When the Story Comes Back
Well, Fellow Creatures, as I write this, I am nearing the end of the beta phase for the Scarred World prequel and Books 1–3.
As mentioned in previous posts and newsletters, thirteen brave souls volunteered to become the First of the Scarred, those faithful few willing to wade into the fray of typos and potential continuity errors in hopes of helping me find a better story on the other side.
Now, that story is beginning to come back.
With it has arrived a collection of extremely useful feedback about what worked, what didn’t, what was confusing, and what became emotionally difficult.
The next step is figuring out what all of it means.
What I’ve hopefully learned over the years of doing this, my job is not to obey every suggestion. It is to understand where readers became engaged, confused, exhausted, surprised, or even unwilling to continue. And then I get to decide what the heck to do about it.
That’s the fun, occasionally manic joy of this whole authorship thing.
Mostly, it means looking for patterns.
One reader might struggle with a scene that completely pulls another into the story. One person’s favorite character might be the character another wants to skip altogether.
I need to remind myself, contradictory reactions don’t necessarily mean something is broken. Sometimes, they simply mean the story is producing different experiences for different folks.
That is where the difficult part begins.
My responsibility is to look at all of that evidence without becoming defensive, panicking, or sanding away the qualities that made me want to write the story in the first place.
Other feedback has pointed toward storylines or plot points that seem to disappear among the many threads. That means carefully combing through the manuscripts to determine where those threads were lost and how to bring them back into view.
Then there are the grammatical issues and confusing sentences that cause readers to stumble. I had already planned to catch many of these during my final line-editing pass, but every marked sentence gives me another smushed bug to clean from the windshield.
The next step will not be easy, but it is necessary if I want to make this story the strongest version of itself.
For making that possible, I owe the First of the Scarred an enormous thank-you.
I hope that when the books finally emerge on the other side of this process, they will see something special they helped bring into the world.
So, What Comes Next?
Once I have organized the feedback and decided which changes belong in the manuscripts, it will be time to take out the surgical tools and begin working more closely with the prose.
I’ll move through the story line by line, trying to make each scene sing as clearly as possible.
After that comes formatting. I’ll prepare the prequel and Book 1 as both ebooks and paperbacks, then read through the finished formats to check their quality and mop up what I sincerely hope will be the last of the grammatical mistakes.
Then the book will go to my advanced review team (or ARC team.)
These readers will receive the finished book before release and, ideally, leave honest reviews once it officially becomes available. If that sounds like something you would enjoy, feel free to reach out. I would be happy to add you to the team.
After that, I’ll give Amazon the official thumbs-up.
And then it is off to the races.
I don’t have a firm release date yet, but late September is becoming the current target for Book 1 and the prequel.
The plan after that is to release each subsequent book approximately one month apart until the entire Scarred World Saga is finally out in the world.
Within the next two or three weeks, I should have a much clearer understanding of whether that timeline is realistic. As I learn more, I’ll continue sharing the journey here and through my newsletter!
I hope you’ll continue walking beside me, Fellow Creatures.
None of this would be possible without you.
All right. Time to get back to editing.
Until next time,
See you in Elsewhere!
-Jeff