Another month passes and so I am back to the monthly updates. As I mentioned in a quick post pretty much exactly two weeks ago, I finished the sixth draft which I declared the first beta draft. I’ve found one beta reader even before it was finished from a discussion on Goodreads and, almost a months later, he was given the current draft. Now, I’ve received some early bit of feedback from him though the weekend gave me little chances to have a look at it.

Yet, even before I’ll go to look at what he tells me, I’ve had one of those nights when I want to sleep and get ideas instead. It slightly follows what I’ve been saying about cuts a month ago. In the last draft, I made several cuts to the beginning, getting rid of some parts that did not meet my expectations. It was just that: cut some parts, scour the draft for any stray mentions of those events and that was it.

In retrospect, I probably knew that I’ll need to dive into it a bit more. That the beginning will need a bit more work. I admit I had no idea what and how exactly – which was given to me the last night. This time, it’ll be more than just cutting. It’ll affect the first four or five chapters from which some parts will be removed, some will be moved a bit and a character that appears in them introduced in much different way – which’ll allso change some interactions between characters and the setup. I can’t know how exactly will my latest idea work out but I have high faith it’ll cut even more of the drawn-out fluff at the beginning and give a bit more hints about some characters.

My current plan is to wait for the beta reader to pass through what I’ll edit, ask how he felt about it (to know how the pre-edit felt), then tell him about the edit ideas I came up with and ask him for his insight on that.

As for the beta process itself, I am starting slow and will probably not start loking for more beta readers in the coming weeks. Maybe I’ll do two more drafts before I seek for more beta readers to weed out some problems that I might have trouble seeing but a different pair of eyes will.

So, that’s it from me. I’m also finally starting to know what I might share about my story – something I now see for the next two weeks or so. As I said in past, I need to find a spot that allows me to tell something about the story without spoilers and without telling too much or not enough.

If you have a question or feel like leaving your own opinion, feel free to comment.

See you next time.