Well after a lot of thinking et al

[nadinbrzezinski]

decided to rework the fiction from the Future Nexus GAMING world, into something more edgy. It is a good science fiction world and there were things that I could NOt go into when meant for teens. Since the book and game didn't do too well...

Anyway, I have gone into very adult themes, as the first draft is (actually draft zero) comes to an end. Yes, I decided to deal with issues such as rape... and abuse in wartime, as well as how kids can be really broken in war. It is in some ways the US in the 35th century. Some of the powers that be are exactly taken from today's world. This brings us to the reality about fiction. I might set a story on oh ... the other side of the galaxy 20K years from now. Reality is... take the covers off, a writer is talking about today. That's the reality.

It's been fun, now doing the writing of the editing notes and all that. It will be fun to edit this and add the story lines I did not fully go into, At 70K I have space to add those and add a lot of the padding, aka description. I know once it is done... I will look for traditional publication. If not sold in the US... will look for foreign markets, and if not... self publishing over the usual places. Reality is... the industry is at an interesting point, to be truthful. Of course now I also intend to do a few short stories to try to sell on the web. Asimov et al have really stopped doing new writers a while ago.

And this is one reason why the trades here in the US at times feel stale...

[SheilaT]

1. I'm getting slightly stuck on

your calling your first draft "draft zero". Will the second draft be "draft one"? Or do you simply have a marvelously idiosyncratic way of labelling your drafts.

I know this isn't the most important thing about how you write, but as a sometime writer myself I'm fascinated. Anyway, back to what actually matters about this work: Is this now intended to be a stand-alone s-f novel? Or part of some kind of series or shared world?

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Draft Zero... it is as raw as they come

and yes draft one will be a more polished version of this... and so on.

Hemingway iirc, used to do the same. I could call it the same way he did... TRASH. I am aware that those first drafts need a LOT of work.

After all, as you know writing is rewriting, what is the other saying 98% perspiration, 2% inspiration... (on a good day)

One problem I already found, the order of scenes for the prologue are all wrong. So that will be easy to correct.

Oh and it is a whole sale revision from a gaming world of mine. As a gaming world it didn't do too well. The world is really complex and rich, but having to write for YA (and gamers at that) places a certain series of constraints on the writer. I knew, for example, that in the background for the MC he was a POW, a child soldier, tortured and yes, raped. In a YA novel you might hint at this,,, but you really don't go there. I am going there. Let's just say his reason to hate the enemy are quite... well... raw. And yes, I broke him well before word one was written in the actual novel.

And it should be a series.

(I could have taken the original novel and just revised it, but damn there is so much to explore here, on a serious matter)