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Writing progress

Rewrote the police scene, and it’s taking the story different places.

That’s the thing with changes like this. If you don’t re-write as you go, you take the story down one path, but the re-write takes it somewhere else. The more you keep writing on the original, the more re-writing you do at the end.

Sometimes, when you get to the end on the original plotline you can’t be bothered doing the rewrite. It’s gone too far.

I’m not sure how much of draft two we’ll have left when we finish draft three. I forsee large chunks being omitted.

This draft is already a much better story.

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Writing progress

Sherylyn’s opinion of Barrain so far…

This draft is definitely better, but Mathers simply would not do what he was doing. Mathers is not a ‘bad’ policeman. He would not overlook the obvious.

He might start out believing the dead body was Caid, but if all the evidence—and that’s every single piece—points to that being impossible, why does he continue to insist he must be right?

This is where the value of the co-writer comes in.

Left to myself I would have Mathers insist on the body being Caid’s all through the book, but I can’t do that now, my co-writer won’t let me.

I can already see some flow-on consequences.

Mathers’ relationship with his partner will definitely change. They’ll be more buddies than antagonists, working together on a case that doesn’t make sense, rather than at loggerheads all the time.

His relationship with Scott will change too. Scott changes from being a suspected murderer to a victim.

This changes every police scene from here on.

It’s becoming a markedly different story.

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Writing progress – doing this draft hard

This story is like pulling teeth at the moment.

If it was a first draft we would probably stop here.

We usually give a first draft up to 100 pages. If we lose interest before then we stop writing. The story doesn’t have enough legs to carry us through to the end.

If we get to 100 pages we generally don’t hit a slump until three quarters of the way through the book (300+ pages). We hit a real down here, always hard to get past.

If we stick to the story enough to complete a draft, however, we try to complete any further drafts we start.

This is our third draft of this story. Sometimes it feels more like the first, but we’re going to stick it out. All the way. The block has just come earlier this time.

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Writing progress

More travel, training, deadlines and disruptions. Can’t settle into a routine, which is not doing this novel any good at all.

Still on chapter four, with Mathers and Shannon at the scene of the ‘crime’.

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Progress report

Writing progress

Finally getting some time to work on Barrain.

Chapter 3—Know we need to work a bit more on what happens between Scott, Elna and Caid to keep the timeline, but have jumped ahead to the first introduction of Mathers. Hence Chapter 3 is currently just a blank heading at present.

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Writing progress

Finally made a start on rewriting the first chapter (formerly known as the prologue). It’s patchy, but I think it’s better. It’s been bugging me ever since I wrote it as a prologue.

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Progress report

Writing progress

Only a couple of pages into chapter 1, and already Scott’s a little wimpy. Not sure what Sherylyn’s going to say, and not sure how to fix it yet either. I think it’s because he’s a victim. Things happen to him, rather than him taking control.

Sherylyn’s a few days behind on reviews on this. It has been tax time, and she has been working 12 and 14 hour days. Luckily it’s finished now. Tax season is July to October.

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Progress report

Writing progress

The transfer from present tense to past tense is harder than I had hoped. It’s made more difficult by the omniscient point of view we have taken with the prologue. Not sure yet this POV is a good move.

Started off doing it in past tense, found we were switching between present and past, so changed it all to past tense. The rest of the novel will be past tense.

Outside of that, the transition from script back to narrative is more of a direct copy than I expected.