Never Finished

 As I've mentioned before, I am reading my novel aloud to an audience. I don't know if it's the story or the way I read it, but my novel is currently being well received. 

The thing is, it's far from perfect. I'm looking at the structure of my novel now as I'm reading more (having more time to read now that my book is 'finished') and watching films more, I'm seeing where magical elements could be added to make it more wow. 

For example, after the catalyst (the incident that starts all the conflict off, ie Harry getting a letter from Hogwarts) in my novel, there's still adventure and conflict, but there's no wonder. Things happen that I think (hope) are interesting, but no awe. 

I've really streamlined this part of the book. I've cut out the superfluous detail that didn't really help the plot or the character development. I have some wiggle room with my word count now, especially as I'm going to cut out chapter 19 completely. (I just need to go through it to see if there's any plot or character development that can be moved to an earlier or later chapter.)

Now that I have a bit of wiggle room with the word count, as I'm at 59k words whereas the limit for my genre is 65k for a debut novel, I can see about fleshing out any thin or flaky parts of the novel. 

I know that chapters 20 - 25 are a bit weak and need filling out a bit. I mean, there's trimming the superfluous and then there's leaving the novel completely bereft of detail, plot and fun. 

Another thing I'm thinking is that my chapters are too short. I have 43 chapters, because they're roughly 1000 words each. That seems a lot of chapters to me, so I think I need to restructure the novel. It works quite well reading for a short period of time, however, so I'm not sure. And my audience quite likes the chapter headings. They ask for me to tell them what the next chapter is called, and guess what might happen in it. 

I'm struggling to focus on editing my manuscript while I'm reading it to my audience. You can probably tell because I'm writing this blog post instead of working on the novel. It's open on this PC, lingering in the background while I type. I've chopped out the offending chapters that I want to work on and set them aside from the fourth draft of this novel. 

The thing is, I've made notes on the one I'm reading aloud. What if I change things and then the notes are irrelevant. Or if the notes make the changes I would have made unnecessarily. Those notes are based on actual, audience reactions. And I don't feel as if I can work on it until I've finished reading this draft aloud. 

The answer is simple... 

.... work on the new novel! 

If I knew where to start it, I would!