![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A storm of consequences
Feb. 17th, 2008 04:41 pmI had plans to get a lot of revising done this weekend. Alas.
I'm at that stage of the revision where I'm cringing a lot. I breezed through chapters 1 and 2 with minimal cringing. Really, they were in pretty good shape—some horrible infodumps, but those were fairly easy to hack away at. And it afforded a good opportunity to bring an element from the ending into the front part of the ms., something that explains a key component of my worldbuilding. It's an intentional bleed through of things that are part of this Earth, the one we live in, and those things threw at least one beta off quite badly. If that was the case, I figured other readers might be thrown off, too. I remembered something that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala once said: don't save it all up for the big surprise ending if it confuses the rest of the story. Put it all out there on the page up front.
I suspect I'm paraphrasing rather badly, and from ancient memory at that, but I thought it very sound advice.
Chapters 3 and 4, however, have not been a happy experience. Not just because of more turgid infodumps (though, aye matey, thar be plenty o' those to run aground on). I found a plot hole that I hadn't noticed before. None of betas mentioned it so perhaps I finessed it, but I'm confident that if I don't fix it now it will some day come back bite me on the endpoint. I rearranged some things and thought I'd smoothed it, but I realized when rereading this afternoon that no—no, no. It's going to require me to rethink some things, work out some other things that I didn't think I'd have to bother with until the next book in the trilogy.
It's okay, it will be okay. I knew I'd have to do a certain amount of restructuring, especially the drifty middle, and I'd been positively dreading chapter 5. It was a mess when I wrote it and didn't ever get much better. Many betas choked on this chapter, as I was fairly certain they would. This rethinking may allow me to smooth that and make it less of "Main Character walks around taking a worldbuilding tour." I might actually be able to put some plot purpose into that chapter along with the ooo shiny new things.
So I'm asking myself a series of questions about this plot hole and about this worldbuilding aspect I'd ignored. I've come up with some answers already, all to the good. Other things will take more brainstorming, both conscious and unconscious. The questions are spinning around in there even as I type. I'll feed some more in as they occur. Maybe when I wake up in the morning it will all have taken care of itself. Hopefully, it won't turn into Typhoon PJ or anything.
I'm at that stage of the revision where I'm cringing a lot. I breezed through chapters 1 and 2 with minimal cringing. Really, they were in pretty good shape—some horrible infodumps, but those were fairly easy to hack away at. And it afforded a good opportunity to bring an element from the ending into the front part of the ms., something that explains a key component of my worldbuilding. It's an intentional bleed through of things that are part of this Earth, the one we live in, and those things threw at least one beta off quite badly. If that was the case, I figured other readers might be thrown off, too. I remembered something that
matociquala once said: don't save it all up for the big surprise ending if it confuses the rest of the story. Put it all out there on the page up front. I suspect I'm paraphrasing rather badly, and from ancient memory at that, but I thought it very sound advice.
Chapters 3 and 4, however, have not been a happy experience. Not just because of more turgid infodumps (though, aye matey, thar be plenty o' those to run aground on). I found a plot hole that I hadn't noticed before. None of betas mentioned it so perhaps I finessed it, but I'm confident that if I don't fix it now it will some day come back bite me on the endpoint. I rearranged some things and thought I'd smoothed it, but I realized when rereading this afternoon that no—no, no. It's going to require me to rethink some things, work out some other things that I didn't think I'd have to bother with until the next book in the trilogy.
It's okay, it will be okay. I knew I'd have to do a certain amount of restructuring, especially the drifty middle, and I'd been positively dreading chapter 5. It was a mess when I wrote it and didn't ever get much better. Many betas choked on this chapter, as I was fairly certain they would. This rethinking may allow me to smooth that and make it less of "Main Character walks around taking a worldbuilding tour." I might actually be able to put some plot purpose into that chapter along with the ooo shiny new things.
So I'm asking myself a series of questions about this plot hole and about this worldbuilding aspect I'd ignored. I've come up with some answers already, all to the good. Other things will take more brainstorming, both conscious and unconscious. The questions are spinning around in there even as I type. I'll feed some more in as they occur. Maybe when I wake up in the morning it will all have taken care of itself. Hopefully, it won't turn into Typhoon PJ or anything.