... just some lose ends?

Work continues on COT Draft 5 as the first three chapters sit in public and feedback slowly trickles in. Last night I was sent a list of grammar oddities from none other than Alex, the author for the original Jyre. (She's really enjoying it!) She seems to have a knack for spotting sentences which could be structured a bit less awkwardly. More work!

I've been doing more than that, though. I mentioned previously that I was doing some additional work on later chapters, focused so far mostly on Chapter 8, and dealing with Sheam. Without giving too much away, the events in the original which were reformed into the events of Chapter 8 were truncated quite a bit, and one thing that never made it into the rewrite was any kind of information about Sheam's past, even how she was hired to work for Nightfall only several months ago. My reason? It wasn't very interesting! It wasn't important to the plot! It didn't drive the story forward! And so it never made it in, and Sheam became something of a mystery, the every-day person in the story, and yet with no past or background, whereas every other character has a great deal of past/background information given.

My inspiration to change that was twofold. On the one had, when thinking up stories I want to tell in COT2: Chronicles of Thieves (just wait, I'll change that title again...) the idea of Sheam's past came to mind. But the problem was the same - it's not very interesting. She's led a very normal, comfortable life, without much drama or strife. (Didn't know I was a poet, did you?) That, actually, furthered the argument for putting that information into COT-R.

Each character in COT-R goes through a particular kind of hell, and faces challenges greater than they've ever faced in their life. That's no less true for Sheam, and in many ways it's the most true for her. All of the other characters are used to danger and mortal peril and having to make life-or-death choices. It's normal for them. For Sheam, it's totally new. So with that realization, I knew that I had to present just how much of a contrast this is in her life. I knew I had to explain where she came from, not because it's important to the plot (it still isn't) but because it's a very important part of her character arc.

So I did it. Chapter 8 was ripe for it, not only because it was already highly Sheam-focused, but it ran rather short, and it already featured another several-pages-long flashback scene for another character. Thus, it fit. In the end, I think it adds a great deal of understanding for the challenges Sheam is facing.

I have another task though, which is more deeply rooted in something I don't want to put into COT2 than something I feel is missing from COT-R. It's a much bigger spoiler though, so I have to be a bit more vague here. It basically deals with a pivotal moment in Lytha's past which is hinted to a great deal but never enough so that the reader has enough information to understand exactly what happened. (If they figure it out, they're far, far smarter than the author!) I, again, was planning to turn this into one of the short stories for COT2, (one of the Chronicles, as it were) but it wasn't right to do so. Even though each story in COT2 will stand alone, I don't want any of them to be simply background information for COT-R and have nothing to contribute to Contravention of Thieves. There's really nothing about this bit of history that will have anything to do with anything in Contravention (still hesitant to call it COT3, I guess) so it really doesn't have any place in Chronicles, which will be subtitled as "From Correspondence to Contravention". It's quite, completely, and utterly part of Correspondence.

So now I am pondering how to work it in. It could either be a simple paragraph, or it could be an entire section. It depends on where I think it would fit best and how much it breaks up the flow and momentum of the story. As always, I will blog about it when I've done it!

... the urge to add more

Chapter 8 was very easy to expand to a full chapter's length, and I didn't even really need to add any new plot points, just expand and extrapolate what was already there. The biggest changes were to Nightfall's sections, each of which were almost entirely rewritten. One small bit was cut off from where it sat, moved earlier, and expanded. I am surprised that so much in these sections as well as in chapter 7 were left so mediocre, even after the last revision. It's possible that when I was writing and revising it the subject matter simply left me so uninspired that I didn't want to bother trying to fix it. I feel that with the division and repurposing of these sections into a new chapter 8 with the theme of "serious distractions" (that's the new title) the events are given breathing room to be fleshed out and given true purpose.

Sheam saw the greatest amount of expansion, with several completely new scenes written that filled in some gaps that were left up to assumption before, or simply forgotten. The goal of the work was to 'give' the chapter to Sheam and Nightfall, just like 7 was given to Jyre. Though Ghost and Lytha see important events take place here, it is Sheam and Nightfall that provide the structure for the chapter. The strangest thing I did was the incorporation of the end-chapter segue into the body of the chapter. It was unique in that it was a flashback told from Nightfall's perspective, so it naturally lent itself to being part of a chapter proper, but was awkward because it dealt with events from a long time before the start of the story. I worked it in, and it works... I think so, anyway.

... on chapters

I just sent the revised chapter 7 out to the critics. This chapter had some of the biggest alterations since the beginning, mostly centered around Jyre. Three of her scenes were very nearly rewritten, with one totally new one drafted to fill a careless gap. (Of course that means that there's new 1st draft material in this chapter, which means it will need attention during the next revision after this one.) The unexpected thing, however, was my decision to end the chapter about 12 thousand words earlier.

I take what constitutes a chapter fairly seriously, not only because it's important in general, but because the story is going to be released as a serial and each chapter needs to be able to stand as an episode. Even when the story is published as printed volumes I am not sure yet where the divisions will fall, and I don't want to compromise any of the books because one of the chapters isn't structured just right. The rules for what makes a chapter are quite flexible. As I am writing I tend to think of 20 thousand words as the 'standard' length for a chapter, though a few are shorter and most are longer. Each chapter tends to have a theme or a tone which makes it distinct from those around it. I try to give each one a sort-of arc, with a beginning, middle, and end, though what constitutes those is of course very open to interpretation. As a rule I try to avoid 'cliffhanger' endings because I happen to think that's slightly childish especially when done over and over. It works for the serial format because the reader then is anticipating the next chapter a week later, but in printed form it's a bit meaningless unless it's a chapter-a-night bedtime story. Basically it has to work as both - a novel and a serial - or I avoid it. I think the simplest, and most pure rule is this - if I can think of a short title that sums up the chapter's essence, it works. If I cannot, then there's a problem.

So, chapter 7 was giving me trouble. First of all, it was the longest so far, and the second longest of the entire story at 31K words, very far above the standard length. However I didn't think that it was the length that was causing the problem. After going over it a few times, I realised what was happening. The first half of the chapter was devoted to continuing and concluding events from chapter 6. It took the main action of those adventures and provided an epilogue for them, and set up the way the story was going to progress from there. Then, after about 19K words, it switched to new events which were of a considerably different tone and focus from chapter 6. I thought, okay, split it in two - but it wasn't that simple. It was very, very clear where Chapter 7 wanted to end, and it was at around the 19K word mark. I couldn't split it in two and have one of the chapter be a mere 12K words, which would be painfully off balance from the rest of the story. Length isn't the most important aspect, I reminded myself, what felt right for the chapter was. So, with that in mind, I wrote in 'End Chapter 7' where I wanted it to go, declared the rest of 7 to be the new Chapter 8, and changed the titles of both to things that I felt were far more fitting than the original title for the old 7.

So now figuring out how to make a 12K word Chapter 8 right is going to be interesting. I have a few ideas, but it doesn't involve chopping off bits of the old Chapter 8 and adding them on to the end. The structure of that one is just how I want it, and it doesn't need to lose its beginning.