Well, if you’ve been following the situation with Slow Motion Whirlwind, you will be aware that it is my first novel and that I had to cut some of my chapters in order to improve the story. After sitting on it for a little bit, and showing it to a couple of beta readers, my initial fears have been confirmed: the story is going to take a complete re-write. I am still going to post the rest of my first draft to wattpad, so that there is a complete draft there instead of only a half, but I am going to end up re-writing the story completely once the beta reads are done.
What I have learned from my first story is that I am not very good at structuring a novel. I am telling a story but I forgot to tell the reader why they should care about the story! I didn’t succeed at making the relationships as believable as I would have liked, and I failed to make the conflict visible in the first half of the story. There is a lot of work to be done, and I’m not quite ready to do it yet.
It is hard to give your work to others and even harder to hear their feedback. I imagine it will be harder still to re-write the book when I finally get down to it, but I know it will be for the best. So, I’m writing it here and penciling it in for after my current works in progress are drafted. I will sit down and re-write the whole story. I hope it will make it better, but I know it will help me learn, so I know it will be worth it no matter what.
Have you ever had to re-write a whole book? Was there ever something you finished and then had to start again? Have you ever had a book where you felt like just throwing it out would be less work than fixing it? Did you decide to fix it anyway? If you did, was it worth it?
Check out more posts about Slow Motion Whirlwind or click for details on my works in progress.
Eliza Solares 