A Writing Week

This week was a writing week. I went through The Rise of Aethan Lightbringer. I found a few mistakes. Can you believe it? I know. Me either. It was things like titled instead of tilted, a stray apostrophe, etc. Spellcheck won't catch those. I made notes for corrections, but I'll need to go through it one last time. It was in preparation for going through book 2 in the series, which I published a while back but withdrew. It just didn't feel right. I needed a break from the series and went on to working on AoE. After book 1 this week, I went through book 2 and spent more time on editing it. Now that I've been away from it for a while, it was easier to see the problems. Sections of it are just fine. Other sections will need to be fixed or possibly re-written.

Book 1 has a certain feel to it. It flows along pretty nicely and carries me along. Book 2 is set a few years later. The gap of time and the events in it have to be explained. That takes some space. The things going on at the time sometimes need additional context. It all works to slow it down. Another problem that goes along with that is that things can be happening, but there's a lack of urgency to them. Not everywhere, just in some places. It's hard to explain. The story is unfolding, but it doesn't pull me along the way book 1 does.

How do I fix book 2? The most radical solution is to scrap the entire thing and start over with it set immediately after book 1. The current book 2 could become book 3 or simply abandoned altogether. I don't entirely like that solution. The gap of time is already written into book 1. Changing it would require changing book 1, a distasteful solution but certainly doable and with not a lot of effort. Then there's the problem of: What happens after book 1? Practically nothing, although I could make something up with Ashley, a minor character from book 1. Hmm, maybe it could be a 99-cent novella, something I could do later.

Another way to fix it is to go in and change the wording of the prose to alter the tone. I could also change the tone of the characters and remove some of the sense of humor and replace it with seriousness. Maybe I could condense some of the chapters together and still convey the same information. I could change settings. Maybe, instead of meeting in public, a couple of characters could meet secretly. A simple change would be having the characters talk about the pressure they're under or the time deadline. Another change would be to put more pressure on the characters or change their reactions to the pressure that's already there.

I'm thinking book 2 doesn't have to have the same exact feel as book 1, but it needs to have the same pacing. Book 1 pulls the reader along. Book 2 only does that in certain sections.

I just finished going through book 2 last night before bed. I haven't had time to look through any of it again. I'm thinking that maybe I'll pick a small section that's not working and try to fix that to see if it can be done easily. If so, then the changes won't take long. Even if I have to re-write some of it, it still shouldn't take too long to get it out the door. I hope.

Have a great weekend.