The Craft - Blundering Through the Final Few Pages

I’m working on the final chapter of Jaci’s Experiment - the third book in my Resonance Mates series (Hara’s Legacy, Davin’s Quest). Late last week, I spent about six to seven hours writing somewhere over 5,000 words only to decide later that night that the direction I’d taken the scene in at the last minute just would not work.

See, I’d planned to (how to say this without giving too much away?) have the main characters arrive somewhere and settle into the place. At the very last moment, I decided to have people there to meet them and it took the scene in a different direction entirely. When I got to the next scene, I realized what I’d impulsively done had messed up some important aspects of what I’d planned to do next and what would come in subsequent books in the series. I had a plan and I really should have stuck to it. *sigh*

Live and learn. I should have known better than to veer off course at the last moment without thinking it through completely, but most often when I get these creative wild hares, they turn out okay. This time, not so okay. However, I do have a backup plan. With a little tweaking, I just may be able to use the majority of those 5,000 words in the next book. We’ll see when I get to writing it, but I’ll keep it in mind to try once I get to that point.

The Craft: Prologues & Davin’s Quest

I adding a new category to this blog for posts relating to the craft of writing. Not that I’m any mighty sage of the English language, but as I discover or wrestle with new things, I think others in my position - either aspiring or published authors - might be interested in some of what I’ve been through. I know that’s how I learn - by listening to the comments of other writers. Hopefully some of my observations will help someone else. Plus, I find this stuff interesting and I *hope* readers of this blog will too. So here goes… My first “The Craft” post - a little something about writing my upcoming ebook release (Davin’s Quest - February 19th) and what it taught me.

I struggled with the beginning of Davin’s Quest for several reasons. First, there was a prior book in the series - Hara’s Legacy - in which a lot of information about the futuristic world had been laid out, but what if the reader hadn’t read that book yet? I had to make the beginning of this book make sense to a new reader, while not insulting the old readers too much. Always a challenge - to remind folks of the “rules” of the world without huge chunks of exposition or the dreaded ”telling rather than showing.” *Yawn*

Another challenge was the fact that there are two heroes in this book. One is quite different from the other and until about halfway into the book, they don’t even know each other. So how do I introduce them both and keep the readers interested in BOTH of them throughout the first part of the book?

After much indecision, I decided to go with a prologue to set the stage for the story, since this book takes place over a few years of the characters’ lives. In the first iteration of the prologue, only Davin was featured - a hot section that introduced him and his position within Alvian society during an encounter with one of his underlings. Rick - Stud Number Two - didn’t show up until a few chapters into the manuscript. I knew that was a potential problem. How could the reader come to know and love Rick if he suddenly appeared in Chapter 3? It just wasn’t working.

So I wrote more pre-story for Rick and moved a key piece of interraction between him and his father to the prologue section, expanding the prologue in a way I’ve never done before. I decided to separate it using the main differences between Rick and Davin. Rick is human. Davin’s an alien. So by expanding the Prologe into something a bit longer than I’ve ever done before, I think I’ve managed to introduce both the alien way of life, illustrate the human existence in this post-apocalyptic world and the relationship between Rick and his fellow man and Davin and his alien race. That’s a lot to tackle in just a few short pages, but by doing it this way, I think I’ve made it interesting. At least I hope you’ll all agree.

Tomorrow, I’ll post the “Human” part of the Prologue as a Sneak Peek. You’ll get to meet Rick and then you can let me know if I’ve succeeded in laying out some of the history of the world and introducing Stud Number Two in an interesting way. Stay tuned…