I finally finished the first draft of Skyway, one of the novellas of our five novella series. It’s placement in the series has shifted, as I mentioned before, moving from novella #2, to novella #4. The current word count is just over 40,000 and will probably need another 2,000-3,000 when all is said and done.
That means the third novella I’ll be working on, titled Lost & Found, will actually be novella #2 in the series. I’ve sketched out the storyline and will now work on a chapter-by-chapter outline before diving into daily writing.
As for the first novella, The Homecoming Incident, which also still happens to be novella #1 (haha), it has been out with our teen Beta Readers. Quick tips about teen Beta Readers.
- They don’t understand the concept of time. Agreeing to read it in two weeks has meant trying to get them to do it four weeks later.
- They don’t give detail. We offer our beta readers an anonymous survey to fill out so they could be free to share their true feelings. Teens, however, aren’t really chatty, especially in a survey. You get a lot of “I like it.” Or “It was cool.” But, not a lot of detail, like you get from adult Beta Readers.
Lesson learned. On future surveys, they’ll be longer and ask very specific questions that will give us the info we need. Since they’re our target demographic, we’ll be patient. But, be forewarned 🙂
Two novellas down, three to go.