by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The beta reader process is — as expected — turning out to be something of a dud. People just aren’t giving me any input. I expected that for various reasons and I think, ultimately, I’m going to have to wait until I finish the third draft to get the input that I really need.
I need input that is constructive, but not harsh. Encouraging, not nit-picky. Anyway, the second draft was 81,000 words and, as such, I feel I can safely add 20,000 words without making the novel too long to get published. The key reason why I’m adding some words to the beginning is world and character building.
I want people to actually care enough by the time things get moving that they’re willing to read the novel to the end. The novel is already a very accessible, easy read. I have to take things to the next level by fleshing out and explaining the world I’ve created so more of the novel is on the page, rather than in my mind. That seems to be one of the biggest complaints from those willing to give me any input — they just don’t understand what’s going on.
I continue to worry about the issue of having more than on POV within a chapter, but I refuse to believe that audience expectation have changed so much that I can’t do the same thing that Stieg Larsson did with his work. And, yet, I am worried enough about this particular problem that I am definitely going to start to work on a backup scifi novel just in case I need to be able to say, “Well, if you don’t like this novel, I’ve got a first person, single POV novel for you to read.”
Or something like that. Whatever else is going on, the key thing is I have to finish something, anything so I can start to query ASAP. Even with that in mind, I think I probably have about a year ahead of me. I say that because of time and money.
In a sense, it’s all kind of comical because the world could be collapsing just as I’m ready to query in late 2024. It could be that civil war / revolution breaks out in the United States just as I’m about to pitch my first novel to agents. And that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of AI really making all my hard work moot.
But, sometimes, you just have to believe.
