New Project: Beginning the Rewriting Process

Hello all!

So, my last post revealed that I would be rewriting one of my first stories into a comic strip (and new novel). This morning I finally had time to work on it. And oh boy, was it harder than I thought.

Because it had been so long since I'd immersed myself in this world, I had to reread the first draft and ughhh. It was rough, let me tell ya. Definitely salvageable, but it was all over the place. *insert face palm here*

I thought I would sort of document my journey in rewriting this book, to give you an insight into my crazy brain and help other writers along.

The first thing I did was get my messy notebook and favorite pen.

Then I turned on my Writing Playlist on Spotify. It's a playlist filled with movie and video game soundtracks, some Pink Floyd, and various other musical artists. This is all music intended to help me drown out the outside world and boost my imagination/productivity levels. Side effects may include taking off the headphones and realizing your back on the material plane, several hours have passed, and you are insanely hungry.

With the environment set up, I went to work. I opened up my first draft, character sheet, and Google - essential for the research.

First I went through and summarized the story - very basic with only the three main characters involved. It was hard to take out a lot of detail, but this is very important for when I create my outline (I went through the outline process in a previous post).

After I wrote the summary, I turned to each important character. I wrote out their abilities (it is a super hero story after all) and their reasons for what they do. Every character needs to have something driving them. Even especially the villain.
Speaking of the villain, I went back and wrote the summary of the story in his point of view. I wrote what he was doing in the background, ect. This is important so that I can get inside their head and make a character believable to my audience. A villain that is "relatable."

I had several pages of character notes after this. I made several changes to the first draft. After I was done I typed it all up and sent it to my sister. As she is the artist, I want her to get a feel for the characters, so our visions for the story will match.

Next that came was the beginning of world building which is my least favorite part of writing.
I actually quite enjoy world building, the only problem is picking which parts should go into the story. It's a fine balance of overwhelming your readers with the facts of the world or giving them nothing to go on.
When I do start world building, I like to go to a couple close friends or family and get their take on it. My father adds a lot to this side especially. He and I could run ideas all day (or night as the case usually was), and with this story in particular he heavily influenced a lot of the world building early on. So, thanks dad!

I've decided to do a new post devoted to more of my world building process as I continue to go through that particular journey with this new rewrite.

Thanks for sticking around this long! Alas, I don't have any new writing pieces for the end, but if you would leave me a comment  (or just message me since I probably know all of you) it would be really encouraging!

Until next time,
Emi