The Solune Prince chapters I’ve completed are… kind of meh.
If I were to put myself in the shoes of a reader, I might think: This series is kind of boring. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere. And if it is, it’s going there very slowly. There situations and characters seem a little lacking. Some of these chapters go nowhere, or add nothing to the story. And why did it take so long to get here?
These are pretty serious concerns, right? I mean, it’s been 20 chapters and not much has happened. If the average chapter is 1000 words (and it’s actually a little more), then that means I’m 20 000 words in and I’m still only at the beginning.
It’s overwhelming. I feel like I’ve sort of shotgun-vomited and pantsed myself into a narrative about nothing, filled with boring characters, and then insulted the reader by adding a “first draft disclaimer.” I mean, maybe I should actually put a little more effort into making my pieces of a high enough quality that I don’t feel the need for disclaimers.
I was at a point where I was almost ready to throw up my hands and drop the serial altogether.
That’s what I was thinking.
And then, on the way to the library, I listened to Falter.
[bandcamp width=100% height=42 album=1240144987 size=small bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 track=3862756510]
See, that song was one of the biggest inspirational pieces for The Solune Prince, and hearing it again, I remembered a lot of what I was feeling back when I started. I decided to return to The Solune Prince project for sure after that, but with a different mentality.
To practice, to learn, to improve.
This is a first draft, I’m sure there are a lot of people who write a first draft by the seat of their pants, read it over, and then think, “man this is awful.” And, that’s what I’m thinking. It’s pretty awful! But that’s okay, because it’s a first draft. A second draft can (and if it’s got glaring faults, should) be drastically different than the first.
I’m not going to go back and fix the first twenty (geez, twenty?) scenes until I’m done though. I’m not even going to try to fix every single problem I’ve had with those scenes going forward.
I’m just going to focus on one thing at a time, and this time, it’s planning. So, I’m going to do a lot more work planning the rest of the Solune Prince. You know, it was going somewhere, I just kept getting into tangents, and hopefully with a plan, I can avoid that.
In addition, outlining will allow me to know a little bit better where each scene is going, and what it’s trying to do. I may end up with less frequent, but higher quality scenes as a result of planning. Maybe I’ll even outline individual scenes, I don’t really know.
I actually drew out a basic outline before writing this. It looks like I’ve got seven acts to go. Seven acts to get my act together haha. I’ll work on the outline a bit more before posting another scene.
Daniel Triumph.
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P.S.
On a side note, I really need to update my categories.