Finding my voice in the Redraft.

 

In much anticipation of the Festival of Writing – York – Sept 12 to 14 – I spent much of the week before leading up to Aug 20th to better Chapter 1.

To explain the result in a synopsis: it went from ‘This is great’ to ‘This is rubbish.’

Against the ‘put it down and leave for a few days’ advice, I redrafted, printed, read, scribbled, and re-redrafted 5 times in the space of 6 days.

Overkill?

Maybe…

But it taught me a valuable lesson about how the protagonist’s voice and behaviours had to change. I know the ending, because I wrote it, and I have a pretty solid arc, however the protagonist in Chapter 1 lacked the gusto for you to give a rat’s-behind about his goals. I had to take a step back and improvise some of the scenes in a mirror to understand how my voice should come across. Writing in 1st Person POV is a new experience for me – and although I didn’t want to drag humour into it, it seemed to work for the character.

Chapter 1 can’t be done any better (I say now – though it’ll change later) for what I submitted to #FOW14, and I hope that I haven’t bodged up. It’s not for me to worry about until Sept 12th arrives, but I’m really enjoying redrafting the rest of the novel.

The improvements I made in Chapter 1 are flowing through the rest of the pages. The last thing I want is if a submission is requested by an agent – and then I get slammed for going into flat-uninspiring-prose for the rest of it.

So far on target to complete redrafting by Sept 8th.

And then I’ll redraft again.