Forward and Back

Saturday (3 Aug 2013) - Forward and Back

Well, I missed my writer's group meeting on Thursday, 1 August. The group had to change the room where they met (there was a dinner meeting of a dentist's group in the room when I got to the library). I didn't get the word. That's the second meeting I've missed due to miscommunication. Or lack of communication. Partly my fault, since I didn't get any contact information from the group during the last meeting, but it would have been nice to have been contacted about the change. The library has a monthly calendar, too, but they hadn't posted the August schedule yet. I should have checked online. However, when I did remember to do that (after driving back home) the schedule showed that the writer's group was meeting on 8 August and 22 August instead of 1 and 15 August (the first and third Thursdays of the month). Since they actually did meet on 1 August, I'm pretty confused. I now have contact information from one of the members and sent an email to the group leader asking for clarification of the meeting schedule.

The "Majik of Spark" took a step forward and a couple of steps back this week. I did a run through of the novel specifically to reset the chapter breaks along more natural lines than the forced method I used when writing them. The result is that I expanded the over-sized original 12 chapters to a more fitting 25 chapters. I like the results.

A second change is going to require some additional work. I am expanding the story by five chapters. I wavered back and forth about where the ending to the novel should be, worried that I would keep adding to it and spilling more of the story into what should be the second book. So, I somewhat arbitrarily cut it off at a convenient stopping point, leaving the troupe of adventurers poised for new challenges at a relatively safe place. Then I started working on the second book.

It didn't take long for me to realize that there was still too much left hanging in Spark that would have to be explained in the second book, and things were just not matching up the way I wanted them to. No amount of stitching things together was working. I had simply ended the book prematurely. Now, I know that sounds like I can't finish the thing and will endlessly add to it. No. The five chapters I am adding each have very specific goals. I know exactly where I want all the various characters to be, and the situation I will leave them in, and these new chapters get them there. Three of the five chapters are in pretty good shape already. I'm not worried about the ending anymore.

Now comes the "step back" part. While I was walking through the book and setting proper chapter breaks, I came across a rather nasty incongruity. It didn't look hard to fix at first, and I tinkered at correcting it for a couple of days. Tinkering was not going to be enough, though. Without going into too much detail, I wrote a whole chapter that was based on information that I had not introduced into the story yet. There are a lot of strings attached to that chapter, so I can't simply move it, nor will it work by trying to introduce that information earlier. I will have to follow several story line threads both forward and back to repair that damage, and it will take some time to do it right.