I finished the third draft of Portal Woes today! *happy dance* (Hopefully the final draft, sans a few minor things my beta-readers will invariably pick up.)
Most of the third draft revisions went swimmingly, with only a few hiccups here and there. Except for last week. O.o Last week was…challenging.
Right before I called it quits on my editing session last Tuesday, I found a major plot hole around the 3/4 mark in the story. My timeline was messed up there. Seriously messed up, as in the flailing-plot-threads-that-span-fifteen-chapters-and-throw-off-the-climax kind of messed up.
Honestly, I don’t know how I missed it. I thought I’d worked out all the kinks in timing everything, but apparently I forgot to take into account the fact that the twins are 8-12 hours ahead of everything that’s happening in the military/political subplots at this particular junction of the story. *sigh*
I ended up setting the book aside to keep myself from doing more harm. I had no idea how I was going to fix the plot hole–didn’t even know where to start. The prospect of having to rip out huge sections of the last quarter of the book and revamp them was daunting. :/
Needless to say, I was a little depressed that evening. (The I-may-burst-into-tears-at-any-given-moment variety.) I was so close to being finished with PW and it looked like I had another massive obstacle to overcome.
The next morning, I was still bummed. But then the Holy Spirit reminded me that it’s only by God’s grace that I’ve made it this far, and that He can certainly help me straighten this out too.
He did.
The fix took most of Wednesday afternoon, and involved rewriting a few pertinent sections and tweaking several others, but it was vastly easier than I’d dreaded expected. It also fixed two scenes I had needed to rewrite anyway because they didn’t mesh with the overall storyline.
That little nightmare over, I moved on to overhauling the first two chapters–which proved to be its own brand of fun.
As I’m sure many of you know, sequels have their own unique quirks. A stand-alone book like my in-progress TOSOTH or the start of a series like Bad Faith has to introduce the reader to the story’s world. A sequel gets to pick up plot threads and expound on them, introduce new plot threads, and develop characters further, but it also has to catch readers up on what happened in the last book without drowning them in clunky chunks of exposition. On top of that, pertinent things like my characters’ nano-armor have to be described again. (Without using exactly the same words as the first time. :P)
It was an interesting process, one that occasionally required staring at the ceiling or banging my head on the table. But, by the grace of God, I got those bits of exposition woven into the first two chapters and tweaked a couple of last-minute things. Now I can print this baby out and give it to my beta readers. 😀
Still waiting on artwork, but what I’ve seen so far is amazing. 😀
Depending on how everything goes, we’re looking at a possible release date toward the end of October/beginning of November. I’m excited. ^_^
Portal Woes Third Draft final word count: 155,233
I can’t wait to start working on The Guardians:Book 3! And finish writing TOSOTH! And work on a scad of other stories jumping up and down in the back of my head! *is mobbed by popcorn kitty ideas*
