Update.
The rewrites on my novel, The Land of Midnight Days, are going really well. The advice and feedback I’ve received from both my workshop group and my potential publishers have been concise, clear and amazingly helpful. I’ve now cut three unnecessary characters, reduced the number of points of view and yet still increased the overall word count.
I’ve also changed my target audience from Adult to Young Adult. Even though at first I wasn’t too keen to write for a younger audience, I’ve now come to realise perhaps that’s where my strength lies, especially since trying my hand at Flash Fiction and found writing for children much easier. This doesn’t mean to say I’ve allowed my standards to drop, young people can be very insightful and don’t appreciate being served up “secondhand” goods. I want to write quality fiction and give my potential readership every pennyworth of value for their money.
I don’t want to be another JK Rowling, although I wouldn’t mind her success, I want to be different and perhaps appeal to a slightly wider audience. There’s magic, mayhem, twisted relationships, romance, hate and love, contained in my book and if it turns out not to be one hell of a read, it won’t be from want of trying.
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November 27, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Brilliant to get specific advice. You must be so happy. Best luck with the changes.
November 27, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Thanks, Ashen. It is great and what makes it so great is that they obviously know what they’re talking about. The advice given points out obvious errrors, which I missed because I’m unable to be objective about my own work, no matter how hard I try to be. However, getting this advice has taught me such a lot and hopefully, when I start work on the sequal, I can avoid some of the pitfalls.