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.

Last night was the twice a month meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Support Group. I think it was because of the impending holidays that we had a fairly small group turn out, which meant even though I read a bit at our last meeting I read again.

I read out a scene that had been problematic for me in the writing and turned out to be problematic in the reading. Even as II read it aloud I could feel the prose falling flat.

The scenes had no life, no purpose and failed in every objective.

  I got lots of really good feedback and this is where a person had to listen and not just hear. It can be very difficult to be truly open to your own mistakes. This is as true with writing as it is with anything else people do. I tried my best to keep ego out of the way. (Beating down the little monster with a crowbar and burying him is a hole in the desert.) I think I succeeded. I have a much better idea today why the scene failed, and some idea about how to fix it with a total rewrite.

Writers groups are invaluable, but you have to listen.

For me, writing a novel is a lot like driving towards mountains. My outline points me in the correct direction and through the haze the distant peaks are dimly visible. I start out on the journey and those damn peaks don’t seem to move at all. Scenery passes by on either side, sometimes its tough driving and sometime it is lovely scenery, but my goal seem as distant and as elusive as when I started.

Then somewhere around the middle of the project, the mountains seem to close with a rapidity that is startling. At this point I afraid that I don’t have enough story and that before you know it I’ll be across the mountain range and my journey will be over far too soon. At this point I have to trust my outline, and not slow the writing with pointless meandering scenes.

The final stage is finding myself suddenly in the mountains, with loads more road to cover and no fearing that I have too much plot to cover in the remaining page count. Here I have to fight the urge to cut everything short, and work studiously at keeping all the elements I had planned on in the story.

Command and Control is now about 150 manuscript pages long, about 37000 words out of a target of about 100,000, and those mountains are suddenly closing in.