I Finished the First Draft of The Mystery of the Body Thief!

 

I just finished The Mystery of the Body Thief's First Draft!! 

I had four different attempts in writing this series, before I came to one that actually worked. The previous attempts were: The Case of Confusion, The Mystery of the Stolen Crown, The Race Against Time and The Mystery of the Phantom of Dragonspire Court.

When I wrote The Mystery of the Body Thief I intended it at first to be the fifth book, but because the other books didn't end up working, it ended up being the first book. The Mystery of the Body Thief had the strongest plot and a coherent one, as well.  I believe this is the first successful mystery book I have ever written. However, in the first draft I sort of forgot to world-build, because I was much more focused on the mystery. So, just like any first story, it's not perfect. It can be improved through editing, rewriting, and world-building. (Which I will talk more about later, in this post).

During this NaNoWrimo,  I made the word count goal pretty high at first because I thought it would take a while to reach the end of the story. I ended up lowering the goal a bit, because otherwise I would have been forcing the story to go on for longer than it needed to be, and at that point I may have been just pouring out unneeded words. 

 Now onto what the story is about: 

                                               (Images from wikipedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Red_hair_in_art#/media/File:William_Strang_portrait_Cynthia_1917.jpg, 

Drawn to Writing , and Pexels and Pixabay). 

                               Synopsis

Genres: Fantasy | Murder Mystery with a bit of Adventure. Series: It is the first book in the Lady Annabelle Mystery Series. 

Horatio wakes up from being in a coma, but he doesn't remember anything that happened before he fell into unconsciousness. All that he remembers is a name, "Annabelle!" 

Also... Detective Inspector Time finds himself having to solve a case without Lady Annabelle.
Murders have been happening throughout many different kingdoms, and no one knows who exactly is behind it all. 

Go here and here to read the two other posts I made about this novel.   

                   Music for the world      

 

You can also listen to it here. 

Since I made a playlist/soundtrack of music I listened to while writing my story, I thought I would post the playlist. This is where I get some of the inspiration for the world that I am at the moment working on, and that will show up in my future posts. 😉

What's Next for The Mystery of the Body Thief? 

I'm going to be working on the second draft, which is mainly going to be focused on world-building as the first draft was more focused on the plot, than the world itself. And because of that I intend to share some of my world-building process in a new series for this blog, A Look Into a World. It will be focusing on how the society works, the religions of the world work, and how the magic works. (Though in this world the magic and the religions are tied closely together, because the gods give people magic). 

Also I gave two of my character's powers recently. I need to figure out more clearly what they actually do, and what gods they are connected to. (Basically who they'd be a devotee to). I also need to figure out Vonivera's powers, I know a little about them like she can turn invisible but I don't know much else. Vonivera was born with her powers, instead becoming a devotee to a god or goddess, while the other two characters have powers given to them from gods and goddesses. I also have a sorceresses character who I vaguely know the powers of, but I need to figure them out. 

I also need to get to know the other main characters, as I seemed to be more in Annabelle's and Horatio's heads, than anyone else's. So I want to get to know them better, I already know at least one of them well at this point and that is Annabelle's father Lord Oberon. But everyone else I hope to know better through second drafting. 

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What type of magic system(s) do you have in your Fantasy world(s)? And in First drafting did you ever forget to world-build? 

-Quinley