Hi folks,
As I work on prepping Book 1 to release it as an ebook and paperback, I've started posting revised chapters here. The original chapters I posted were the fourth draft, and now that Book 1 is complete, I'm in the process of working on the fifth draft.
The changes I've made are primarily to improve the flow and to clean up some awkward wording. There were also a few typos and a couple of very minor inconsistencies that nobody noticed, but that I wanted to fix anyway. And I changed Corec's equipment slightly. He now has a long knife for situations where a greatsword would be too awkward, and I clarified that his scabbard is detachable (it's not possible to draw a greatsword from a scabbard that's attached to your back or waist--your arms aren't long enough).
I'll update this post as the revised chapters are posted:
December 19, 2019: Book 1, Chapters 1 to 10
--Ivy
Patreon
Five drafts... no wonder this stuff is good
Question: Did you do the early (1st/2nd) drafts before or after completing book 1? How much did it help with the future story?
The first four drafts are done on a small batch of chapters at once (a single Patreon release, which usually comes out to three chapters).
The fifth, sixth, and seventh drafts for Book 1 were done book-wide (i.e., I did the fifth draft for the entire book before starting on the sixth draft). That helped me to ensure internal consistency within the book, and it let me catch small issues like the ones I mentioned above.
I worked on those three drafts for Book 1 while I was writing Book 2, so it also helped me ensure consistency across the two books. Basically, it meant I re-read Book 1 three times while I was writing Book 2, and it allowed me to tweak both books in minor ways to ensure all the pieces work together. This story has *a lot* of pieces, so the extra oversight was helpful.
The seventh and final draft of Book 1 is now available on Amazon as an ebook. While the story itself hasn't changed, the wording has been greatly improved.
And I'm now following the same pattern by writing Book 3 while I work on the fifth draft of Book 2.
@IvyVeritas Wow, thanks for that. That perspective really helps as well as shows the amount of effort that goes into polishing.