Title: Bones & Dreams
Genre: Dark Fantasy, New Adult
Premise: On the verge of a vengeful ancient goddess breaking out of her prison, two people from opposing cultures enter a blood-thirsty forest with orders to stop the event. But when the ritual requires something that will haunt them forever, they must gain autonomy over their decisions before betrayal leads to an old war being re-started between their peoples.
Rewrite Progress:
100% (preparation)
0% (rewrites)
Stamina Potions (Cups of Tea) Consumed: 10
It's time for another update on my current novel-in-progress! 😄
After completing my revision plan, I went through my entire first draft and added all the worldbuilding information I created when writing that version to the novel's Story Bible.
A Story Bible is a physical and/or digital place where writers keep all the information for each of their stories and the world they are created in. Kind of like a large encyclopedia detailing specific information - such as cultures, animals, plants, types of transport, locations, etc. - about the world a story is set in. Even writers whose stories are set in the modern day usually have a Story Bible. Its main functions are:
1. To keep all the information in one place to make searching for details about a story world element much easier
2. To help writers remain consistent in their stories as they can check, cross-reference, and edit what they've written accordingly
Making sure all of my first (or Discovery) draft worldbuilding information is in my Story Bible for this novel before starting this round of edits puts me in a better situation when rewriting my scenes as I can now cross-reference my details and ensure they are consistent in my next draft.
Since I am having to do a lot of rewriting in this round of editing, I also copied into a separate document all the text from my first draft that I want to include in my edited draft so that it is easier to access.
This isn't normally something I would do when editing. However, as I discussed in one of the previous edit updates for Bones & Dreams, the first draft of this novel was written with barely any plan or outline to guide me as I went. This was a great experiment during a time when I was struggling creatively as the process helped me get the novel written. But, now, the story needs a lot of structure, plot, and scene reworking/rewriting. The ideas I've had to improve these elements have rendered a large percentage of the writing from my first (or Discovery) draft irrelevant to the story. This means all of that text will not be making into the next draft.
I would be lying if I said this wasn't disheartening initially, but the first draft is all about discovering the story - hence the term Discovery draft - and that's what I did. I discovered my story. Now, I am refining and improving it so that it can be the best it can 💪
Goal(s) for Febuary 2024:
Rewrite 4 scenes - that's one per week!
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If you would like to follow my journey as I edit my dark fantasy novel, Bones & Dreams, I will be posting a new update here at the end of each month. Each post will have a summary of the progress I've made, my editing goals for each month, as well as other details about my novel. Some months will have more to read than others depending on my progress as well as which stage of editing I am in at any point.
I will also be posting a shorter version of my updates on Instagram on the same day as the blog posts. Please feel free to check those out if you prefer quicker reading.
Stayed tuned for more updates!
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