I started and finished chapter 31 yesterday. That’s a regular-sized chapter (sorry, no numbers here), so that was quite a bit of writing for one day.

The scene is typical of Fantasy books where the protagonist touches magic for the first time. You might say that chapter 31 is a bit late to introduce magic.

Well, magic has been around and has been seen early on (chapter 1 I think), but I didn’t explain it until right now. In fact, magic is not very important to my setting and I could have finished the book story-wise without writing this chapter. Why did-I do it then? Well, that was to show my protagonist something that she hadn’t understood about herself up until now. I suppose I could have found something else, but triggering her touching the magic with this was a good solution I think.

Alpha reader, you’ll have to give your opinion on that also. Are you taking notes? There’s quite the list of things you have to tell me before I edit the book fully.

I decided that this first draft would not be sent out to other people (no, alpha reader, you won’t get the ending in the first draft). Stephen King calls it “writing with the door closed”. I’ll put everything in the page, edit all to a second draft and then send it out to alpha reader. That way, I get to correct the things I already know don’t belong there before anyone wastes his own time telling me something I already know (adverbs, beware!).

On another note, today’s podcast was quite good and gave me much insight into the female psyche (funny when the podcast was called “how to write men”). All that they said rang particularly true and I hope I’ll get to use all that – in my second draft, of course!