Yesterday I held the feedback luncheon for the beta readers of my novel “Command & Control.” It was, in my opinion, the most successful beta reader feedback session I have hosted. Everyone contributed with their ideas of what worked and what did not work for them in the novel. While a there was a great spread of many issues, at least two issues seemed to generate near uniformity.
First – the opening two thirds of the novel did not mesh with the final third. It was generally agreed that the last third felt tonally like a wholly different story and that it did not integrate directly with tone that preceded it.
Second – that the villain of the final third of the book, was a powerful and well realized character who the readers thought deserved a novel dedicated entirely to his story and interaction with my hero Seth Jackson. (It was incredibly flattering to have people compare him to Khan from Star Trek.)
Most importantly about these two points is that I agree with them. When I wrote the book I was fearful that the final section was far too separate from the rest in term of plot, conflict, and tone. I struggled to find a proper bridge between the disparate aspects of what I had conceived as a single plot and it would seem that I failed. That leaves with me two options to fix the piece, and one option to send it out as it.
I shall not send it out. It is flawed and I can see it, I agree with it. It is better that I fix it.
So the two fixes.
One – split the book into two, treating the disparate tones as separate stories and give each the room to be their own tale. This means a lot more work, but if done well will produce the best results.
Two – find a way to reconcile the front and back of the books, making the entire book feel like a single whole. That probably cannot be done with the plot as it is currently constructed. During the luncheon I had the epiphany that the first two-thirds of the book was real a conflict between charter A and Character B, while the final third was a conflict between Character A and Character C, whom did not appear at all in the previous portions. That is tonally very much two stories and not one. To fix that I would need either to make C’s plot part of the opening, or make B’s plot the overall controlling interest of the C’s events, and that would destroy the character that everyone really liked.
So there, I’ve talked myself into a lot more work and I have expanded my list of Seth Jackson books. What started as a single novella now looks to stretch across five or six books.