Anecdote
Well, after several marathon writing sessions I've finished the first draft of my second Lizzie Lott book, now called Lizzie Lott's Reflection. It's just over 81,000 words long, in comparison to the 47,700 words of Lizzie Lott's Sovereign. I can see I'm going to have to cut it down...
The main faults I became aware of while writing it, apart from its length, are that it has far too much dialogue and is very preachy. I also suspect that I go to too much effort to explain things the reader can easily deduce, but it is intended for young adult readers so that was actually deliberate. I'll see how it goes. I'll probably re-read it over the next few days to remove the worst of its rough edges and spot any obvious errors and inconsistencies, then I'll leave it a bit and come back to it afresh.
At times, this was actually quite wringing to write, emotionally. There was a passage like that in the first book, but this one has several. I don't suppose that my writing will convey to the reader what it felt like to me as I wrote it, but if some if it gets across then I'll perhaps have done my job. My problem is that I see in my mind exactly how the story world is built, almost cinematically, but I don't always transfer it to the page; I forget that other people won't see what I'm seeing unless I tell them.
I'm cautiously optimistic that the story is a good one, though. I'll go through a couple of revisions first, then find some guinea pigs to try it out on to see if my hopes for it are justified.
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Copyright © 2012 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).