It was great seeing so many folks I recognized at Lock & Load and meeting lots of new attendees as well. Getting to talk about what we do with people who enjoy the Iron Kingdoms is always a good time. Even better, when the show was over we got to come back to the office and dive right back in. Great things are on the horizon!

So what am I up to now? Story—lots and lots of story. Vengeance has its maneuvering, manipulation, and fighting; Skull Island eXpeditions has its adventuring scholars, ill-fated love, and bloodthirsty ruthlessness; No Quarter has some disgraced kayazy out for blood . . . and then there are those other projects, where [mumble, mumble]. Since I’m up to my neck in story issues, I thought I’d include you all in it and get back to explaining the process.

The last time I talked about story creation, I described fleshing out the characters and getting that precious blood from the stone: the first draft. Completing a first draft can feel like a huge accomplishment in and of itself. And it is! It’s the first place where the full elements of the story all come together, and making that happen isn’t always easy. What it’s not, though, is the end of the writing process. There’s plenty of work still left to do.

Once a writer has created a solid draft, if he wants the best for it, he needs to turn it over to someone (or several someones) who can examine it not only with an expert eye but also with enthusiasm and honesty—sometimes known as ruthlessness. This is called a developmental or substantive review, and it can be a particularly difficult part of the process for writers, who tend to become very attached to their stories while going through the heartache and joy of creating the draft. Part of the reason for this is the scope of changes that can be prompted at this stage. If the main character isn’t believable, the story draws things out too long, the ending is unsatisfying, or so on, entire sections may need to be addressed in order to fix the underlying problem.

A writer wincing at the thought of people working over his freshly crafted story is perfectly natural, of course. After all, how well does he know those people, really? No matter if his reviewers include trusted peers, his writing group, or even longtime friends—they might as well be strangers! Cold, heartless creatures who are sure to completely misunderstand the personalities he’s coaxed onto the page and the complexities of the subplots he’s woven into the paragraphs.

Let’s be honest: most authors can’t help but resist facing a reviewer who’s likely to be arguing plot points, questioning motivations, cutting entire passages, and sending the file back chock full of suggestions for revision. He may even imagine her taking the piece to some secret meeting in the dungeons under the local library to entertain an entire room of faceless editors who howl with laughter at the bad grammar and clumsy attempts to set words on the page in a way that makes any kind of sense. (I can assure you that doesn’t happen. Library dungeons are far too musty for such gatherings. ;))

So our writer balks at handing over the draft for developmental review. He avoids. He stalls. Just one more revision and it will be ready, he says again and again. It’s really solid and just needs a quick proof, he says. He may even try to negotiate having it reviewed at all. (I will warn you that this rarely works—and when it does, it doesn’t turn out well.) He may want to take his work and run for the hills, where he’ll barricade himself with it in a mountain cabin and knit camouflage book covers for it. Pay attention, now, because this is important: he must not do this. If he does, his draft will forever remain a first draft no matter how he tweaks and tinkers and adjusts it on his own—and, sooner or later, he will. Just as in real life, in order for a story to mature it must be exposed to some aspect of the greater world and be changed by that experience. It might be okay without that step. It might even be good. But it won’t be as good as it could be, and that’s a sad fate for any creative effort.

Eventually most authors, even the most independent, accept that the creation they worked so hard to get onto the page really is better off for being shaped and guided—constructively, of course!—by an outsider. Often, the time the piece is in review gives the author enough of a break that he sees it with fresh eyes the next time through and can tell a lot more about where it works and where it’s problematic, where it flows and where it’s sticky, where it’s compelling and where it wanders off a bit. In the best scenarios, writers actually find themselves enjoying the revision process as they try out fresh ideas or approach the work from a different angle now that the pressure of completing a first draft is off their shoulders. And ultimately, there’s nothing more satisfying than reading through your revised work and feeling like the piece ended up where it was supposed to be all along.