Richard Phillips Rho Agenda Blog

Announcing New Alpha Reader Program April 21, 2015

For a limited time, anyone interested in receiving periodic updates to my initial draft of Book One of The Rho Assimilation, can sign up for the program by sending an email to me at:
Richard.Phillips@SecondShip.net
requesting to be added to my Alpha Readers list.  I will also need your kindle’s email address (something@kindle.com) and you will need to add my email to your Amazon account’s approved document sender’s list.

All I ask is that you provide me your general impressions and thoughts on the draft and that you not share it outside of your immediate family.  A word of caution is in order … all first drafts are ugly babies that, once finished, undergo significant revision to turn them into wondrous things of beauty.

This warrants a short comment on my writing process and why such feedback is very valuable to me. When I first started writing, I got into a state where I would write a section of a novel and then go back and rework that, write another section and go back and rework all that had come before. You can see where this is going. It eventually brought me to a dead stop. That’s when my lovely wife, Carol, got frustrated and told me … “Just finish the damn thing. You can fix it later.” Best advice I ever got.

So now I start by putting together all the major plot points I want to hit for the main plot and major subplots, then charge straight on through to the end of the first draft. Then, I come back and take a hard look at sections that need more setup, or scenes later in the book that need to be foreshadowed earlier, or even significant areas that don’t quite make sense and need to be rewritten, and I add those things. I also look for scenes that don’t add much and merely slow the pacing and give them the ax.

In that regard, I’ve been using comments from my Beta readers (the readers of my second draft) for years, giving everything a hard second look. And while I don’t go with every idea or suggestion, I definitely give them a lot of thought.

With these novels, I want to get that feedback started earlier, saving the comments I receive to review prior to starting my second draft. This will help me improve the Beta Reader experience and speed the overall production of the finished novel.

Best,
Richard