Sunday, May 31, 2009

... the hump has been cleared

Chapter 22, the big climax of the entire story, called No Name by the Tongue of Man, is finished (1st draft). I almost had it done in two days, but near the end of the second day I decided I need to step back, think about for it a bit, do a revision of everything I had written, and to have this chapter go a little long but wrap up the main action and not drag the end of the climax into the start of 23, only to have the rest of 23 be wind-down. At first I was not feeling very good about how things were turning out, but after the revision and finishing the chapter, I am feeling quite satisfied.

In fact the whole thing came together much more tightly than I had thought, making this hardly an over-long chapter at just under 23K words, which actually makes it shorter than 21. There were many things I could have easily drawn out, but in the interests of keeping things moving, the writing is fast-paced and focused.

There's still a great deal of things to wrap up in 23, not the least of which is Sheam's plotline, which was totally absent from 22. It wasn't just a matter of the tone being completely different. Every event in 22, from Nightfall to Ghost to Lytha to Jyre to James, was connected, but Sheam's plotline by its very nature is not connected to the others - she's the one facing what's going on at the home turf while everyone else is out on their adventures.

I think fans of the original will be happy between the balance I struck between honoring what they remember while also keeping them in suspense. There's shades and echos and mirror images of nearly everything that went on in the old story, but everything plays out a little differently, in a different order, and with some wildly different results.

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