Finishing the first draft of my first full-length novel project

As you all probably already know if you follow any of my social media, I have completed the first draft of the book I have been writing since I started this book! It has been a very long journey, and there have been times where I stopped writing (for almost a year) and got distracted by other ideas or just life in general, but I always came back to it. Since starting this book, a lot has happened personally, and I graduated high school and started college. All of this helped me grow, and it all even affected my writing – for the better.

I did three of these posts in the past; one for when I first started, one when I finished the first ten chapters, and one when I finished the first twenty chapters. They were all informational/reflective posts that I hope helped some of you if you read them! And now I am making this post as I have finished the rough draft and am starting the editing phase.

The first thing I have to say about finishing my rough draft is that my entire book was wrong. It had felt right when first writing it some three years ago, but now that the book has ended, I can really see what direction I want the book to go in. I have to rewrite the first 20 chapters of the book – I am already halfway through chapter five – and make some huge changes.

I got rid of an entire group of people and changed them to be a subsection of a different type of people.

I changed a main character’s name which is sad because I really liked his name, but it was too similar to the other main character’s name.

I added a made up religion that now plays a huge part in my book.

I completely changed the ending and the direction of the second book.

My real main character has changed entirely, and now her parents have too.

My side villain is entirely different.

There is so much, and different, culture and mythology I need to include and work in.

And more.

In all, I have a lot of editing in front of me. This will be a lot of work, but I am so happy with my novel now, and I believe in it even more than I did before.

I definitely stand by what many authors say in that you don’t know the first chapter of your book until you finish your last chapter. Now I believe in the fact that you don’t ever really know the direction of your story – sometimes your characters surprise you or your own writing concludes before you though it would, or continues past where you though it would. Sometimes, in my case, you won’t know the first three quarters of your book until you write the last chapter.

Well that’s all I can thinm of currently about the first draft! I will doing writing videos on my channel starting in June, so be on watch for those!

How is your work in progress going?

Thanks for reading!

Taylor