What Happens Next?
Short post this week. Last time I wrote about the development editing and revision approach for Stone By Stone (SBS). I’ve completed 14 items on my list – yay, me. The majority of these were to add text, or modify text, in order to clarify or strengthen something important to the story. For example, a key premise in the SBS world is that there are these “houses” that work on behalf of the alien founders of the planet Caron to build things, fix things, and generally drive the economy. From one perspective a house is like a business consultancy: experts for hire. But another aspect is they use violence and intimidation when those tactics can advance their interests. A house is then a combination technology contracting firm and Mafia protection racket. I think this is a cool idea.
But some feedback on SBS was to the effect readers weren’t certain about houses. The events the protagonist appears in were clear and, I daresay, exciting. But there wasn’t clarity on “Is this the norm on this planet?” That makes a big difference. If what the hero does is the norm, then we see he’s trapped in a system; but if its not the norm, he’s kind of a bad guy. The improvement was to add 2-3 events where supporting characters have run-ins with other houses. Turned out to be easy to do, and had no disruption to the main plot line.
That brings me to a bigger change I’m starting. Here’s a picture:
This shows the length, in pages, of every scene in SBS. A “scene” is an event or episode, usually but not always in a short period of time, but always with a start and an end. The book has 84 scenes, in 24 chapters. Long scenes are of two types. Early in the book there are some scenes that are context-setting. The 8-page scene at the beginning introduces the main character and his environment; scene 19 is 10 pages long and its where an important supporting character shares some revelations with the hero. But mostly the long scenes are where big events happen. The 8-page scene near the end is where the hero and bad guy have their big showdown. Such a scene has to be long, else after all your build up, the reader will feel cheated.
A last general observation … the variety in scene length is a big part of what keeps readers turning pages. If all your scenes were the same length that would be boring – it would be almost as if there were no scenes at all.
The reason I’m looking at this is I need to make a big change that requires whole new scenes, possibly a new chapter. I like the current flow. For example, the very short scenes, 46 and 47, precede a tragic turning point in the story. Those short glimpses of the main character gives extra context for the event he is about to experience. But if they were too long, that would deflate the impact of the big event. The graph above is my “map” that I’m hoping will let me situate the new content at the best point in the book.
Hoping to finish up these revisions in January. I expect then I’ll have a last call for Beta+ readers – would be chance for you to have an early glimpse of SBS if you didn’t beta-read already.
Till next time …