My draft manuscript has been to my favourite readers. Their reactions, in brief:
- Reader 1 said she needed to know more about how the magic worked;
- Reader 2 thought the first part was too slow;
- Reader 3 said he couldn’t tell until he was some way into the book what kind of story it was supposed to be: fantasy, historical or romance?
- Reader 4 finished it, got swamped with work and was not able to let me have any reactions until long after I had started on the third draft, so I said to her, ‘let’s just have a cosy chat’ and we still haven’t done that yet.
All of them said what they had to say in ways that were clear but not at all bruising, which is why they are favourite readers.
So, what do we do about this? Let’s leave Reader 1’s comment for the moment. Magic and its rules is worth a blog post all by itself. Let’s have a look at 2 and 3.
My rule is that if one reader says something, then fixing whatever-it-is may be optional. If more than one say the same thing, then a fix is compulsory, even if I can’t see the problem myself.
In this case, Readers 2 and 3 appear to be saying different things, and their comments, if I choose to address them, would need different solutions.
- Problems with pace call for slimming down the descriptions and explanations, upping the drama and making more things happen (if this is possible without messing up the storyline). I can do that.
- Problems with signposting need, well, more and more obvious signposts. Can do that too, although need to be careful about adding more descriptions and explanations…
But wait. What if Reader 2 and 3 are really saying the same thing, only saying it differently? Would Reader 2 not have felt more engaged with the first part of the story if he had been sure what kind of story it was(1)? Maybe yes he would have been.
In any case, there’s clearly a problem with the first chapters, and this is no surprise. Building the world, introducing the characters and getting the story going all at the same time is quite a lot to do all at once. This would not be the first time I have let a story start too slowly.
So with that in mind, let us:
- Strip out some of the historical detail. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it might be leading the reader in the wrong direction. This is a fantasy, albeit in a historical setting. A knight is a knight is a knight. His horse does not need to be a destrier, his armour does not need to include gambeson, coif, or ventail, and we can skip the descriptions of these two medieval towns because he never goes back there.
- Reorder the early scenes. Instead of arriving at place A, going to place B and then returning to place A, let us travel to place A via place B and have all those conversations a little earlier. That’s fewer scene changes and it also gets our first two mysterious – fantasy – incidents close together and both within the first 15 pages. (It’s also a lot more work than I make it sound here, because there’s all kinds of knock-on effects on the way we’ve laid out the story if we do something like this.)
- Simplify the language, strike out the superfluous adverbs and adjectives, cut unnecessary description, break the complex sentences into short, plain statements. All of which we had been going to do anyway.
And now, a month later, we have draft three. This is version that goes to my agent. Thank you, readers. I love you. Whatever may be wrong with it now, it is my fault, not yours.
(1) I could of course interrogate Reader 2 on this point, but I choose not to. Readers don’t always know what it is that makes the telling feel ‘slow.’ It’s just a restless feeling that creeps on them as they read. And if he were to say ‘I was expecting hard sex and a stabbing somewhere in the first twenty pages,’ then he would not be the reader I think he is, nor would I be the writer he wanted.
Last Updated on January 1, 2026 by John