IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Hello! It’s Chris, circa early 2020. Unfortunately, you can no longer read Stargirl for free online, for reasons which will hopefully become apparent shortly. If you do stumble across this series somehow and really want to read version 2 along with my commentary, let me know and I’ll be happy to send you a copy.

Well, that was fun. Interesting.

I’ve just finished writing commentary/ annotations on a few chapters at a time of Draft 2 of Stargirl, a novel I first wrote during National Novel Writing Month 2015! The hope was that I’d get some insight into what I can improve about it for Draft 3, as well as use an existing project to build up some momentum for this year’s NaNoWriMo; this’ll be the first one I’ve done since 2015, and I’m planning to do an entirely new story, which is scary but exciting!

I think I accomplished what I wanted to with this; it got me into the groove of thinking about my own writing and processes, which will hopefully help when coming to write something new (I am, sadly, way out of practice). There were also some good things I spotted during the reread that I’d like to improve on for the next draft of Stargirl (ultimately, in the hopes that it might one day be publishable), as well as the just-as-important things that I do like and want to keep!

Mainly, I think I need to make some adjustments to the pacing. It’s currently way too heavy in the early goings and too streamlined, if anything, at the end! You’ve got this sort of super front-loaded scenario where it takes ages for anything to happen, then suddenly all the stuff happens within the space of about a third of the story’s length. That’s probably the main thing I’ve learned here, and I have some ideas about how to achieve that. I hope that what I’ll be able to do is to do Draft 1 of UnTiTlEd ThInG for NaNo this year, then make Stargirl v3 the next project as soon after that as possible. Then, if I like the new one, after that it’ll be on to Draft 2 of that! (And maaaaybe looking at finding out more about publishers/ agents and stuff, but that’s… I don’t even know where I’d start on that one.)

ANYWAY. I hope that if you did read any of Stargirl and/ or my commentary thereon, you enjoyed it, and… if nobody did, this was for me anyway so I don’t really mind! Apologies, though, to anyone who’s been turned off by me talking at length and frequently about fiction writing, which is not what I suspect my usual readership comes here for (insofar as I have one, it’s probably one with an interest mostly in gaming and stuff). All I can say about that is that I, uh, get to do whatever I want here, so you’ll just have to go along with it!

Here’s a quick directory of all the posts in the ‘Let’s Read Stargirl!’ series.

Let’s Read Stargirl! – Introduction And Stuff
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Blurb to Chapter Three
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Chapters Four to Six
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Chapters Seven to Ten
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Chapters Eleven to Fourteen
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Chapters Fifteen to Eighteen
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Chapters Nineteen to Twenty-Three
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Chapters Twenty-Four to Twenty-Seven
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Chapters Twenty-Eight to Thirty-Two
Let’s Read Stargirl! – Chapters Thirty-Three to Thirty-Seven

As ever, I am always very much open to feedback, so let me know if you were one of those people who, to my eternal surprise, actually did take the time to read this odd little story of mine.

Much love!