Friday, May 20, 2011

Onward and Any Direction that's not Down

The revision of my first novel, Aure the Topaz, is in the hands of my publisher now.  If she likes it and wants it, she publish it and all the self-published versions will quietly vanish.  If not, I will republish it myself and lower the price.

Then on to Book 2.  I've been surprised by something in this story.  The characters in the story have started to demand time on camera.  By that I mean I decided to revise a few early scenes to give the main characters more time to express themselves.  This seemed like a good idea because early in the story they each have a scene to themselves.

But what surprised me is that these scenes uncovered details I hadn't fully realized and are now forcing the additional of other scenes as I explore more aspects of my characters to round them out.

The biggest surprise has been with the one character who is the flattest, Iriel, the elf.  I've had a hard time writing her well and now I discover she had a troubled past.  Worse, her mother is working with some of the bad guys.  When I hit on this idea, I realized I needed to follow this because in Book 3, Iriel will met her mother again after 40 years.

So in Book 2 I want to set up the details and then move on.  Now some of you might ask, should all this be in Book 3 if that is where the conflict is?

I certainly thought of that.  But the current plot for Book 3 does not lend itself to revealing Iriel so much.  This is only a subplot after all and should not take priority over the main plot.

Also the divisions of these books is artificial. In actually fact, this is one story told in seven or eight installments.  From the perspective, I need to place this information about Iriel where is fits best.

Personally, I like these developments I hope the reader will too. We'll see.

For now, it's onward and hopefully upward.  But I'll take any direction that's not downward since the path to publication is seldom a straight one.

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