Writing Draft 5

Once more, my friends, unto the breach.

I am now getting back to the book, seriously. Recently, I read a couple of books that convinced me that I needed to evaluate what I am now calling The Vessel of Ra scene by scene. So, I whacked my manuscript up, threw away about five scenes, and marked what I thought was truly, truly lame.

I had a good crowd of beta readers who gave me similar feedback on a lot of this material, so I have a good grasp on my deficiencies and what I need to do to fix them. It seems that the following are things I should address:

Octavia’s crazy slippery personality.
Show the conflicts between Drusus and Octavia.
Give readers the background on Binders that they need so they don’t have questions (in short, do not rely on the ESP method for writing…)
Make sure that I minimize the anachronisms.

So, before I sent those first fifty pages off, I want this book to be ship shape. Right now I’m tarring the boat.

Next post will be some recent reads.