Hello, fellow campaigners of the writing world! I hope your writing adventures are faring well. As for adventures, I wanted to share with you all the progress I made concerning my book. This first section of the post is from almost a year ago when I wrote this ahead of schedule. I completely forgot about it, so I’ll still include it so you all can read it.
January/February 2021
First off, I started with a rough plan of finishing the edits on the first 15 chapters of my book. I was consistently editing about a chapter a day until I got to chapter eight and decided to take a small break (which turned out to be over two weeks). I used most of my spare time to write blog posts (such as this one), get my new branding touched up, and start writing my newsletter. Not to mention my last semester of college started up, so all my time was dedicated to my Bible time, family and friend time, work, school, chores, working out, and reading (yes, I feel I haven't consistently read in so long).
But from what my book is starting to turn out as I'm editing the first draft, it fits a lot more with the original feeling I had in mind when I first started brainstorming this book a few years ago. I am deleting a character, replacing her with a character that was pushed to the shadows, and creating more interaction with the characters to share the dynamics and bring forth some character building.
I finished that draft of my book in May of 2021 and hadn’t really touched it much until I did a little bit in September and November. It wasn’t until December of 2021 and January of 2022 (this month) that I have really started rolling with editing.
Last time I edited my book (between January and May of 2021) I was just taking the scenes and editing them. I may have added a scene here or there, but I was just focusing more on the flow of the story. I did delete a character, but not much had changed plotwise.
Now, this third draft I’m working on has taken a LOT more thought writing/planning since I am trying to deepen the characters, make sure the scenes add to the story as well as make the gospel a bit more impactful. When I was reading over the second draft I was noticing the characters seemed flat and their lives were dull and flat as well.
So, I’ve deleted more characters, added more conflict between characters, as well as added some more insightful scenes on life to make it seem more realistic. A mistake I made when writing this in the first place was that I didn’t develop my characters. After filling out some character drills, I am more sure of who they are and what will break them.
Thanks for reading!
Salutations, fellow adventurers!
Respectfully,
A. F. Kopp
A. F. Kopp Author 