Ok, so I recently finished my second novel (though technically it’s more like my 3rd or 4th but whatever) over the summer. It was my first plotted novel from beginning to end. Usually I just have an idea, and then I just sit down and knock it out in three or four months. But this was the first one that I actually made a sort of storyboard for from scene to scene. Maybe it was because I knew this one was going to be a bit longer then my others and I was experimenting with a new sub-genre (it’s a YA steampunk fantasy, with an emphasis on fantasy, so not as much scifi) and I knew it was going to be part of a larger series.
Anywho, the result, as you know, in my opinion, was a pile of literary crap. BUT! As I’ve recently discovered, that pile of literary crap taught me a few things (as all finished projects do) about myself, my style, and my overall writing process. And though I hate the finished, very rough manuscript (with plans to completely rewrite and eventually post for free on my Fictionpress account) there are a few things that I am quite impressed with.
For one, I finished it in two months. Something like 110,000 words in two months. That’s two NaNoWriMos back to back, baby!…and then some. Also, because I plotted this one (we’lll just call it Clockwork, that’s the partial title) it was not only written much faster than my other novels, but it was put together in a way that left little to no room for many plot holes. There are still plot holes, no doubt, but not as many as I would have if I did not plot. And finally, I was able to find exactly what I did not like about the story.
My biggest problem with Clockwork was that it was too busy, there was too much happening, too much going on and I was only writing in one character’s POV. What this means is that my readers would only be getting a part of the entire story from only one characters perspective. After some debate, I decided that this was not the best way to tell this story. I needed more perspectives for a story of that size and complexity. Also, while I felt that I enjoyed writing a steampunk novel, I felt that I did not know enough about the genre to do it true justice. I think I need to read a few more steampunk novels and maybe visit a few steampunk forums to really get more familiar with it.
Vernon Smith 