Rachel Hansen: My Journey Update 3

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Hi everybody! One of these days, I'll actually post things more regularly, I promise.

It's been awhile, so I wanted to give an update to the three of you who are following my writing journey. (thanks friends - you're the best!)

So in my last update, I told y'all that I FINISHED REVISING ARTHUR'S LADY!!!!!!

And now (*drumroll please*)

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I am REVISING ARTHUR'S LADY AGAIN!

Le sigh.

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So here's what happened:

I have every intention of ignoring this beast and handing it off to some poor suckers, *ahem* I mean, friends, I trust, and have them read it and give me some feedback. But the more and more I thought about it, the more and more I didn't want to do that. Here were my problems:
-I didn't know how old my characters were. I wanted Arthur to be in his mid to late 20s, but I also wanted Mordred to be his son (since, you know, that's how the story goes), but that would mean Mordred would either have to be REALLY young or Arthur would have put out REALLY young and I didn't like either of those options
-Two of my Points of View (POV) were shallow and not strongly developed.
-PLOT HOLES - I brainstormed for several weeks, trying to figure these out and when I did, I couldn't just let them sit, I need to FIX THEM
-My writing still isn't great

So, I decided not to share it yet. Which meant that if I ever did have dreams and aspirations to share this with actual physical beings, I needed to keep working on it.

After ignoring it for a couple of months, I printed it off and read the stupid thing.

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And boy, was I right. Reading it was a struggle. I made so many notes while reading - changes I want to make, things I should add, things I should delete, etc. Revising became NECESSARY.

But I'm not going to revise the same way I did in the last round. Last time, I focused on BIG picture things. I made a lot of structural, plot, character changes. I was essentially re-writing my story.

This time, I want to focus on my characters and make sure they better developed. When I revise this time, I'm going to revise one character at a time. I have four POVs - Arthur (the king), Viviane (the servant), Mordred (the 'bad guy') and Braen (the love interest - a character I created for the sake of the story). I'm staring with Mordred who needs the most work (by far - especially since I'm taking away his biological relationship to Arthur - there was no way around it!) and I'm going through each of his scenes. So far, I've made it through 2.5 scenes - I know, I'm killing it! I won't tell you how long I've been revising already..........

Braen's next - he was a bit of a cliche and not interesting enough emotionally to be the love interest. I want everyone to love him as much as I love him. I want everyone to root for him to get the girl (or, the girl to actually want him, as the case may be), and I don't think I achieved that in the last draft.

Finally I'll cover Arthur and Viviane. They are the most fleshed out and I'll focus mostly on improving the writing and less on their characters :)

There is another difference in this set of revisions. I'm going to be writing everything out by hand instead of typing it out! I've found from the stories I've posted on this blog, that I revise A LOT better by hand. On a computer, I tend to type as quickly as I think - too fast to make a lot of sense (I don't edit these posts very much, you can probably tell). But when I write everything out by hand, it forces me to focus on the story and not just getting the story out. I've already figured out the story, now I just need to turn it into the best story I can.

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How are you tackling revisions? Want to hold me accountable? Ask me how my revisions are going and watch me crumble into a million pieces when I say, "Well, I haven't worked on them in a while" and then guilt me into working on them.