I wrapped up the first draft of “Codename: Jungle” on Friday. “Jungle” is a young readers’ chapter book. What I’ve finished is actually the first draft of the first volume (of five) that will make up the entire novel.
It’s definitely been a challenging run. I spent months working out the storyline for the entire series, and then hammering out the details of the individual volumes.
Back in February I wrote the first chapter of the first novel, but then had to step back from it, as I could see it wasn?t coming together quite right.
I went back to the drawing board, fleshing out the characters and the back-story and felt like I was ready to break the page again. But there was still something missing.
I realized that a critical element to this one was the city in which the story was set in. In all my prep work I?d managed to just gloss over the setting as being somehow unimportant. It?s just ?some big city in America.?
As I wrote, I realized that some of the fantasy elements were grinding hard against that notion of it being a big city like any big city in America. It had to be it?s own city. It had to be a unique city, where only this story could take place.
The city in which the books are set is not unimportant at all. It?s actually a major character in the story. Once I realized that and started to take on the city as a character ? an entity all it?s own, the book really started to fly.
I?ll be spending a few days polishing off some rough edges (one character?s dialogue is all written in partially-phonetic dialectic speech and I think it?s a bit hard to read). Then we?ll get it off to the editors and see what they think!