Word Count: 8913

This second draft is starting to shape up. For context, my first draft was 5,814 words in total and was written in first person from the perspective of my main character. I’d never really tried to write a draft in first person and my lack of experience in it was apparent in review. I’ve now returned to a third-person limited viewpoint and am making ample progress toward finishing the draft.

I’m surprised how, even with a first draft, how much about the story has changed. Some conversations and scenes are not recognizable from the first to the second. A few parts of the first draft simply-put, did not work, and I’ve removed or replaced them since. Do this too many times and you’ve got a whole different story. Adding two new characters also contributes to this.

One of my hopes is that the reader will be able to get lost in the story – like I do when I write it. To me this is a usually a result of great characters, conflict, and beautiful prose. As I comb through what I’ve already written in the second draft, I’ve been editing sentence structure and word choice to uplift my writing. The end result, hopefully, being a polished and complete story. I’m projecting that the ending word count will hit somewhere between 15k and 17k words. This throws it up to the border between novelette and novella.

Once I am finished with edits and revisions with this draft I plan to submit it to the Writers of the Future writing contest. If I overshoot the max wordcount of the competition I may reevaluate my plan.

Thanks for reading!