I’m finishing up the third draft of Persian Flames. The fourth Out of the Bottle novella has been a challenging writing journey. Lots of internal conflict and a decidedly magical external conflict. Plus, any story with a child in jeopardy tugs at my heartstrings — even when I know there will be a happy ending.
It’s taught me something about how I write, though.
The first draft is where I get the story down, untangling motivations and developing character, roughing out the action. The second draft is all about structure. Have I got the pacing right? enough description? does it work? The third draft is language: over-used words, passive sentences, punctuation, italics for present tense thoughts.