The Immortal Words…Again
So… I did it again. I promised myself that I was done with it, but it just keeps pulling me back in! The fourth draft of The Immortal Words is nearly halfway done. I know, I know. I need to be working on my outline and beat sheets for Book Two, but a voice in the back of my head kept nagging me about some issues with the first book. That voice was right.
After I finished the outline for the second book (and the third), I realized how sloppily stapled together my Frankenstein’s monster of a first book truly was. The cuts, edits, and merging of plot points from a much larger book was necessary, but it left some weird gaps in plot and had no real finality. Naturally, I this forced me to rewrite my book one story and character outlines. Just a normal thing to spend a few afternoons doing. That outline, to this point, has added four new chapters, axed two old ones, and led to the rewriting of six others. And that’s just with the story arcs for Fen and Aleesa. Isabel will require a little bit of work, too, but I felt her arc was nearly complete after the last draft. She may get an extra chapter before her midpoint and a fair amount of tweaking to her other chapters, but not a lot will change there.
That is, until the ending. If you have been one of the few to have read through the end of the story (thanks again to those of you), you’ll know what I mean by incomplete. I love the penultimate chapter, and that part will remain mostly intact. But the chapters preceding it are rushed, and the ending feels unjustified. I have outlined an entirely new ending with several more chapters, giving the first book a true sense of finality. My confidence in this book has nearly doubled!
Once these new chapters are finished, I’ll dive into a full re-read and polish the rest of the book to ensure the existing, unaltered chapters properly reflect the new series of events. Amanda told me it’s almost an entirely new book, and she’s not that wrong. The essence of the book remains; it’s just better.
Have a good week!
-J
