I got the edits for the v3 draft of my outline for The Gray Shift back last week and it’s definite improvement over the previous draft. The breakdown of the 41 chapters is:
13 chapters ok as is! (31.7%)
15 chapters need minor edits. (36.6%) These were things like adding/removing characters or moving the “cymbal crash” moment a line or two around.
11 chapters need major changes. (26.8%) These are mainly in the chapters in between the pivotal moments in the middle.
I completed the third draft of the outline for The Gray Shift last week and it is now out for editing. This is the third version I’ve sent to my awesome editor and this has some pretty major changes to the characters and tone that I think make it work a lot better. I should get the edits back in a few weeks and if everything looks good to go then I’ll start on writing the first draft of the full book after that.
This version of the outline is 41 chapters and 21,802 words, an average of 531 words per chapter, which is pretty close to my target of 500 words per chapter for the outline.
Now that this outline is out for editing I’m resuming work on outlining the sequel, which will be called The Unsettled Compromise since I want to launch these next two a month apart. Current status on all books is below:
The Gray Shift: 3rd draft of the outline out for editing The Unsettled Compromise: (This is the sequel to The Gray Shift) 1st draft of the outline in progress Full Coverage 2: Fuller Coverage: (This is not the real title, the real title involves 🥓 😉) Occasionally brainstorming and adding notes/ideas to OneNote but not actively working on it yet.
I got the edits back on the outline for The Gray Shift last week. Things are improved over the first draft but there’s still a lot of work to do. About 1/3rd of the story is good to go but I need to re-think the beginning and how things interconnect a bit. Progress is slowly inching forward but that’s what drafts are for and it gets better each time!
Part of the problem seems to be that I put too much into the outline so I’m going to try and limit myself to around 10,000 words on the next outline to make sure I get the core correct faster and move the details to a separate notes file on the side. That should help me tweak things faster.
I’m also about 2/3rd of the way through the first draft outline of The Unsettled Compromise. That’s on hold now but I’ll come back to it after finishing the rework on The Gray Shift so I can apply those learnings to this outline too!
NaNoWriMo 2020 is over and I was very productive this past month. I completed the first draft and two edit passes of the new detailed outline for The Gray Shift and I sent it out to my amazing editor on Friday 12/4 for editing! I did take two days off from writing but the amount I got done on the other days made up for it. The totals are below:
Total Words Written from Scratch in November: 10,889
Total Words Edited in November: 82,210
Days Writing: 28/30 (93.3%)
Average Words Per Day: 3,325
Now, I edit a lot faster than I write. Looking at the whole outlining process, which started back on 9/13, here is how long everything took. You can see how my words per hour jumps up with every revision as the amount of changes gets smaller and smaller each time I go through it.
Revision
Time (Hours)
Word Count
Average Words per Hour
6 (new revision from scratch)
25.92
34,758
1,341
6.1 (editing pass 1)
8.6
38,433
4,469
6.2 (editing pass 2)
4.02
38,978
9,696
Total
38.54
39,455
1,024
My Nanowrimo 2020 Results
After editing pass 2 there were still 6 chapters that needed special attention so I just lumped in those final edits as part of the total since it wasn’t really a full pass. The revised outline wound up being 39,455 words and 48 chapters long. An average of 822 words per chapter, which is about what I was aiming for. It’s a bit long for an outline considering that I’m aiming for the final book to be around 80-90,000 words, but I added in a lot of detail and dialogue where I already had ideas for them. If anything, this should help me get better feedback from my editor and make writing the full book faster.
Next up, writing the outline for the sequel The Unsettled Compromise! I’m aiming to get that ready for editing by the end of the year.
It’s November so once again I’m doing my informal NaNoWriMo month. I started things off today with 1,063 words and I might do some more after writing this post. Right now I’m 69% done with the next revision of my detailed outline for my next book, with 32 out of 45 chapters and 24,932 words out of my target of 36,000 words done. I estimate it takes about 800 words per chapter to make my detailed outline and so far I’m holding pretty close to that with an average of 779 words per chapter. I’m aiming for about 80,000 words for the completed book so all major actions, discussions and actions scenes are covered by this outline.
I’ve got about 9 hours of writing time left to finish this revision so I should be able to finish that by the end of this week. Once the first pass is done I’ll revise it at least two times with a heavy emphasis on getting continuity and characters straightened out and choreographing all of the action scenes. Both of those should make for fun blog posts. Once that’s done, I’ll send it back to my awesome editor for her to read over.
While she’s reading it over, I’ll get to outlining the sequel. That’s right! This will be a two part series and my first time writing a sequel! I have a pretty good idea of what I want to have happen but I haven’t completely laid it all out yet.
A lot of people view outlines as rigid, immovable objects that restrict their creative freedom or something to be afraid of. I take a much more fluid view of them. In my mind an outline is how things fit together, at the moment. They can and do change constantly whenever they need to, and that’s ok. Making changes to an existing outline has its limits though. Sometimes you need to just start a fresh outline from scratch so you can focus on picking out the good pieces from the previous version and adding in the new stuff without all the old stuff cluttering the space around it. That’s ok too. You know more now about your story now than you did when you started your previous outline. As you find out more about your story, your outline should change to reflect that new knowledge. This can be anything from adding or changing characters and events to a reordering of chapters. Each time you get closer to the final version.
It’s been a while since my last update. In the last 9 months (eek!) a lot of things came up but I have made some slow progress despite the pandemic making a mess of everything.
As of 5pm today I stopped writing so it’s time to go over the totals from this year’s Nanowrimo. While I certainly didn’t start and finish a novel, I actually got a lot done this past month, including writing every day! Here are the totals: Continue reading →
This year I decided to do a modified Nanowrimo and focus on outlining my next book with goal being to have no 0 word count days. 15 days in and I’ve managed to keep that streak alive! My totals so far are below:
After a long break I’m finally back to writing somewhat consistently, getting at least one day per week where I get stuff done. Right now I’m about 75% through the high-level outline for my next book The Gray Shift. I thought it would be fun to share how I’m trying to outline this book. Continue reading →
Books by Tom Reeve 