 Hello and welcome back to my channel, my name's Jackie and today is August 14th. Now on August the 10th I received an email from my editor saying in two weeks your manuscript critique is coming up and I'm wondering if you're still on track and I went crap that's closer than I expected and yes I knew it was happening on August 24th but August 24th felt like a theoretical concept for me at some point in the future as opposed to a date that's suddenly two weeks away or as of today 10 days away. So what I need to do is go through the first 50 pages of my book and get them into the best shape I can in order for her to be able to give me the best feedback that she can. The problem is it's been almost two weeks since I last looked at the book because I needed a bit of a break and honestly I don't feel too drawn to go back to it yet like I could happily enjoy taking a full month off but I have this deadline so to give you context of what I have to prepare for I booked in a critique of the first 50 pages of my manuscript and I did that for a couple of reasons. One, budgets a bit easier for 50 pages as opposed to the full book but two because this is my first real new project in over 10 years I'm pretty sure it needs a lot of work. I'm pretty sure it sounds like it was written by somewhere in high school since or maybe university since I haven't really written since then so I feel like it's probably going to come across as a little bit immature and inexperienced in terms of writing skill and if that is the case I don't know if it's worth getting the full book critiqued when any of the major issues are probably going to be evident in the first 50 pages so I can use that feedback to refine the full book. So the priority is obviously the first 50 pages and that's what needs to be done in the next 10 days however I would like to finish going through the book just because I think it's easy not to finish things I think it's easy to sort of put something in a folder and go okay I'll get back to that when I can and suddenly it's six months later and you haven't looked at it so at least tying this up means it's done and I can put it aside. I don't know knowing that it's taking time to marinate and mature and I can go back with fresh eyes and I have something that's more complete to look at as opposed to something where there are all of the issues that I knew about now that just haven't been addressed and I'm outsourcing those to future Jackie. So what am I going to be looking at and in fact before I go into what I'm going to be looking at I should tell you what the book's about because if you're new here nothing I'm about to say will make sense. So this book is powerless it's Superheroes meets the Russian mafia. The original idea was a girl with no powers in a family of superheroes gets kicked out of home and told not to come back until she has powers and after she gets kicked out she then runs into the she goes looking for trouble because she knows that the stress response or an adrenaline spike can trigger the awakening of powers if you have the right DNA which she does so she goes looking for trouble and runs into the mafia and chaos ensues. So where am I at the moment? I looked at this book for Camp Anorimo in July and on August 2nd I'd gotten to the end of the book Save the Final Scene which I'm sort of happy to not look at until I've got a feedback because I feel like the ending could be a bit better and I feel like if I fix the earlier parts of the book the ending's going to be it's going to be easier to write a powerful ending that fits with everything. So I've been through the entire book Save the Final Scene. However there were difficult things or things that I did not address and those I highlighted in yellow as I was going through. So what is there to look at? The first thing is how is the Brotherhood introduced? So the Brotherhood is the Russian Mafia and I have struggled with how to introduce them because when you create a fictional world your audience doesn't have the understanding of the world that your characters do So let's say there was something set in our current world and like modern day Japan and someone gets in trouble and they turn to their family and says it's the Yakuza. I don't know what to do. You don't need to explain who the Yakuza are. Everyone knows Japanese mafia. Same thing if you're like in New York I guess and talk about the mafia or the mob. Saying that gives enough context so your readers know okay this is serious. Because this is a different world it's not the Yakuza, it's not the Italian mafia. There isn't that context so I feel like there needs to be something to explain why when the main character finally encounters them it's like it should be an oh crap moment. This is not a good thing. So I need to think about how to weave that in and I don't really know how to do it beyond like cataloging the things they're known for or responsible for. It's so much easier to just tell through experience but if I tell through experience then we don't have the foreshadowing. So that's one thing. The next thing is a couple of scenes where I just could not figure them out as I was going through them. So one is there's this basically there's a mission that goes wrong at the beginning. They think supers might be behind it but the main character gets a DNA sample from one of the culprits and he doesn't have the DNA. So that raises questions and there's sort of one or two scenes that need to happen there between that discovery and when she gets kicked out of home that I haven't really nailed yet and I'm not sure if I'm going to keep what I did last time or if I'm going to cut it and do something else. There's also after the initial trouble with the Russian mafia she gets sort of adopted by the head family of the Russian mafia and before that everything's going really fast like it's sort of disaster after disaster and this moment things slow down a little bit and I think it's necessary because we need to catch our breath but I think it could be better. So there are two scenes there like one sort of family life with the mob family and then two is like a little revenge quest they go on. Then there are a couple of sections that I've just highlighted because it's like fundamentally they work they fit but the handful of paragraphs could be written better. The next big thing is sense of place so I think an area where I've actually done this well is the auction house where the final confrontation takes place and the reason this works well is because I didn't wait until the final confrontation to describe it. I actually sent the main character and one of the sidekicks there to scope it out beforehand so the reason that works is because we already get the sense of place there in a lower stake situation we can understand where everything's happening and then when the battle comes at least I hope this is how it works but when the battle comes the readers already know this place so they can fill in the details without me having to go oh the room looked like this and blah blah blah. There are other parts in the book where I think I need to slow things down a little bit and create a sense of where things are happening and one of the big challenges is talking about the city itself because the main character has not really left the family home for a couple of years for reasons so when she gets kicked out it's her first time seeing everything in years it's the first time we as the readers are seeing everything. The problem is she's being chased out of the house by superheroes like who have been set upon her so it's this really fast-paced scene there's not enough time to describe things so I'm not sure how to handle that and then the final thing is I need to name a bunch of things so if I don't know what to name something I just put name in capital letters and highlighted in yellow so I need to name the city where this is based the country in which the city is based I need to give the family a name because at the moment I'm just calling them like the super family but I think that's a little bit on the nose if I made the father's last name like if I made it actually super that's actually made though is a bit of an egomaniac so maybe he could have changed his name to that that's actually not a bad idea and that gets me out of thinking of a name but anyway I need to think of names for people and places and just fill them in where I've got the blanks so summary of what needs to be done introduce the Russian mafia in a way that four shadows that being involved with them is not a good thing two I need to write three new scenes for the parts of the book that aren't working or I need to delete them and figure out how to link what came before with what comes after I there are scenes that need to be replaced or deleted or something three sense of place for basically anywhere where significant scenes happen and then five fill in the blanks in terms of names so my plan for tackling this is I'm just going to jump to the parts of the document that are highlighted in yellow and address them one at a time because I think that if I try reading through from the beginning and addressing parts as I get to them I'm just going to get lost in the book so jump straight to the yellow sections fix them and then once I've done that the best of my ability I'm going to read through the first 50 pages again before that goes to the editor so let's get started I am 28 pages into my book and I think I'm done for this session because it's getting to the stage where I'm seeing sentences that don't work and I'm sort of I'm putting my head on the desk because I don't know how to fix them I'm still worried about introducing the brotherhood but I have introduced them now so I've done basically two passing mentions like one is just mentioning the term the brotherhood but we don't know who it is or what they are the next one is mentioning that they're the largest Russian crime family in the city and then there's a like paragraph or two where Hannah mentions they're getting more into super issues I don't know if that's enough I don't know if I need to try and build up how bad they are or if just saying like crime family or mafia family mentioning them a couple of times and then having her meet them in real life is enough so I think unless I have another idea I think I'm going to leave that for the editor to see what she says I've also been working on places a little bit so I've changed the concept I had for the main guy's mansion so I've added a little bit of descriptions around that did a lot of shopping for nice real estate in Estonia and I'm telling you if I win the lotto I have some options what's funny though is that I've actually taken out more than I've added so I took out one of the flashback scenes just because that was sort of supposed to be the introduction to the brotherhood and I didn't feel like I needed it once I added the earlier hints I also went through the difficult scene so I'm not sure how much detail I went into earlier but at the beginning of the book there's a mission that goes wrong Hannah the main character needs to analyze DNA samples from one of the culprits because he had superhuman abilities and the sample says he's not a super so they need to get more samples and in the original book it was mentioned this sample doesn't have the right DNA and the extra samples magically appeared and she was in the lab and I had an idea of adding a scene where she goes to the morgue and gets the samples herself and I decided to keep that I still think it needs work I still feel like it's quite slow but I've incorporated some like discussion there between her and her sister Maria so I'm leaving it there for the time being but I think it's one of those things where I need feedback but I'd written that I was considering cutting it but I've decided to leave it and then there was the final little link between that scene and when she gets kicked out of home and I've actually just kept what I originally had so we have this new scene now and then it sort of goes back to beforehand so there's sort of a summary of this is what happens in the next 48 hours and you know she scans the samples they don't appear to be supers the father gets paranoid and calls security technicians to see if anyone's broken into the house or potentially stolen research and then she gets called to the dining table for the talk so I don't know how to feel about this progress it has been like two hours or so since I started working so I think that is enough for one session I'm at the point where I'm not making good progress anymore but I'm also not sure how much progress I've actually made but there is now less highlighted in yellow in this part of the book I think the only things I have left are naming the things so naming the family so named the city and the country which I can add in at any point so from here and take a break and probably won't look at this again until tomorrow and something I forgot to mention is that I am not home at the moment so my husband and I have a wedding this afternoon we are in Germany like an hour and a half outside of Frankfurt for friends wedding so that's happening at 4 p.m so I think from now until then we'll just go out for lunch relax and then we've got the wedding this afternoon and tomorrow hopefully I can get through the next chunk of the book also I just emailed three people about beta reading my book so I've got manuscript critique on the 24th and potentially two or three beta readers who'll be looking at it in September so this is scary because it's not ready for anyone else to look at it but I yeah it's necessary and I mean if they hate it then I just end this YouTube channel and never speak to anyone about writing again my book and addressing all of the yellow areas except the like the little things I need to name because I can go back and do them fairly easily and I'm now at the next difficult section so I mentioned in my big things I need to look at I had basically three scenes that needed to be redone or deleted or dealt with in some way the current version doesn't work the last one I ended up just leaving what I had which is what I wrote during revision in July and rather than adding like an extra scene afterward I sort of just jumped from there to the next little summary of what happens over the next couple of days so it's been addressed I feel a little bit like I cheated though I didn't actually do anything to it now though I am at the next section which is four and a half thousand words that I'm not sure how to fix so to give you context before this Hannah the main character has been tortured by a mysterious mafia doctor who wants to see why her superpowers haven't been activated or why she's hiding them and pretending to be something she's not so he figures either he's going to trigger them or going to break her to the point where she uses them while she is held captive a couple of goons I guess come in with the mafia boss's granddaughter who's unconscious she's ingested a drug they don't know what it is and they don't know what to do and Hannah ends up saving her life so Lisa the granddaughter of the mafia boss she's like okay Hannah I'm adopting you now come home live with my family and we've now got this little lull between when Hannah has essentially escaped from the doctor to when we get the next bit of juicy information about the mafia and some of the stuff they've been working on and what I originally had was there was sort of a scene of life with the mafia family they were talking a little bit about super issues in this world and then they decided to go and hunt down the guy who gave Lisa this drug and kill all of his associates and that's still what's there because I didn't do anything with it last time and now that I'm back I still don't know what to do with it and I don't know why I do this to myself like I don't know why I assume that future Jackie will magically have a solution to something that I couldn't solve a month ago so I'm not sure what to do the good news though is that this is after the first 50 pages of the book so I don't actually need it sorted before I send it to the editor but I would like to find something I'm happy with before I send it to beta readers because I've got three people who are going to be looking at this so I'm not sure what to do I think I'm at a similar point to where I was yesterday when I checked in after my work where I've gone through enough of it in one session that I know I'm not going to be able to do any more meaningful work today so I'm going to let it sit for now I'm wondering if I should look at future parts so I've scrolled through the document to see what there is to look at after this section and there isn't too much there's one scene where I feel like the dialogue goes on for a bit long so I've highlighted that to cut it back and I'd like to add in another two maybe three flashbacks so they will be new content but other than that it's just really the science stuff which I'm not going to look at now anyway because I want to wait for my science person to look at the draft and give me feedback on what could work so because the main work that needs to be done is writing new content it's looking at these couple of scenes that I've gotten up to it's adding in a couple of flashbacks I think I'm going to call it a day in terms of new writing I might try doing some brainstorming to see how I can fix the mess that is the current chapter and the next chapter of the current draft but yeah I don't think I'm going to do any more writing today it is Sunday morning which means it's time to head home so I'm hoping I can get some work done on this difficult scene on the way back good morning it's Tuesday I'm back at home and I was really hoping to get through that difficult section before I finish this video but I think now I'm at the point where the video is going to end up way too long and I probably won't ever finish it if I keep waiting to finish this scene so yesterday I had an idea for how to tackle it which was to do sort of a skip forward to the like oh crap moment and then go back and go through the day and hopefully that would make the day more interesting actually I've made a few more changes one is that we're going to get the Lisa the mob boss's granddaughter to put the gun in Hannah's hand and like tell Hannah she needs to shoot this guy so where the chapter starts now is there's this guy on his knees in front of her she's pointing the gun at him going oh my god how did I get here this is not a good thing I've cut out all of the stuff in Lisa's house so originally I had her waking up and they got ready together and went down for breakfast and it was sort of day in the life of a mafia daughter I originally had it because I wanted to explain how the brotherhood worked as an organization and I never felt like the scene was particularly interesting though so now it's gone and I've also cut back on the drive from the house to the location where the violence happens so now we don't really get an explanation for the mafia at all and what they do and why they're interested in super issues I don't know if it needs to go back in somewhere or if it's okay like this and maybe if Palace has a sequel we can include more there so this is going to be an interesting area to get feedback on from my beta readers so what I've done is I've done the scene up to where she's holding the gun at the guy and I still need to finish it so how she gets out of it and then afterwards there was like a bonding moment so I still need to look at those but as I said this video is getting a little bit long this scene might take me another few days and we are well into the working week now so I do have limited time to work on it so I'm going to end the video here make this a two-parter and part two will cover the work I do over the next six days before I send my book to the editor so when it comes to your own process and when you start working with editors and beta readers I'd love to know one when do you get feedback on your work is it once you've got a first draft is it does it have to go through a number of visions doesn't need to be as close to publishable as you can get it on your own so please let me know because I still don't think this is ready to be seen by anyone but I'm sharing it because I think that'll help me move forward or decide not to move forward and then question two is how do you prepare when you're sending your work out to be reviewed what sort of things do you look at and what do you put together so your reviewers can do the best job possible like do you create a list of questions or do you tell them which points you're worried about and what they should look at or do you just leave it open so you can get their raw impressions of your work please let me know in the comments and I will see you next time bye