Anyone who’s read my earlier posts will know that I’ve decided to enter the world of e-publishing with my first book, Broken Things. But the big question for me now is, where do I start?
I have a manuscript, which I’ve been working on, on and off, for about four years now. It’s been read twice by a professional critiquing service, which has helped me improve it massively. In fact, it was after the first assessment that I was shortlisted in Route Publishing’s Young Author competition.
Since I had the novel assessed for a second time, I haven’t really worked on it any further. I’d started a new project and it felt like a natural time to move on, although I was probably at the point when my novel was at its most promising.
But now I’ve come full circle, as the idea of e-publishing has been growing on me for a while and I’ve decided to return to my story and see what happens.
At the moment, editing the manuscript again seems like a pretty overwhelming task. What I need to do is break it down, figure out the best place to start.
After the last manuscript assessment, which I won from The Literary Consultancy, I got a really helpful feedback report. One of the best comments was about my characters:
“For me, the strongest element of the novel lay in the characterisation. By the end of the book, I really felt I’d come to know each person and each one stood out as an individual with his or her own personal traits. This is a real accomplishment, a real talent, and one doesn’t by any means find it in all novels one reads.”
But whilst this is a really positive comment, there is still a lot of work to be done. The ending, for example, is described as “less successful.”
So maybe the end is the best place to begin?