 Hello, my name's Jackie and welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, I am an aspiring fiction author and in today's video I'm going to read through my Nanarimo draft from last year. So this is the draft. It is called Powerless. It is a book where superheroes meet the Russian mafia and I am very, very nervous about looking at it again. But this has to happen at some point. So it's been more than four months since I looked at this and when it comes to what I expect to find, I'm expecting there will be certain issues. Like I know that characters could be more developed. I know there are certain relationships such as between the protagonist and her father figure and the protagonist and her sister which need to be a lot stronger. The father figure is the antagonist in this book and I think there needs to be a much stronger antagonist protagonist dynamic to really drive the story as opposed to the stories happening and the antagonist just shows up at the climax at the end of the book. I think the world building could probably be stronger but I'm not too worried about that because I took the lazy way out and I'm basically based it on Tallinn, Estonia, which is where I work and live right now so I can just throw more details in. My biggest concern is probably that it's going to feel like two different books and the reason for that is because at the midpoint when I was plotting this out I knew I wanted the protagonist and her new sidekicks to basically interfere with one of her father's missions and I hadn't explored it beyond that. I thought I'll figure out what it is when I get to it and then I decided what they could do is like some sort of heist where they break into his house and try to get data for something and then I needed to figure out why they needed the information and it turned into this whole weapons dealing heist type thing that wasn't foreshadowed earlier in the book so I'm worried that the first half and the second half of the book are going to feel like two fundamentally different books and that is a big problem because that probably means I need to go back and rewrite the whole thing rather than just revising what I have. Beyond that I'm worried it's going to be crap. Like I know it's not going to be perfect, I know it's a first draft, I know it's my first draft in a very long time. I haven't really written anything since I was at university which was over 10 years ago so I'm worried I'm going to read it and it will just be cringe worthy and there'll be nothing of merit there and I'll set a match to it once I'm done. I'm also worried that I'm going to get too sucked into this project and I'm going to want to start revising it and working on it straight away which I actually shouldn't do at the moment because I'm in the middle of drafting another project and if you're wondering why I'm looking at the book now rather than waiting until I'm done drafting the other project which would be my preference the reason is because I am doing another video at the moment which will probably be up by the time the one you're watching is which is basically on syncing my writing to my menstrual cycle so if you're interested in that I will put a link in the description but basically when you're in your menstrual phase of your cycle your mental strengths in that phase are supposed to be evaluation and taking stock and reflection so I thought that would be the perfect time to review a draft. The problem is is that this phase has come up before I've written the draft of the other book so unless I want to wait for another month or two to finish that experiment I really need to look at this now. When it comes to what I'm hoping will come out of reading this draft one is simply hoping that it won't be that bad like again I don't expect it to be perfect it is the first draft but I'd like to read through it and go oh this has potential or oh I can yeah I know that doesn't work but I can see a solution or oh that moment that scene that conversation is really cool and I'm getting giddy reading it because this is an enjoyable thing so I'm hoping there are some points where I have that reaction. In any case I'm not going to know until I get started so let's do this. Before we get started here are the materials I have for this task. The first one is my printed out draft of powerless which I haven't looked at since I think the 29th of December which is when I finished it. The next one is a notepad. I am not planning to get too deep into revisions at the moment because I am writing something else so this is really just to take down any initial thoughts and observations and so on. Ten to write with the notepad and then highlighter just in case there's anything I feel like highlighting. Time to do this. So I've been reading for about 45 minutes I think I'm up to chapter 10 and there were 35 chapters in the book. I made the mistake of not printing out with page numbers so I don't actually know how far through I am it's maybe about a quarter. So far I'm really enjoying it like it's lots of fun and there are a couple of things that need to be corrected beyond there are certain paragraphs where it's like more description would be nice here or I should build up this but the biggest thing so far is that in the first 20 to 25 percent of the book I really need to build up the brotherhood and give background on them so they the brotherhood is the mafia group in this story and the reason they need more background is because when Hannah encounters them when she leaves home it should be this foreboding horrifying experience which it isn't at the moment because we don't really know who these people are. The other thing I've noticed is that things move very quickly and even at the time I was writing I knew they moved very quickly like she you know they're at home there's a mission which sets things in motion she gets kicked out she looks for trouble she encounters the brotherhood she gets kid she gets captured they find out who she is she gets taken to the boss she gets tortured and it's all of this stuff happening like they're short chapters probably 1500 words each and each of these things is happening in that space and I don't know if it's moving quickly in a good way or a bad way like I don't know if it's moving quickly in the this is exciting it's out of control oh my god what's going to happen next or if it's moving quickly in the there's too much happening I can't keep up I'm going to give up so at this stage I'm just going to continue reading but yeah all in all it isn't awful which is what I was most worried about so I just finished reading powerless and I can't stop smiling it it does need work it is not going to an agent or a publisher anytime soon but it was so much fun it just um you know it was quite a ride it I liked the characters I like the world I think the climax worked really well I actually think there was more antagonist protagonist playoff than I originally realized and yeah it's just the sort of thing that this is a YA book and it's the sort of thing I would have loved to have read when I was sort of 16 to 18 so I'm really happy with it for a first draft all in all I think the overall shape of the book works really well I think the first half of the book does need to slow down a bit I think there's a lot that happens very quickly and we miss out on the opportunity to develop characters and setting and so on I mentioned earlier that I need to build up the threat of the brotherhood at the beginning of the book so that when we meet them it's like a oh my god type of moment and other than it's mainly little things like there's a moment where Hannah is really angry at the brotherhood because they essentially brand her as one of their own without her consent and then two chapters later she's on their side because she discovers that her father is the greater of the two evils and it's clear why she changed sides but it's not clear how she starts to feel like the brotherhood is her new family so there's development that needs to be done there similarly with Hannah and her sister at the end it's like her sister's the one person who's the most important person in the world to her and that could be developed much more at the beginning of the book before Hannah's set free because one of the challenges I have is that for over 50% of the book they're apart so I've got to think about how to build that relationship when they're not actually together there was one big concern I mentioned earlier today which was that I thought it might feel like two different books I thought the first half might feel like one sort of superhero Marvel sci-fi Russian mafia type of book and the second half might feel like a heist book and it wasn't actually that bad there was one scene which felt really out of place and that was when they're going to an auction house that's been built on top of an old Soviet bunker which is where the final battle takes place and they go there beforehand to case the joint and the way that's been approached I think is appropriate for a heist type book but it feels really out of place in this book so one of the things I need to figure out is do we need that scene and that level of detail do they need to case the joint or could it be taken out or if they do need to do it is their scope to include that sort of analysis earlier in the book when Hannah encounters other locations for the first time which might make it fit a little bit better so the good news is that I don't think this needs a major overhaul I don't think I need to start writing another draft from scratch I do think the bones are there which means I can start revising this draft and fleshing it out unfortunately I'm not going to be able to do that for another month or two because I should really get back to reciprocal stalking which is my current work in progress but all in all I'm very pleasantly surprised I was worried I would look at this and go oh my god it's so crap what's wrong with me and I completely deluded in thinking I could ever be a writer and I look at this and think there's hope so yeah all in all very happy come stop smiling so that is all from me for today if you've been in this position where you've picked up a draft after a few months I'd love to hear about your experiences have you been pleasantly surprised or have you looked at it and gone okay this needs a bit of an overhaul or maybe I should put this book aside entirely and how do you know which side of the spectrum you're on how do you know that this is something you're happy with and you can continue working on or whether it's something that should probably be put to rest so you can focus on something else so let me know in the comments below if you liked this video please give me a big thumbs up and I will see you next time bye