Since last time, I added a dark mode toggle to the site for folks who find a black background easier to read. The button floats at the lower right of the screen, and you can click back and forth to your heart’s content. Please be aware dark mode removes at least one accessibility feature (underlined links in posts), which may linger upon switching back to light mode until after a screen refresh. I’m still searching for the perfect solution that will work for everyone in every way (lol), but it’s an option in the meantime.
I also added a “News Only” feed to the RSS options. That would be limited to actionable posts, such as “here’s a sample of the book with preorder links” or “here’s a story you can read” or “here’s a SALE!”, with my rambling filtered out. Basically the same as the newsletter, just delivered one at a time rather than several in a clump. I’ll consider additional feed refinements in the future, but for now, it’s easiest for me to ask “Is this worth sending to people who’ve opted out of the rambling?” and click one button accordingly.
Little measurable book progress because most of this interval was consumed by roughing in four scenes from Hero’s POV (two changed from Heroine’s POV, one new material, one pilfered from a “what he was doing while they were separated” bonus story and modified for continuity). It amounts to about 12% of the word count up to this point, which feels like a reasonable compromise. We’re going forward with “look for scenes that would be better converted to his POV and opportunities to add brief new scenes from his perspective” as part of the problem-solving agenda. I do feel better about his characterization now that there’s more than just his observable behavior to judge him by. I’ll give those bits a separate overhaul between drafts to bring them up closer to the surrounding material’s level, and then we can get into the prettifying rounds.
As long as I was already off on a tangent, I typed up the glossary of made-up words to go in the back matter. The goal is to have all the necessary clarity in context so readers will get the gist of a made-up word while reading the story. However, as a bit of optional trivia, the glossary will elaborate, for instance, whether a handheld baked good smeared with jam is more bread, biscuit, or muffin. A distinction without a difference! Totally skippable! But some people relish useless trivia, and that’s one service I can easily provide.
I had occasion to read the book description aloud, which inspired some tweaks as a favor to myself and anyone else who wants to talk about the book. A sentence that scans fine with eyeballs can be a breathless tongue twister orally. That can be fine within a story, where long, meandering sentences are often used to impose a slower pace. Jacket copy is marketing material, though. Different rules apply. Even if you’re selling the saddest story in the world, ad copy has to be zippy. Sad! 🙁 But zippy!
So that’s better, but now I’m left with a nitpick about whether “World-altering magic isn’t a problem she can solve with blades” or “World-altering magic is a problem she can’t solve with blades” is better. I dislike the “isn’t,” but I will make an impassioned defense of the virtues of the “problem she can solve.” Maybe I’ll find an alternative that avoids nulling any verb. Maybe I’ll decide quality doesn’t matter because keyword salad is the only thing that gets placed in front of eyeballs anyway and I have rejected the one path to success!
Unable to procrastinate any longer, the revision proper resumed.
I had to restructure Heroine’s scene with the mentor who isn’t trying to kill her. It’s their only scene together (in this book), and there’s just not enough room to cram their entire backstory. It’s a covert meeting, there’s some urgency, so they need to stick to the point with strictly integral relationship stuff as a frame. Every change I made tried to sprout out of control because I want more of this interaction, but I mercilessly pruned it. If I have a burning desire to show more of their history (and I do), it can go on my big ol’ list of bonus story ideas (and it has).
In purging the excess, there was an opportunity to show Mentor’s frustration that he spent years trying to teach Heroine not to take the path she’s currently on and she learned everything except that single, most important lesson, so there’s at least one tangible improvement. “Better through erasure” is more difficult to track than something that’s actually present on the page.
I’m going to be upset if my post-draft readthrough makes no sense because all the superfluous information I removed was, in fact, crucial information and only seemed superfluous because I already know it.
Banging away at that one scene shook loose some series-relevant history that won’t be mentioned in this book, but “how the world works” is always useful to hold in my head. It sometimes manifests in exciting ways.
I thought my “midpoint” event was something else that just had a really loose interpretation of “mid,” but this mentor scene is where it’s spelled out that the necessary and just quest Heroine is on can only go very, very badly. As in “Congratulations! You saved a handful of people! Now watch them die along with everyone else because you kicked off the end of the world, just like you were warned would happen, dipshit.” Because it’s information rather than dramatic action, it doesn’t feel much like a midpoint, but it’s definitely the final warning before the real hurt begins.
I’m not a stickler for story math, so it’s just a curiosity that the midpoint function does manifest near the middle, even though the midpoint feeling happens 24 hours later in story time. I’m not going to add a swordfight to the conversation to make it more zesty. Who, other than people trying to sell their writing method, ever pays attention to what beat falls at what percentage? You’re interested in what’s happening or you’re not. If you’re bored, it’s never because a scene is at the wrong percent marker.
Fuel an author!