Writing a Novel: Sons of Taldra. The writing process.
I’ve posted a few blog entries about my work on the sequel to Degranon: A Science Fiction Adventure. You can read the other entries by clicking on the Sons of Taldra tag at the end of this one.
The draft I finished slowly changed from 31 to 21 chapters, because of combined chapters and cut or combined scenes. Quite a few scenes provided nice interactions between certain characters, but really added nothing to the overall novel and slowed it down unnecessarily. Other scenes went by too quickly and needed expanding or combining.
I know from experience that the novel’s final draft will look nothing like the first one. Even the ending has changed with revision, and one scene that occurred in the middle of the book now occurs during the final chapter! Actually, though, it looks like the opening will see the most changes from here, with a long action sequence that will expand some more.
For this novel, I keep working one chapter at a time, printing new drafts of an individual chapter when needed. The printed chapters often become hard to read, because of the insertions, cross-outs, and arrows (“move this part here,” etc.).
My past novels started as short stories that I slowly expanded. Sons of Taldra started with some ideas and an outline, spawned in part from the memory of a character I created for the first book but never used. I had written a scene for him before realizing it wouldn’t quite fit into the narrative. Still, he helps bring together some ideas I had for the sequel, along with a few passing references that occurred during the first novel. (I won’t say any more about that. Spoilers!)
I plan to completely revise all the chapters again, creating a new draft that comes closer to a finished work, and then focus on polishing the complete novel from there.
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