I have a single novel that I actually reached the words THE END. I wrote it during NaNoWriMo in 2008, and despite how completely boring most of it was because of how much filler I put in it, it was a great story and all of the people who I let read it raved about it. They all said that it had great potential, and one particular friend has been great at helping me get to that potential. After November was over, I started working on the second draft, and decided that somethings needed to change. So it began to evolve from what it was, very slowly morphing to what it is today. However there were quite a lot of large bumps in the road along the way.
Since the first time I wrote it, I haven't been able to bring it back up to 50k. After the initial paring down, the most I got it to was 24k. At first I didn't understand why this was happening, then I realized that it was because I didn't have enough plot to actually fill that much space. So around version three, I started adding new plot stuff; dreams, more bad guys, a longer conflict with Chandra instead of Artemis (they are the same person, just different personalities, in case you were wondering), etc. Nothing worked.
Another thing was the guys in my writing group kept
About a week ago, I decided that I really needed to work on it some, because my best friend has a printing waiting for me to finish it. (her own painted cover included, it was the best birthday present I have ever received) So I pulled it out, thumbed through my notes, read through several of the different drafts, and talked it out with my mom. It's always fun doing that, because while she doesn't like what I write, it's good to bounce ideas off her (and they always come back better than I threw them.)
After a few days I came to a decision: Huntress was taking on a whole new direction. After carefully examining it from every possible direction, I came to the conclusion that it would be better for Chandra, the main character to be older; It would make it easier for me to write it since I hate writing about high school students, and it would solve a lot of time constraint problems. So Chandra had a small encounter in high school, but the big one didn't come until she was halfway through college.
And since she was older, many other things had to be changed as well. Friends had to be cut out or changed, setting had to be rearranged, and finally I had to come up with things for her family.
But I still didn't have an exact plot in mind; I knew the very VERY basic of what I wanted to happen, I knew that it had to last longer than any of my other plots, and I knew that it had to be amazing.
So today, while mom was at work and the boys were at school or asleep, I sat down at mom's computer (mine's in Iowa) and just started typing the plot. I wrote up a little of what I had already written, including a prologue and some of chapter one, then just continued on from there.
The plot was similar to the first drafts, but at the same time very different. There were less important characters to keep track of (though I did completely forget about one while I was plotting...) and there was a lot more action and danger. I finally got around to inserting a new scene that I have wanted to get in there for a while now (it never fit until now), and I got to use two characters as supporting characters instead of background, like they were before.
Somethings still happened, like her mom dying a fiery death, and somethings that happened in the first drafts but not the more recent ones came back, like certain people getting injured, and some completely new things happened, like Artemis not really coming back all the way, just as a voice in Chandra's head.
All in all, when I was finished writing the plot, I felt a sense of elation; I was actually going to be able to get this done.
And so here I go, on my way to a complete global take-over, stealing the world right out from under Twilight's vampire riddled, annoying feet.
Wish me luck.
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