This week I am doing my first read through of my rough draft. As I go through I am supposed to make comments to myself about what I like and what I don’t like. The point is to get a full read through of the manuscript as it stands in its raw form. This helps prevent getting bogged down in starting to correct everything you see that is wrong or missing.
In addition, I am supposed to put in Chapters and Chapter headings. These will help organize the work in my mind. They are also supposed to clue me in as to whether the characters and plot are moving. If the Chapter heading reads ‘characters stand around’, then I will have a problem. The difficulty for me is finding the right place to break up running situations into different chapters. I want the chapters to end in cliff hangers, but I don’t want to interrupt the flow of things too much.
Finally, I am one of two students who will be critiqued next week in class on our first chapters. My palms are already sweating.