Mental Meanderings

Second Drafting Woes

The dread is upon me. I've put it off for almost two years but I've finally settled into deciding to get a second draft of The Dating Game together. The first step I suppose is to actually read from cover to cover the first draft. I read the first three chapters of it today and of what amounts to about 7 thousand words only perhaps 500 of them feel salvagable.

Overall I read it and feel like it sounds totally contrived. The characters aren't real. Jake goes in way too strong and I'm left flounding over exactly why these two conflict. At this point they don't and because of the genre they should be facing issues that will lead to the climax.

Basically it all feels very weak, limp, and lifeless. I know, we writers are our own worst critiques but truly at this stage I'm no where near liking it and wouldn't share it with anyone until I at least have a little pride in the work myself. I am proud of the word count. I'm proud of the basic plot, the original concept and while they might at the moment feel a little 2D I'm also very interested in my characters. There is a great story here and with the right approach I can polish this and get it published.

The trouble is facing the dread. Normally I could take a romance book off my shelf and read it cover to cover in a matter of hours. With TDG I can't lose myself into it. I don't know if it's just because it's bad or if it's because I'm analysing it all too deeply. Perhaps it's because I know what I want to accomplish so I'm always searching for the elements to make it work. It's making the reading factor a drudgery.

A part of me wants to just stop reading, put it back into a bottom shelf for another year or two. Then part of me thinks maybe I should just toss the first draft and go in for a full rewrite. The primary part of myself however if determined to focus on reading the whole thing before deciding to rewrite or hack and slash.

The strange thing is I feel let down today that I only read three chapters. Because I know I could read a book of this style and genre in a few hours. I've read five and six a day of these sorts of books sometimes. I suppose I should reflect on the fact that if I were writing I'd only have processed around 2,000 words max so reading and making notes over 7,000 words of the book is an accomplishment.

Mostly at this stage the notes involve brackets to bring my attention back to certain points. Some are marked with praise if it's a section I felt deserved it. There are a few larger notes when I felt forced to comment on something particularly flaccid such as POV issues. Reading over it there are entire scenes that have names out of place where the characters developed in my mind. My main character went in the beginning from an Emma to an Emily which is something I've changed on the latest WORD version with a find and replace. But her children also were altered in the early chapters and all that needs fixing.

There is a whole undercurrent that I came up with in the story that will need to be added to flesh out the novel as well as countering the 'moving too fast' factor with Jake. He's too self assured, too certain, which doesn't work for the plot because in the early stages he's supposed to be finding Emily dates instead of already deciding he's her guy. *sighs*

Basically I know there is a great deal of work ahead of me and I'm not really sure how to go about it. I guess all I can do is go as I normally do, leaping in feet first. Part of today I tried looking around for information on facing a second draft. I couldn't find very much. Writing Books tend to talk about the idea stage and the writing stage, some even cover the publishing stage. There is the editing stage that focuses on the sentence structure and spelling etc. But I can't find much that talks about cleaning up the story, bolstering the character development, and basically turning a weak, limp, first draft into a good, solid second.

I guess I'll keep trudging on. Reading a few chapters a day. I can face it, bit by bit and hopefully it will all slot into place through dedication to action. It's definately better than the inaction this book has faced for the past year and a half. It's still a daunting idea and talking about it doesn't seem to help counter the dread factor. *sighs* Hopefully continued action will.