[Friar]

Glad to see this thread has made a resurgence.

After a five month hiatus of my novel after I finished college (my man writing time was on the bus to college, and work meant and still means I have little time for it), I tried to go back to it and found that I couldn't. The characters weren't that great, and everything felt a bit rushed, as a result of poor planning and wanting to go through everything too quickly.

So after 70 pages, I made the very painful decision to delete the whole thing and start afresh. I'm keeping the same title (The elementals) but I'm completely changing the core mechanics and storyline. It's now based on a sort of game my friends and I played as kids. We used to pretend we had powers. I had Ice, my friends had water, fire and electricity.


The book is aimed at people just finishing primary school and starting secondary. It's a kid who uncovers one of these powers and he and his friends have to find the rest to fight an ancient darkness that threatens the land. All whilst balancing school life.

I'm doing it properly this time. A detailed plan certainly helps a lot. Even so, I've. Decided already to rewrite the first chapter (It is intended to be a prelude, a back story to the origins of the powers, but I found that I was giving too much information , and making it seem that it WS the story. I'm going to swap to that chapter being narrated, and made a lot less detailed.)

My original novel idea isn't gone forever. I'm still toying with the idea of writing some sort of doctor who fan-fiction around it. It would convert nicely, I think.