I am having a saga surrounding a publishing project unrelated to this one. The store I expected to be delayed because my account wasn’t approved until 2 days after I’d uploaded everywhere else had the book live 2 hours after I was able to log in[efn_note]And an hour of that was me having to reformat images to their specifications and make them a bespoke epub, so it could have gone faster![/efn_note], while I’m still twiddling my thumbs 3 days later waiting for Big River, which has been ushering my books through within a day since 2009. At this point, I’d welcome a nastygram just to feel like progress is being made.[efn_note] ETA: Progress was made![/efn_note] Preorders are really making a case for the virtues of doing my part and checking the status one time a week later rather than hovering over the process to grab live links as they trickle in.
183 rough draft pages have become 293 revised pages. (This number is more irrelevant than ever, for reasons that will be explained in a bit, but I’m going to keep reporting it until the bitter end in the name of consistency.)
There’s so much busy-ness here, that lull in the last section is downright embarrassing. I’ve figured out I’ll have to physically move all of that to a new setting and where that setting is, but what’s going to happen there so I don’t just recreate the “all talk, no action” problem will have to marinate a while longer. I have to figure out what’s different about that location versus everywhere else they’ve been so they have something new to do, and preferably something that gives them information they’re going to need later, for the sake of relevance. It’s very late to be introducing something completely new, though, and they do have more important business ahead of them. So the checklist is: a situation that’s different but within previously established boundaries, a clue that’s important but not wearing a sign advertising itself as such, and an activity interesting enough to carry a couple of scenes but not derail the main mission. Bonus point if the situation they’re briefly in the midst of is foreboding enough to flare up into a bigger issue in a future book. Ball’s in your court, Creative Subconscious. Make it happen.
The emotional dissonance that manifested in the previous section in weirdly hostile Heroine-Hero conversations presents here as lack of emotion. I lost the thread after they had sex. The next day, it was back to business as usual with no consideration of what did that mean, what did that change, how are they acting around each other, what are they worried about now, the vulnerable spots and uncertainties, what’s said and unsaid. Not to mention the trauma that preceded the sex! At heart, that’s a continuity problem, solved by pulling the dropped threads to the surface in subsequent scenes and tying them to present action in some way. I backtracked a little and made some notes about repairing that section on the next pass (since the “present action” of the change of scenery doesn’t yet exist to tie anything to), and we’re carrying on from here like the fix is a done deal. That means guessing a bit about their new equilibrium developed in scenes I haven’t written yet, but I can figure out what their relationship expectations are based on what they think the future holds. (Hint: There’s a good chance they’re going to die, so their priority isn’t sniping at each other!) The transition can always be smoothed out later if the details don’t exactly match.
Another problem that’s flaring up is that I had Heroine trying to convince Hero to stay behind and out of danger. Which is extremely common in romance novels (albeit usually with the little lady being sent to twiddle her thumbs), and I hate it with a flaming passion. What it’s supposed to say: “I love you and want you to be safe.” What it actually says: “You’re useless and add nothing of value to this team. You’re a liability because I’ll spend half my time saving your useless ass and the other half distracted by horny thoughts, and we’ll probably be forced to danger bang because the author thinks fucking in the face of imminent death is a better use of time than figuring out how to not die. We should separate so the forces of evil can take you hostage or, if you have a little bit more agency, you can run off to do something ‘helpful’ that makes everything worse.” And I tried it! Guilty. Because I’ve read it eleventy jillion times, to the point it seemed mandatory. But they are not that kind of team. Heroine is very good at what she does, but she’s developed an appreciation for a partner who sword hacks things that are hard to kill with her daggers and who grabs her before she plunges into abysses. He’s not useless. He’s not incompetent. He’s not going to start humping her when fear makes him sweaty and short of breath and he mistakes it for horniness. He won’t question her competence. It’s also technically his quest, so he should be there to make executive decisions. No, she doesn’t want him to get hurt, but there’s less chance of either of them getting hurt if they’re together so they can watch each other’s backs. So all of the “maybe it would be better if you stayed behind for this really flimsy reason” garbage went in the bin where it belongs. If I can find a way to insert an extremely self-indulgent joke involving “Aren’t you going to tell me you’re going on alone because my safety means more to you than the fate of the world?”, I’m doing it.
I may have just solved this entire problem while whining about it, but I’m going to stick it in the footnotes →[efn_note]There are two days between everything going to shit in the middle and going to the second Big City to do something about the Big Problem that are clunkity clunk clunkers. Maybe… No. Surely not. Maybe, sour merciless gods, they don’t need to go up the mountain? The reason they’re going up the mountain could come to them instead, and that would support a theory that it’s not indifferent about what’s happening. There’s something else up there that’s series-important but would be solely far-off foreshadowing. It’s otherwise irrelevant in this book, and I do have strong feelings about foreshadowing existing in the shadow of things that are present-relevant. Things have been going too neatly according to plan, and “we will follow this plan, ah shit, this isn’t the plan, WE WERE WRONG ABOUT A THING!” would have benefits beyond getting rid of this dull section. And if I put the upheaval of the plan before everything going to shit in the middle (make it the new midpoint?), they’ll have even more reason to be pissed about everything going to shit because the plan disruptor could have been helpful but wasn’t. And then the day they spend cleaning up the mess will be extra fraught because it’s “wasting” a day of the deadline they now have at that point but they can’t in good conscience leave things in that state because it would be horrific for the people the Main Quest is supposed to save. I think this happened because it’s soothing to me when things are organized and linear, so that’s how I plot: This happens. Then, logically, this follows. Sometimes, however, what a story needs is a little plausible chaos, and I am, by nature, incapable of entertaining that horrifying concept until order has undeniably failed me.[/efn_note] because it’s extra nonsensical if you don’t know the details of what I’m talking about, but I still want to document the thought process. This is why I blather here! I don’t want “advice” during the formative stages, but there’s a big difference between staring at a problem and articulating it for an audience. I’ll move around to give somebody else a broader view, whereas I seem to believe the secret to personal enlightenment is staring at one spot long enough to develop x-ray vision.[efn_note]The fact that this has never happened only proves I haven’t stared long enough, right?[/efn_note]
The first three revision-related paragraphs of this post (and the page count) are now obsolete, of course, but hey, thought process, documented. Maybe someone in the future will take comfort that my attempts at problem-solving, though ultimately not implemented, did aid in the excavation of the actual problem so it could actually be fixed.
Anyhoo, that’s a TWENTY-FIVE PAGE hunk of dead wood that I highlighted in orange with all caps notes to mine it for necessary information that needs a new home, but I anticipate salvaging very little because a lot of it will prove to be filler trying in vain to inject life into the pacing problem. That loss isn’t as traumatic as it sounds. Fixing problems is Good, Actually™![efn_note]Content warning for medical stuff: I liken massive changes like this to draining an abscess. The process itself is nauseating, but the pain relief is immense and the healing can finally begin.[/efn_note] Also, not to brag or anything, but I recovered after chucking the entire first act, so I’m pretty much immortal now.