by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now that I have finished the first draft of my first novel, I’m going to take a writing pause of about a month and focus instead of reading and development. I’m probably also going to do a lot of development on the other four novels in this five novel project.
Anyway, I’m going to try to really focus on some basic how-to books that I’ve read a few times already while also reading for entertainment so I can stimulate my mind that way. I might also use the Disney+ subscription I have to distract myself while I figure out how to both improve the first draft when I transition it to a second draft and prevent it from exploding in word count.
I really have a looming problem with word count, I’m afraid.
As the story gets better, each scene is going to grow longer and if I’m not careful, the second draft of my first novel is going to balloon to 200,000 words. That is just not practical. So, I’m going to whittle down the scene count and also, in general, try to make each word and scene really mean something and help the plot forward.
The biggest struggle coming up, of course, is going to be out of my hands — finding reliable Beta Readers. It’s way too easy to get really excited and assume there will be a large pool of people who want to read what you’ve written when, lulz, that is definitely not the case.
