I Finished a Draft . . . Now What?
On September 13th, 2017, I accomplished what I had started to think was never going to happen: I finished the first draft to a novella.
Now, I should back up. When I was a kid, I wrote what was essentially Star Wars fan fiction, and when I was between the ages of eleven and fourteen years old, I wrote a 400 page "novel" using a program called Storybook Weaver Deluxe. I don't count this as being my first REAL finished draft.
Last summer, I was scrambling to write a challenge entry submission for Worldsmyths, and ended up writing an entry where the two main characters in Storms of Magic, Arris and Merek, were really secondary characters. But they felt more interesting to me than the real main character of that story was supposed to be - they felt more like real characters. I wrote some more challenge entries using them as main characters, including what is now the first scene in Storms of Magic. I ended up enjoying writing Arris and Merek so much that I came up with what was at the very least a basic backstory for them - Arris and Merek were once queen's guards, and had been best friends since they were young. From there, I decided that Arris had been accused of murdering a neighboring kingdom's councilman, and from there the plot just kind of spiraled. I had an outline, so I started writing.
I ended up buying a huge black binder to fill with world building and plot information - outlines, race information, magic, places, etc. I gradually worked on filling in the gaps of information while also writing Storms of Magic. I took breaks when I had to, but otherwise I kept trucking on.
Last fall, I decided that I was going to "rebel" for NaNoWriMo and continue writing Storms of Magic, knowing fully that there was no way I would be able to reach 50k during November because of school projects. I was 100% correct. I did what I could but then I got smacked with final projects and couldn't dedicate the time I needed to to NaNo. But I was okay with that.
So here we are, ten months later, and on September 13th, I finished the first draft of Storms of Magic at 22k and some change, which makes it a novella. It needs some work, and I know that I can make it longer - either I'll expand on this draft to boost up the word count a bit or I'll leave it at 22k, depending on what edits leave me with, and start a sequel. But I already have a general idea of how I'm going to start it off.
One of the things I've always been told is that after you finish a rough draft, you should step away from it. Some say do it for a few weeks, some day do it for a few months. In my case, I'm waiting until at least January before I start looking at the draft and seeing what edits need to be made. Once I do that, I'll edit it and then see about sending it off to beta readers. So while I may have written "the end" in the first draft, it's not the end. Arris and Merek still have a much larger story to be told, even if I'm not fully aware of what that story is, and I plan on writing it and getting it out into the world for everyone to read.
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