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In preparation of submitting it to small press publishers I have been revisiting my Seth Jackson military/adventure SF novel.

There have been no grand changes but rather her and there minor alterations to a few sentences for clarity. The most common change breaking a compound sentence into two.

That said there is a fairly sizable edit that is going to take place, the deletion of an entire chapter and all the references, so far just one, to the events of that chapter.

The book starts with a major battle between the European Stellar Union and its enemy the ASPs. The battle in my mind has the scale and importance to this war that the Battle of Midway had for the United States during the Second World War. It is the turning of the tide. To capture the scale and complexity of the battle I follow several viewpoint characters, not all survive the fight. It’s a big battle and takes up just over a quarter of the novel. Everything that follows which threatens to drum the main character out of the service is a consequence of that engagement.

However, I have discovered that a chapter that takes place effectively after the combat has ended and the enemy is retreating needs to go. The fighting has ended, the ‘good guys’ have won, all that is needed is a small denouement to wrap it up, but I went on for an entire chapter because I had a cool idea that sprang from a little know aspect of living in weightlessness. I justified it myself as an important character moment between two characters but really I just loved this odd little thing about urinating in space and how it can turn dangerous to one’s health.

You see the Battle of Sigma Draconis is its own little story with a beginning, middle, and end, and I flew right past the dramatic and satisfying ending when I should have stopped.

Stories are made of scenes and scene ending are just as vital as story endings.