05-11-2022 - How I will write
07-11-2022 - KC: The Farmhouse #1
First week's review, feedback & W45 plan
06-11-2022 - 2 years ago - 2m 24s
This has been a really fun start for me. I've had a lot of kind words and about 10 people following my posts daily. Thanks for all of that!
I have to admit; It was also hectic. I tried to go in as soon as my site was ready, but this left me with a lot to do these past days. I already had the outline, characters, and other preparations in some notes, but rewriting them to something comprehensible plus the posts was more work than I expected. But it felt fantastic to put it all out there. Only the outline still misses some notes for the playground, I'll be adding these next week.
Next week will be more at ease since it's the writing I can focus on. This was a good warm-up for me. It's a different kind of writing, but I put a lot of words on the page.
I also got in some feedback. One excellent point about the character Chip, for which I added a new version for the Characters, so there's now an example of a versioned chapter! It's linked to this post.
On feedback in general: Like I wrote before, I will focus on putting down the first draft as soon as possible. I'm pondering about using my Sundays as a revision day to implement feedback and rewrite chapters I wrote that week. But from the short story I wrote, I know this to be a tedious process. I'll see where I stand next Sunday, but it's possible I'm just going to collect all feedback and insights per chapter for when the full first draft is completed. I'd be responding to feedback but implementation will have to wait then. I'll come back on this next week.
When I beta read for Michael J. Sullivan, they always provide surveys for each chapter for more specific feedback. Things like: what was good, what was bad, what was unexpected, how was the pacing, something confusing, what do you think will happen next,… I think I'll be expanding the feedback form for the story chapters with some of these questions. These would all be open to answer, no required fields. Splitting it this way could be helpful both ways to get really specific about things.
Time for the actual work!
Monday I'll start at the beginning, the accident with the Pudding truck. Since it's the first week, it's hard to plan how fast everything will go, but I'm setting my sights on at least 1000 words each day.
To give a reference for book length you can check this post or this image:
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A Thriller/Horror/Mystery Novel has a default word count between 70K and 90K. So If I'd be able to pull through every day, it'd be a 2-3 month process to get the first draft. I'm not sure if I'd reach that but I think Novella length (14-40K) is also fine. I'll check that again later once the writing gets going.
So the first week's target is 7K words. A normal page is about 500 words single spaced, that'd be about 14 pages. I hope to be past the first 2 chapters, the truck and the neighbor, and hopefully have Derrek enter the first playground chapter.
To get the creative juices flowing, I plan to watch a few movies throughout the week:
I'll be including notes on these in the posts the day after.
All right, I feel prepped to get started. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the first actual writing post.
See you then and enjoy your Sunday!
I have to admit; It was also hectic. I tried to go in as soon as my site was ready, but this left me with a lot to do these past days. I already had the outline, characters, and other preparations in some notes, but rewriting them to something comprehensible plus the posts was more work than I expected. But it felt fantastic to put it all out there. Only the outline still misses some notes for the playground, I'll be adding these next week.
Next week will be more at ease since it's the writing I can focus on. This was a good warm-up for me. It's a different kind of writing, but I put a lot of words on the page.
Feedback
I also got in some feedback. One excellent point about the character Chip, for which I added a new version for the Characters, so there's now an example of a versioned chapter! It's linked to this post.
On feedback in general: Like I wrote before, I will focus on putting down the first draft as soon as possible. I'm pondering about using my Sundays as a revision day to implement feedback and rewrite chapters I wrote that week. But from the short story I wrote, I know this to be a tedious process. I'll see where I stand next Sunday, but it's possible I'm just going to collect all feedback and insights per chapter for when the full first draft is completed. I'd be responding to feedback but implementation will have to wait then. I'll come back on this next week.
When I beta read for Michael J. Sullivan, they always provide surveys for each chapter for more specific feedback. Things like: what was good, what was bad, what was unexpected, how was the pacing, something confusing, what do you think will happen next,… I think I'll be expanding the feedback form for the story chapters with some of these questions. These would all be open to answer, no required fields. Splitting it this way could be helpful both ways to get really specific about things.
Time for the actual work!
Plan W45
Monday I'll start at the beginning, the accident with the Pudding truck. Since it's the first week, it's hard to plan how fast everything will go, but I'm setting my sights on at least 1000 words each day.
To give a reference for book length you can check this post or this image:
A Thriller/Horror/Mystery Novel has a default word count between 70K and 90K. So If I'd be able to pull through every day, it'd be a 2-3 month process to get the first draft. I'm not sure if I'd reach that but I think Novella length (14-40K) is also fine. I'll check that again later once the writing gets going.
So the first week's target is 7K words. A normal page is about 500 words single spaced, that'd be about 14 pages. I hope to be past the first 2 chapters, the truck and the neighbor, and hopefully have Derrek enter the first playground chapter.
To get the creative juices flowing, I plan to watch a few movies throughout the week:
I'll be including notes on these in the posts the day after.
All right, I feel prepped to get started. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the first actual writing post.
See you then and enjoy your Sunday!
Linked in this post
Story
Kane's Cases: The Farmhouse
Chapter
2 - alpha of Characters