Writing Your Second Book

Yesterday's blog -- First Draft Twitters -- was in response to a writer who has written one very successful book and is now slogging her way through draft one of book two.

I've found that for most writers Book Two is at least as difficult to get written, if not more, than Book One.

Doubts about ability, luck, the depth of the creative well crop up more in draft one of book two.

Same advice applies for draft one of any book -- just get it down. Can't finesse that which isn't written.

Authentic Details

Draft one, writers attempt to create a story with a Beginning, Middle, and End, filled with Dramatic Action that affects the characters in meaningful and coherent ways -- a firm foundation. 

Subsequent drafts, writers create more layers, each of which benefits from the use of authentic details. Authentic details "show" who the characters truly are by the objects they surround themselves with and how their actions support their dialog, and allow the reader to sink into the exotic, unusual story world. 

For example: Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman -- "... In some distant arcade, a clock tower calls out six times and then stops. The young man slumps at his desk. He has come to the office at dawn, after another upheaval. His hair is uncombed and his trousers are too long. In his hand he holds twenty crumpled pages, his new theory of time, which he will mail today to the German journal of physics..."

Authentic details make the story unique, come alive, pulse with meaning.

Research reveals authentic details. How do you find yours?