Science Fiction

Adrift 2nd Draft Completed! What’s next?

/ Justin Turpen / Leave a comment

Wordcount: 15k

Man it feels good to finish off a draft! I am far more pleased with this ending and am excited for my writing group to get their hands on it. I’ll do one round of edits before they see it – I mostly look for grammar, clarity, and word choice.

Assessing the manuscript as it is now, I don’t think I’ll need to write another draft. I can uplift it through a round of revision based on the feedback I get from my writing group. After, I’m going to send it off to some beta readers. I’ve not had many people outside my writing group weigh in on my recent projects so it’ll be good to get impressions from readers who aren’t writers and who have fresh eyes.

A note on receiving feedback. My approach is always to let the reviewer have an open mic. Let them tell me their impressions, their issues, and their suggestions before weighing in. It can be difficult not to interject, explain, or defend what I’ve written – and I’m not perfect at it – but I think it is vital to get an uninfluenced take from the reader as is possible.

What am I going to do while my alpha (my writing group) and beta readers are reading my story? Well starting my next project of course! I’m hoping to produce a short story, I’ve settled on a structure I want to use and have some ideas on what I want to do with it. No working name, no details yet, but definitely more to come on the short story in the future.

A huge thank you to all of you who’ve been keeping up with me on these projects. It helps keep me motivated knowing that you’re interested in the work I’m doing. Writing is a solitary pursuit but the product is to be shared, to be enjoyed and discussed by a community. Thank you all for being a part of it.

Are you a writer? How do you approach feedback on your works?

Thanks for reading!

Adrift Update #2

/ Justin Turpen / Leave a comment

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!

Adrift Update #1

/ Justin Turpen / Leave a comment

Second Draft Word Count: 3199

My favorite part of writing this second draft is having the opportunity to expand and polish the world my characters live in. The simple way of putting it is that I get to retreat into my mind and try to describe the imaginary world I’ve made for myself. It’s so much fun.

I plan to include a few more characters. A father and a sister.

In the first draft I felt that the protagonist, Sara Emoc, needed a stronger reason for following through on her role in the plot. She had originally been motivated by “just wanting to do the right thing”. It didn’t match up with the stakes of the story. I plan to combine her motivation of wanting to do the right thing with also wanting to honor her Father.

I also felt that the first draft lacked conflict at certain times. The conflict that Sara faced in the first draft was mostly exterior and I wanted to give her more to chew on emotionally. Especially in the earlier part of the story – enter the Sister. The late parts of the story are a bit of whirlwind. I’m eager to rewrite them and expand on the climax and ending.

A crazy idea I’ve been playing with would also change the story drastically. I’m considering adding a second protagonist whose story would run parallel to Sara’s and intersect somewhere in the rising action. This would be a major change. I’ve gone back and forth on wanting to include it in this second draft. The main consequence would be doubling the word count. This would take me out of qualification for the competition I was planning to join. Choices.

That’s it for this first update. If you have any suggestions for what you’d like to know about, feel free to chime in on the comments.

Thanks for reading.