It’s time for part two of Beautiful Books! I did it last month when planning for Subsapien: Hybrid, third book of my science-fiction series Subsapien and now I’m doing it during NaNoWriMo! Also did it last year with Red Hood and it was so fun! To get in the know with that, check out Beautiful Books #1, #2, and #3! Beautiful Books is a link-up that goes on during NaNoWriMo to show the progress of writing during that time. Basically it’s the time to show off your novels.
Thanks to my writing buddy Cassia from Dimensions of my Universe I finished NaNo TWELVE DAYS EARLY! Wuuuuut?! I finished NaNo at 53,563 words in just 18 days! Then with the added pre-writing in seven days I finished Subsapien Hybrid at 58,076! This is the shortest book I’ve written in a while, but I know it’s going to grow in the rewrite. This is the last Beautiful Books link-up for this year. Sadness, but it was very fun. You can check out October and November’s Beautiful Books to see in more detail what this year’s NaNo novel is about! If you’re interested in participating don’t for get to check out Paper Fury and Further Up and Further In!
On a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best), how did the book turn out? Did anything defy your expectations?
Eh, probably a six. I feel like the plot is there, but it definitely is going to need a lot of smoothing out and I’m going to have to flesh out a lot of the characters and their development. One scene got way more emotional and feelsy than I expected. I cried during it.
Comparative title time: what published books, movies, or TV shows are like your book? (Ex: Inkheart meets X-Men.)
X-men meets Hunger Games. This is actually how I’ve described the book to people before.
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Do you enjoy working with deadlines and pressure (aka NaNoWriMo)? Or do you prefer to write-as-you’re-inspired?
I used to write as I was inspired, but that’s not how you get things done. NaNoWriMo is a bit tight of a time frame for me. I prefer writing a book over two or three months, but I do prefer writing under a deadline, because I enjoy getting book finished efficiently.
How do you go about editing? Give us an insight into your editing process.
For a full manuscript, I let my book rest for about six weeks. During that time I usually work on something else. When I get to editing, I read over the entire book and take notes on things I need to fix. Then I rewrite the entire book using the old book as a guideline. This is where I fix any plot holes, extend scenes, more character development stuff like that.
After this I’ll take a small break then work on micro editing. I’ll comb through the entire book line by line looking for any mistakes in the prose be it grammar, typos, spelling errors, etc. When all of this is finished, I send it off to my beta readers then they give me feedback and I’ll go for another round of edits looking over their suggestions. And that’s my editing process. That’s how I roll.
What aspect of your story needs the most work?
I’ll definitely be adding a lot more description and a lot more … stuff. I wrote unusually short this time and I need more time in the book for characters to develop. I have a lot of them and they didn’t get enough screen time as I wanted them to. I also need to do a bunch of research for different things, but I always leave that for the second draft anyway.
What aspect of your story did you love the most?
All of the feels. This book gave me such feels. I had a literal feels hangover from sadness and I watched Good Mythical Morning for a week for happiness after that truckload of feels. There were also a lot of happy feels. I cried several times while writing this story. I love writing in the POVs of my favorite two boys Bryce and Matt.
Give us a brief run down on your main characters and how you think they turned out. Do you think they’ll need changes in edits?
The book goes into the point of views of Bryce, Matt, Nox, and Caleb. Bryce and Matt are cheetah grafting brothers. Learn more about them here. Nox is a viper grafting. Learn more about him here. Caleb is a biomechanical genius. Learn more about him here.
Bryce:
He is always a pleasure to write. He didn’t give me any trouble at all. I love him so much.
Matt:
I also love writing him too. He’s such the opposite to his older brother. I want to improve his arch just a tad, but he’s pretty solid.
Nox:
This child is such a clam! He will not tell me his past and he’s giving me trouble with his voice. I’m having to pry every last detail out of him. I hope he’ll be more cooperative in the rewrite.
Caleb:
He actually surprised me in this draft. He showed me a lot of things I didn’t know about him and I loved the scenes he was in near the end.
What are your plans for this novel once you finish editing? More edits? Finding beta readers? Querying? Self-publishing? Hiding it in a dark hole forever?
I’m not going to get to editing this book for a while, but when I do I will send it to betas and I want to traditional publish this book. It will be the third out of the four books of my science fiction Subsapien series.
Share a favourite snippet!
Since this is the third book of the series, there is much spoiler territory, but I’ll give a bit I love in particular that isn’t too spoiler-y.
What are your writing goals and plans for 2016?
I have lots! In January I’m going to be editing the extended version of Red Hood to be ready to be sent off by February to my betas which I’ll hopefully have back when I return from my trip two weeks later then I’ll edit it again then send it off to a publisher who request it.
Next I’ll plan out Silver Hood (Red Hood‘s sequel) then I’ll write it for April Camp NaNo. After that I’ll work on editing Subsapien: Biomech so I’ll finally be able to get this baby ready for submission. Then I’ll send that one off to betas and edit when I get the feedback. There may be some more months in there where I’ll have time to do other things, but I’ll figure out what I’m doing later. I have my writing life planned at least up till the summer. I’ll definitely be doing NaNo again next year, but I’m not sure what I’ll be writing.
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| This is Siocban from Silver Hood. Stay tuned for her interview next month! |
And that’s a bit about my NaNo novel! Thank you, Cait and Sky for doing Beautiful Books again! I love chronicling my writing journeys like this. ^ ^ Bring on 2016!
Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Are you writing a novel? How’s it going? Are you participating in this link-up? Post your link in the comments so I can see!
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