Following the development editorial suggestions, I asked Claude a follow-up prompt:

Based on this analysis, please develop a 10-point editorial plan for me to revise the manuscript with an estimate of the percentage of time I should allocate to each step.

The result: a 23-page generated plan with specific suggestions, a timeline, and recommendations about how much time to allocate to each step.

Overview

This plan assumes you’ll commit to Option A: Novel with Through-Line featuring Luna Reyes as the protagonist, as this offers the strongest path to traditional publication and reader engagement. Total estimated time: 120-180 hours over 3-6 months.

In my last post, I had agreed that Option A is the way forward. The overview tells me the estimated time required to deliver a completed novel. As with all projects, the first step is to get going. Is this blog a way of delaying this?

1. Structural Diagnosis & Decision (5% – 6-9 hours)

Objective: Make firm decisions about form, scope, and audience before touching the manuscript.

I love the time estimates and percent of the total project each of the 10 steps will take. Of course, the work I’m doing on these blog entries, as a form of project planning, falls outside those parameters. It will be interesting to see how accurate the numbers are when I come to execute the steps.

Tasks:

• Read the entire manuscript in 2-3 sittings, taking notes on which scenes/characters generate genuine emotion
• Create a spreadsheet cataloging:
  • Every character with speaking roles
  • Every scene/episode’s word count
  • Current timeline placement
  • Emotional beats (if any)
• Write a one-page “contract with reader” document:
  • What is this book’s promise to readers in the first 30 pages?
  • What emotional experience should readers have?
  • What single question drives the narrative forward?

Decision Points:

• Confirm Luna Reyes as protagonist (or choose alternative)
• Decide target word count (recommend 100,000-120,000 for SF novel)
• Identify 3 primary supporting characters who appear across multiple timeframes
• Choose your ending: What’s the final image/scene that will haunt readers?

Deliverable: A 2-3 page “Revision Blueprint” document that you’ll reference throughout the process.

I asked Claude to create a spreadsheet listing all the characters . It came back with columns for

• Character Name
• Role/Description
• Episodes Appeared
• Timeline (Years)
• Speaking Lines?
• Character Type
• Notes

Here is the complete listing of 141 characters that populate the Episodes. Claude identified 15 major characters and around 40 supporting minor characters. I was, frankly, amazed at the accurate classification of the people who had populated my series.

UPDATE: I later prompted Claude for additional spreadsheets and a number were generated. By far the most impressive was a timeline for Luna Reyes with emotional beats.

The importance of a one-page “contract with reader” document is explained by writing coach Katherine Crowley:

I first learned about the reader-writer contract in an introduction to film class that I took my freshman year of college. The principles, though, apply just as well to literature as to film.

The reader-writer contract is an agreement between the reader and the writer of a text.

The reader promises to suspend disbelief and invest their time and attention in the story. (Sometimes, the reader also makes a financial investment.)

The writer promises to weave an engaging, entertaining story that delivers on commitments made at the beginning of the story, including, but not limited to:

• Point of View
• Genre
• Plot
• Character
• Style

The Reader-Writer contract should be established within the first 10-20% of a story. We need buy-in and commitment from our readers.

The 1-page contract for Our Fermented Future template is listed at the end of the 10-step process. Here is what Claude recommends:

Your first task: Complete Step 1’s “Contract with Reader” document. Answer in one paragraph:

“This novel promises readers a story about ___________ (protagonist) who wants ___________ (external goal) but needs ___________ (internal growth). Through a journey that spans ___________ (time/setting), readers will experience ___________ (emotional experience) and close the book feeling ___________ (emotional state), having witnessed ___________ (thematic message) through lived drama rather than argument.”

Once you can write that paragraph with clarity and conviction, you’re ready to begin.

It took five drafts with extensive and insightful critiques from Claude, by I eventually arrived at a version I can live with:

“This novel promises readers a story about teenage bio-hacker Luna Reyes who believes fermentation could help answer the crisis of global warming, but must fight to keep that science free. She needs to find the courage to overcome her self-doubt—and corporate opposition. Through a journey that spans her lifetime readers will experience her heartache and pain, defeats and victories, and close the book feeling hopeful about the future, having witnessed her ability to bring fermentation to the world through lived drama rather than argument.”

Next: Step 2: A Protagonist Deep-Dive, transforms Luna Reyes from a symbolic figure into a complex, flawed, memorable protagonist.