As mentioned last week, I’ve been rewriting JOHNNY B. WEEYERD AND THE COSMIC ANNIHILATOR, the first children’s novel I wrote. The fact I had to rewrite it was largely down to one thing: poor preparation.
Allow me to explain . . .
When I started writing JBW it was going to be a comedy sci-fi for the 7-9 age group. I kept that in the back of my mind as I was writing, but otherwise I essentially did no planning whatsoever on the story or characters.
Big mistake.
Because I didn’t even have the vaguest of plans to work to, the story strayed off the path I had intended it to take. The subject matter became more complex, and became unsuitable for the 7-9 age group, and by the time I was finished I was left with a novel for 9-11 year olds.
Which would have been fine, but it was still the length of a novel for 7-9 year olds. Basically, it was of no use to either age group, and – being too lazy to do a rewrite at the time – I moved onto something else and forgot all about it.
Now my agent has read the manuscript and shown interest, I’ve blown the dust off it and added seven or eight thousand words, but if I’d done some proper planning in the first place, I would have saved myself all that work. Anyway, it’s finished now, so I’ll send it off to her tomorrow and she’ll hopefully think it’s worth sending out!
Related posts:
- Mr Mumbles publication date changed I found out yesterday that the first book in the...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Leave a Reply