Ray’s answer to “Hi Ray, I'm just starting Sunset Swing, having read the first three in the series in about a for…” > Likes and Comments
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Hey, no worries.
The drafts are a case of diminishing returns / honing what's there. So the 2nd draft was maybe 70% different from the previous one. The 3rd draft was maybe 50% different from the previous one. The 4th was 30% different. And so on. So by draft nine (the proof-read), I'm just tinkering with paragraphs and sentences, etc. (This is not something you're supposed to do at the proof stage, but my publisher is very chilled.)
But thinking back to the first draft, it was massively different to the final book. There was no Kerry in the first draft, and no Night-Slayer / serial killer. And Dante's story was about him searching for a missing starlet he'd been tasked with protecting. And the other main POV character was an LAPD cop whose old boss went missing (an FBN agent) and the old boss's wife asked him to find her husband. There was also a main character who was the teenaged daughter of a drug cartel boss, but when I read it back she was really annoying, lol. But I tweaked it until this character ultimately became Kerry.
This illustrates it's really just a process of writing stuff, and then reading it back to see what works. It's really inefficient (hence why it took three years to write), but I can't seem to come up with a faster process...
Ray, thank you so much for this insight. It's on my bucket list to write a novel (the clock's ticking!), so I really appreciate this insight into your process. Thanks again.
I look forward to reading your next work. :-)
No worries. And good luck with your novel!
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Hey, no worries. The drafts are a case of diminishing returns / honing what's there. So the 2nd draft was maybe 70% different from the previous one. The 3rd draft was maybe 50% different from the previous one. The 4th was 30% different. And so on. So by draft nine (the proof-read), I'm just tinkering with paragraphs and sentences, etc. (This is not something you're supposed to do at the proof stage, but my publisher is very chilled.)
But thinking back to the first draft, it was massively different to the final book. There was no Kerry in the first draft, and no Night-Slayer / serial killer. And Dante's story was about him searching for a missing starlet he'd been tasked with protecting. And the other main POV character was an LAPD cop whose old boss went missing (an FBN agent) and the old boss's wife asked him to find her husband. There was also a main character who was the teenaged daughter of a drug cartel boss, but when I read it back she was really annoying, lol. But I tweaked it until this character ultimately became Kerry.
This illustrates it's really just a process of writing stuff, and then reading it back to see what works. It's really inefficient (hence why it took three years to write), but I can't seem to come up with a faster process...
Ray, thank you so much for this insight. It's on my bucket list to write a novel (the clock's ticking!), so I really appreciate this insight into your process. Thanks again.I look forward to reading your next work. :-)
No worries. And good luck with your novel!
Yes, 25 days does really seem a small amount. You've gotten so much detail about the period and characterisations etc in these books that I anticipated a lot more days spent researching.
With the 9 drafts - how much changed in each of those? Is it a case of smoothing out the edges or did you have to completely re-write some of the chapters?
Thanks again for answering.