Second Draft Complete!
As of July 5th, the second draft of The Immortal Words has been completed! Re-reading and editing subsequent drafts is always a lot of work, but this draft was arguably more challenging than writing the first! Some of you may already know that The Immortal Words first draft was shaping up to be a massive entry novel in The Age of Gods. Each new idea that popped into my head of where to take the book ended up increasing its length by at least one hundred pages each. When I crossed the 210,000 word mark, I made the difficult decision to split the first book in half. Luckily, the ideas and directions that I axed will be the focus of the second book (whose name remains a secret for now) and I already have a massive head start because of it.
So, I set out on my first complete re-read of what I had written—no edits, no touch-ups, no changing the text at all. Instead, I took in the world that I had created and took notes of important things to keep track of that I may have missed during the first read. And….it was a mess. Without the fourth (and let’s be honest, there would have been a fifth) part of the story, dozens of threads were left unresolved. This would be fine as several character and plot lines will span across multiple books, but it left The Immortal Words feeling incomplete. The journey to reshape the story began!
The first major task that I undertook was expanding the length of Part One—building the Aeyan region, developing the relationship between Fen and Aleesa before the big climax of Part One, and slowing down the frantic pace to let the world live and breathe a little. When the final word was written, I was quite please with all the changes. It also increased the length by 113%—wow. I was quickly approaching my previous word count that I was so eager to trim down for the first book. I spent every free thought for nearly a month wondering how I was going to make it work. Amanda would be quick to attest as I bounced far too many of these ideas off her—I think she was more happy than I was when I finally figured it out. Part Three had to go.
A four(going to be five)-part book was whittled down to only two parts. I had cut off so many major events that led to the development of characters and relationships that made me fall in love with the protagonists (and antagonists, if I’m being honest) that I now had to re-arrange the entire trajectory of the first two books to make the climaxes of this new Book One impactful. Was this book ever going to be its own complete story? Or had I made the terrible mistake of doing too much? Well, that answer has yet to be determined, but I have finished sorting through the mess and finally pieced together a great book with a pretty damn exciting resolution! All of the stuff that I had to cut and move to the second book has made me excited for when it’s time to finally continue Fen, Aleesa, Isabel, and Knox’s journey!
For now, I have sent the book to some wonderful beta readers and await their feedback—I want this book to be just right for all of you! While I wait, expect lots of updates here and on my Instagram about thoughts on The Age of Gods, some major happenings in my personal life, and a few snippets and sneak peaks of The Immortal Words and the history through the Ages!
-Justin
