Nothing is as terrifying to me as writing a final draft. I haven’t really done it before if I’m honest. I’ll write a version of my story that I consider good enough to upload, but right now I’m working on an actual final draft of the Hesitant Hero volume 1. When it’s done, I want to send it to a publisher. I’ve only done one chapter so far, so I have quite a while to go. The way I look at it is inspired by something I read in Stephen King’s book On Writing. Here he talks about how he first writes the story for himself, and then later writes it for the people who will buy his books. That’s a great way to look at it. I’ll put this version in a folder somewhere and keep it there forever. If a publisher does eventually pick up my story, the version that’ll be published will likely be quite different due to editors and other factors being involved. I’m not delusional enough to think that I can write a perfect story that doesn’t require any improvements. I am confident that the core of my story can be good.

So what do I do for the final draft? Honestly, I’m still kind of figuring that out myself. What I’m doing first is taking the version I already wrote and putting it side to side with an empty document. I’ll read it once and then write it again, changing words, sentence structure and maybe even a whole paragraph at a time. While doing so, I’m making a document in which I’m listing all of the important information that I share in a chapter, so I can have a quick look at it later on. Here’s what this looks like for the first chapter of volume 1:

Chapter 1 – The shores of Ravadier

• Mana and Cobal arrive in Ravadier a month after Mana was summoned to this world
• The reclusive Vadier family rules this region, thriving on the export of fruit to nearby cities
• The previous hero, Lord Might, was summoned when Cobal’s great grandfather was a child
• Cobal’s magic instructor was a man named Diriak, who was present for the summoning ritual
• Mages often use symbols as a sort of lingua arcana. These symbols do not seem to hold any real power.
• Speaking the actual words of certain things and imbuing them with power is how Mana is learning to use magic. She can keep an object afloat for a second or two in this chapter

As you can see, I’m focusing mainly on lore and character details. I have a pretty bad memory and I also have aphantasia. That’s a fancy way of saying you don’t really have a mind’s eye. I can think about things, but I can’t ‘see’ them inside my own head. I’m jealous of people who can, which seems like a pretty cool ability to have. This has resulted in me not even really having a clear concept of what some of my characters look like. I don’t like describing my characters in too much detail to begin with. One thing I love about reading books is that they give you the freedom to add to it with your own imagination. Harry Potter looked very different in my head compared to what Daniel Radcliffe looked like in those movies. 

This means that there’s quite a few inconsistencies throughout my drafts, even the ones I put up for everyone to read. Those of you who notice those things, I can only apologize. One of the big changes I’m making for the final version is that it’ll be much more consistent. Did anyone notice I never really explained why no one’s talking about the second prince? That’s because I forgot he existed. I also didn’t like his name, so I changed it. Cryan? It sounds way too much like crying, so I’m changing his name to Azuran. Sounds cooler, right? Sapher, Azuran, Cobal and Cyanna. I hope I’m not overdoing the ‘blue’ theme, but I think it’s nice to have a concept to build off of. I’m doing the same with the Fyrston Empire in the Necromancer’s Daughter.

So yeah, all of this is quite intimidating. I hope I’m doing a good job. Nothing would make me more happy than to have my very own novels in print, allowing people to buy them. I would be happy if ten people bought them, it’s been my lifelong dream to have my own book. My grandfather – whom I’ve unfortunately not met before he passed – wrote and printed his own books as well. I have two of them, one of which is on the shelf behind me right now. It’s a history book about the town he grew up in. He also made coursebooks for schools to use. It’s in my blood to write, it just skipped my dad’s generation. It’s definitely a motivator for me though. I also know that if no one wants to publish my book for me, I’ll just publish it myself. It’s more important to me to have made a book than to make money off of it. It makes me happy to write it, and I hope it’ll one day make people happy to read it. But it’s definitely still a scary process. Thanks for reading.