Thursday, May 12, 2016

Praeteran Update 2

I have recently completed the rough draft for my current novel project, a fantasy novel currently titled Praeteran.  I seem to write rough drafts short, as I have been quite under my final target word count each time.  This rough draft was less than what I'd like it to be at the end by at least half.  It ended at about 35,000 words, and I will get it to between 70,000 and 90,000 words by the time I am done with it.

One thing I have done is rework the outline for the whole series.  I initially envisioned and outlined The Anarchist Chronicles as a five book series, but I have since shortened it to a trilogy, allowing me to move a bit from what was previously book two into book one.  I am in the middle of revisions of the whole manuscript, as well as writing additional chapters for these outline changes.  I have a lot more work to go, but I have upped the draft from 35,000 words to 47,000 words.  There is a lot more work to do - extra chapters to write and lots of detail to add.  But I am on my way.

One thing that I realized I did not fully explain in the last blog entry was about the viewpoint and tense of the book.  Like I said, I am doing the book in first person, like I did with my previous book, Override.  However, unlike that book, there will not be a single viewpoint character, but multiple, and the viewpoint character will change at every chapter break.  This will be interesting, as this is considered by authors to be a more difficult way to write.  The top of each chapter will list the viewpoint character for that chapter, but you also have to give each of the viewpoint characters a distinct voice.  I am trying to do that, but we will see how successful I was when I have other people read it.  (Which will be a while, of course.)  Most of the book will also be in present tense instead of past tense, except for a few choice chapters.