Writing Methodology

The first draft is now complete.

We began with a very rough outline of the story. In fact, even though they have since changed, we began with the chapter titles. That seemed like the easiest way to organize the major plot points.

Although relatively unimportant at this stage, we then proceeded to add some basic formatting. This will likely change also, but it was somehow emotionally important.

We then started to add sentence fragments to each chapter. Most of the fragments later evolved into paragraphs, however a few were later merged with others.

Around this time, again more for emotional importance, we began thinking about cover art. The idea was to design something that might help readers visualize one of the most important moments in the story.

We then went through and ensured that every chapter had at least a few basic paragraphs. This resulted in additional detail.

We then went through, yet again, filling in timeline gaps with additional paragraphs. That brings us to the point we are at now, with a complete first draft.

However, the first draft only tells the basic story. It reads as if someone tells you his or her life story matter-of-factly, devoid of emotion. Therefore, the next iteration will focus on adding descriptive text. As previously stated, we want our readers to experience all of the sights, sounds, and feelings that we hope to convey.

After that, we will share the new draft with our inner circle. We will not yet be concerned with proofreading, but rather with the readers' experience. We see no point in having a grammatically correct bad story, but a good story can be checked before submission for publication.

We leave all that for another blog post.