Spent the last week doing Hugo reading and making notes for the Petra Released rewrite, trying to come up with a game plan. I ended up focusing mainly on a particular plot line, the one that I was seriously unhappy with. I knew it was going to take a lot of work, but it’s going to be more substantial than even I realized.
See, in trying to answer some of the plot questions I had jotted for myself (How much does so-and-so know? Why didn’t what’s-her-name do this or that? Who is going to contact that other guy? And so on.), I took a hard look at some key events at the end of Petra. And I realized that those events absolutely dictated the answers to these questions. What’s more, I had gotten almost all of them wrong in the first draft of Petra Released.
<smacks self in forehead>
I get to keep most of the characters. The settings will stay mostly the same. But just about everything else is getting radically rearranged. It’s almost like I’m starting over with this plot line.
Not that this is a bad thing. The book will be much better for it–eventually. And it’s good to have solutions for these problems. But a lot of this rework could have been avoided if I had paid closer attention in the first draft. I think perhaps I was at the time too focused on other parts of the novel. Maybe I’ve come up against the limits of what Jay Lake would call my "span of control." At least for now.
What the hell. Can’t make an omelet, and all that.
The good news is that this plot line is completely self-contained, so it won’t require any major restructuring of the rest of the novel. Which, by the way, has plenty of other issues, but those all look minor by comparison.
I plan to finish up my notes and get into the rewrite proper this week. With any luck, Magic Meter will be back soon. I know you’re all excited.
No updates for Write Club.
Bed now.
