(vol 5) CHAPTER 02: "Plans, they are a changing"

So, January has gone a little differently than planned.

But in a good way.

So that's okay.

The year did not start as well as I'd like (recurring theme for me), so editing on RAGE is somewhat behind schedule. Yet magic has shone from this failure. 

While walking to and from the train station each day, I've been doing nothing more than playing scenes from the trilogy over and over in my head. And while it's helped on the little editing I've done, something else happened that will, I hope, make the book even better.

I like the first draft. It was the story I wanted to tell. So editing has just been fleshing out the characters and their relationships, working in character history, tightening plots, and making dialogue snappier.

But as my mind has drifted through the story and other things have crossed my mind, I've spotted gabs, huge gaping gaps, where something beautiful was missing. 

You see, the book would work fine as it is. RAGE is, after all, my first release, so I'm not expecting it to be as detailed as a King novella. But these things that were missing screamed at me with their absence. Suddenly I didn't know why these plot points hadn't occurred to me before. 

For example; the main character has grown up motherless. She died in an accident when he was young, and that event has shaped him and his relationship with his father. But reading RAGE through and knowing what comes in book 2, there was a lot more to that loss than I had touched upon. A hell of a lot more. There would be chapters of reflection and doubt in his goal based around this loss. But my original draft was empty of this sort of character introspective.

So now I'm writing again, a deeper pass. Knowing these explorations of characters are there to be told means I can't try and finish the story with what I had. Which is why, despite it messing up my plans time wise, I know it's important to work through it and include everything I can to make the book great.

Fingers crossed.