Last week was devoted to outlining the existing draft. What happens in each scene? So let me reiterate here what I’ve said about this novel since the beginning of this draft process.
It’s a mess! A great big glorious mess!
The purpose of this outline is to give a 1-3 sentence summary of each scene. At this point, kids, I would be getting an estimate (and probably sticker shock due to the Great Big Glorious Mess™) from Stacy Robinson (or maybe a tactful note to throw the thing on the fire and start over) were I going with an editor. Since I’m not, and beta readers work for free, guess who has two thumbs and will have to clean this up all by himself.
This week will be all about rearranging. Yanking some scenes, putting in new ones, changing parts of the ending.
One problem I noticed while going out to lunch today was the last scene. It involves JT, around whom the Amargosa Trilogy was originally built. But he’s with a completely different character at the end. It really should be either Tishla, who emerges as the central character in The Roots of War, or Davra, who is the first character we meet in The Children of Amargosa. There are other things. Do I really need a direct reference to No Marigolds in the Promised Land? I didn’t get Quan’s name consistent. And my God, there’s a lot of POV whiplash in this book. So I may have to do it in sections, somehow fitting in the Best and Germanicus arcs, as well as Leitman’s magical mystery tour.
Also, montage scenes in screenplays (which I wrote for the first draft) do not translate well to prose. They just don’t. So those are gone.
This week is reorganization and riffing for original words. I’m still writing, but I can’t start a new project without running into conflict with this one. It’s going to be a hectic summer writing-wise.