Hey, all.

By the end of next week (hopefully) I'll have completed my first novel of what will hopefully be a series. It's close to 140 pages, and I would really appreciate that anyone interested in taking the time to read it. Like A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), it's a political fantasy, but it's set in the technological era of the industrial 1920s. It follows the lives of 6 people to examine how they're drawn into a conflict that eventually becomes a full blown civil war. There's also a musical element to it, as every chapter title comes from a song in the 20s era and each character has an American roots genre theme (Ragtime, jazz, folk, blues ect...)

Right now the book's in several pieces. When I finish the last few chapters I have for it, and assemble them, I'll post the link to my Google Doc that it's written in here. Please let me know if any of you are interested in taking a peek at it. Bear in mind that this is my first full length work, and that it's still a bit on the rough draft side. I want constructive criticism, but please be gentle.

Valdronius wrote:

I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine.

Gladly. Point me in the direction of your stuff and I'll start taking a look at it now.

Feel free to post it in the thread. I got nothing to hide.

As for the downloading, I'll just email it to you in that case. Do you have Word, because that's how its being written now. I'd have to convert to PDF (which isn't a problem, per say)

Thanks everyone

Man, I'm just grateful that anyone wants to read it, haha. I'm not going to dictate the terms you read it on. If you have any thoughts you wanna share, go right ahead.

LeshLush wrote:

As a writer myself, I'm just trying to be helpful. I don't know what kinds of proofreaders you already have or where you are in the drafting stage. Tell us what you think an ideal level of proofreading would be. It may be that none of us can off that, but I'll at least do what I can and try to get as close as possible.

Fair enough. I guess I hadn't thought of it that way and I really wasn't trying to be a smartass or anything. As far as the drafting stage goes, I'm on a very rough first draft right now that I'm going to tighten up once before I start sharing it.

I suppose what I'm looking for, in terms of feedback, is some general thoughts. Are the characters distinct? Does the story feel disjointed? (A big concern given my sizeable cast of characters) Are there any continuity errors I should know about? Does my story get interesting fast enough? Generally speaking, who's strong, who's weak and how do you think I can improve the narrative. My English major girlfriend is helping me with a lot of the technical stuff, and my brother's read everything I have so far as well, so that should all be in line. That said, if you catch anything that's extremely glaring or troubling, please let me know.

I may have been a bit optimistic when I said I'd be done at the end of the week. I'm adding at least one chapter that I hadn't expect to and probably a second. I'm also going back to redo the first few chapter of one of my perspective characters, as I'd created a plot device with him that I never used and has genuinely become pointless. After that, I'm going to read through the thing add in a few flavor details to spice things up. This is a fantasy world, after all, and I could use some more information on the magical elements and locations I'm using.

All in all, I'm going to tentatively expect to be done by next week. Possibly earlier. I still don't have much to do in terms of actually writing new material, so it shouldn't take a great deal of time. I'll keep you all posted.

Ugh. I haven't touched it in a while. Which is frustrating becuase I'm so close to the end. I've started to go back and do some editing in hopes that it'll spur my forward momentum. The whole thing is a real frustration.

So, to update a little...I'm nowhere near done. I thought I was, but that was an illusion. The more I do back edits, the more I rewrite. The result is that I have a much better story, but it also means I'm further away from being finished.

When I'm satisfied with chapters, I might start posting in Google Docs again. If I decide to, and I also decide to share that as I go along, I'll post the links here.