Write, Edit, Test

The editing of Red Twin, part one in the Colony-series, continues. But this week I’ve had to take a step back and focus on the previous chapter, which I seem to have sent off for test reading in my sleep. How did I end up here?

July 26, 2023 I finished the first draft of Red Twin, while I was in Mongolia, which has been a great inspiration.

It was the end of a very long journey. I knew it was just the beginning of the “real” job – the editing.

So how would I go about this? Which was the right way to go? I knew I needed structure and started by reading Save the Cat! by Jessica Brody.

With each chapter, the picture became clearer and I understood what I needed to do to make Red Twin “work”: the hero must have problems and motivation, the story must lead in a specific direction, and the finale must be about her overcoming her problems.

This is often called the “Hollowood method”, but with Jessica’s help, it was very possible to apply it to fiction as well. If only I had read this before I started writing!

With this in mind, I began the editing process. I came up with a brand new beginning – which is at least the third variation – and a few more scenes establishing Tuya’s “status quo” world and leading her to the Colony.

Now it felt like the story was believable and readable, so I wondered if I could bring in test readers to validate my assumptions. Surely there must be a system for test reading, I thought. That’s when I found BetaBooks.

It was great to get early feedback from friends and family, but what was incredible was that an acquaintance with a background in journalism could provide spot-on feedback on typos and logic issues right in BetaBooks.

Here it became clear how I overused exclamation points and mixed up a little with a little.

So there we are today. I’ve published six chapters so far in BetaBooks, which also keeps track of versions of each chapter. Listen to more about this in the Trycksvärta podcast, where Hanna and Anna address my thoughts.

Do you want to be a test reader? Get in touch with me on e.g. Instagram and we’ll arrange it.

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