Progress on the novel continues apace. Between Munchkin and my day job, I’m not writing as fast as I’d like, but every word and every scene brings me a few steps closer to a completed book. Several of you have asked me about progress on this final pre-editor draft, so I put together a few statistics.
The book is still untitled, though I’m leaning toward “Mage-Hunters.”
Current Word Count: 53,634
Total Chapters: 10
Chapters Remaining in Revision: 5
While it doesn’t look like I’m nearly as far as I’d like to be, I’ve been going through chapters chronologically and filling in critical details and fleshing out characters. The first draft had been barely 30,000 words, and the one criticism that my husband had passed along was that I’d “left out all the good stuff” from what he’d learned about the story and the characters as I was running my ideas by him.
And in re-reading the draft, I realized he was right — I could see my characters perfectly well in my head, but I hadn’t bothered to share what any of them looked like with anyone else. Unless I require all my readers to be telepathic, that strategy won’t pan out successfully. This draft corrects all of that and allows you to really see how my major characters feel and think about the events in the story. Look forward to another snippet soon!