Writing HTTG: Changes
With the completion of Heir To The Gallery, I decided to get nice copies made, and so I went to Lulu.com and “published” the whole story in book form. It took some time to set up the files and the project, but eventually I ended up with a nice paperback (albeit textbook-sized) copy of the story. Excited to have a good physical copy, I sat down and read it. It took four nights of about three hours each (I was also trying to read carefully), but it was the first time I had actually read through the entire thing. I had read through parts before when doing research, but I had never sat down and read through the entire book. It was enlightening. There were things that bothered me; some bothered me when I had been writing it, but others suddenly jumped out at me when I was finally able to step away from the book and read it more objectively. I will talk about these things here.
In case it’s really unobvious, this discussion will contain spoilers for the whole story. Read at your own discretion.
Having read through the book, there are a fair number of things I would want to edit. It was a rough draft, to be sure, and because of that, there were a lot of things I didn’t do as well as I might have liked. Some might say that editing is more than half of writing (in fact, a good number of authors admit as such). I still would like to keep the book shelved for some time, to give myself some psychic distance, but there are things I definitely noted even now.
First and foremost, I would get rid of Mazhigo. I’ve written about this already: Mazhigo was a mistake. It was an experiment, and it failed. I’d still keep it as a plot element (taking it out would lose something, I feel), but I would find some way to handle it—I’m just not entirely sure what.
Secondly, I’d try to reduce my character count. There were a fairly large number of throw-away characters. More accurately, characters that I wrote in, expecting to develop them later, but I never did. Raymond, for instance, was created to have a different subordinate (and because I hadn’t yet decided on Leroy being alive or dead) for Daren to talk to, to learn of Tabitha’s kidnapping (Unintended Ramifications). I ended up cutting out a scene really late where he fought, simply because he was, well, pointless (it would have been temporally after Between The Darkness And The Light; Raymond and Sarah would fight, Leroy shows up, Sarah kills Raymond, Leroy kills Sarah). In an edit, I would probably remove him, and have Leroy take his place. Yes, it puts out the cards of Daniel’s involvement a little earlier, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s okay.
(Tangent: the reason I wanted to keep Daniel’s association with Daren a secret was so that when Daren said “I’ll send someone” (In The Enemy’s Camp), the reader wouldn’t immediately realize that it was Daniel. I wanted his being revealed as an angel to be a surprise, just as it was for the characters.)
The trick is that it would change the nature of Lydia’s rebellion—for a while, I thought of having her plan it with Nathan (which would really create tension), but I think she and Leroy would work well on that regard; Raymond can disappear, Leroy can get more characterization, and the rebellion can get more interesting. Everyone wins.
The other two that come to mind are Gary and Elizabeth: Daniel’s parents. I would either have needed to introduce them a lot sooner, or just ignore them altogether. Elizabeth just gets gimped way, way too quickly in A Feud Of Blood (although this reinforces Rose’s insanity and power), and Gary just rings hollow. It makes sense for Daniel’s parents to be around—they must be magi—but they play no purpose in the story. Taking them out would interesting, but it should be done.
Alyssa’s reaper cronies also ended up ringing too flat. I had written them in before I came up with Soahc, although now I think Alyssa, Soahc, and Noitseuq make a good trio of demons (along with the suite of oracles).
The Earth cast, on the other hand, I don’t think I’d want to cut. Yes, Steve and Jeff are flat and about the same as each other, but they are part of the group, and I think the number helps there. And it reinforces how Kate sees them roughly as background—even Jeff.
Those are just some thoughts on characters to be cut, from me. I’m sure there’s more that could be tightened.
Thirdly, I’d fix a lot of the dialogue. There are far too many places where their speech is just awkward or not realistic (I’m looking at you, Gossiping, even if you’re the entry that made Bekah into a lesbian). This was mostly from the way I wrote it: off-the-cuff, no editing, and immediately posted. Some speech needs to be made more subtle, some more characterization. Some of the blunt conversations would be hard to convert, but should be doable.
Fourthly, I’d increase the roles of certain characters. Andrea, for instance, should have been along with Samuel earlier—fixing Mazhigo would make it easier to handle this, too, because then I wouldn’t be as afraid to write stuff on Glace. She shows up kind of randomly, and her rebellion with Lydia just doesn’t have as much intrigue as I’d like. I had originally planned a conversation between her and Clarissa on the plotting, but I abandoned it because I didn’t want to write the Mazhigo (that strikes again), and I also wanted the choice of Lydia to be a surprise: Lydia asks Tabitha for a favor, but we don’t know what it is until Andrea curses out Tabitha in the alleyway.
I could probably use this to decrease my cast on Glace a little; the Twins were fun at first, but grew boring, and hard to write. I’m not sure exactly how I’d pull it off, but I know it’d be a good idea.
Fifthly, I’d cut down a lot of the beginning. In retrospect, I think I would give Kate her memories sooner, just so we can skip through to Rose’s introduction faster. One of the complaints I’ve heard is that the beginning is just too talky and too much drama—of course, these are all from people who like fighting and action. It’s pretty clear that I didn’t entirely know where I was going (until Rose showed up), and it flounders. Mind, I need a lot of that interaction there in order to reinforce the relationship between Kate and Ami before Rose and Johnathon show up to screw with it, but I think I can do it better.
Sixthly, in the same vein, I’d cut out some of the chaff. I’d end up writing new stuff, yes, but there’s quite a bit that can probably be taken out. Either that, or I need to split it into multiple books (although this gets tricky now that I’m writing the sequel). Once I rearrange a lot of the story and clean it out, it’d be easier to see where breaks would be possible.
Seventhly, I’d fix continuity errors. I think I did very well—considering that it was over the course of eighteen months!—but some still crept in. Max’s talk in all of the prologue (especially The Wanderer) needs a lot of fixing. I forgive myself for it being the beginning of the story. I’m not sure if there’s a better way than the prologue-infodump, but I think it works. As well, Emily tells Kate in Debut to visit her and Derek on Earth (Tangent: Emily and Derek are characters I wouldn’t want to cut, but increasing their roles might be hard), but when Rose goes there in Empty Halls, it’s been abandoned. Of course, Emily could also be lying. Little things like this, and getting my backstory straightened out.
Eighthly, I’d figure out what to do about entries. That organization, along with the titles, made sense with the way I wrote and posted it, but let’s be honest: most of them suck. A full twenty of them are “conversation about X” or “conversation in Y”—that’s only seven percent, but it’s still a fair amount. And there are quite a few more generic ones (”The Angel And The Butterfly”?); on the other hand, there are some of them I like (”Another Wanderer”, to contrast the first entry; “A Convention Of Demons”, which is admittedly decently generic; “Cat And Mouse”; “Shadows Of Mysteries”; “Seduction”; and so on). But they seem choppy in an actual book, especially with how sometimes several of them in a row are really the same scene.
One consideration I’d have is for taking them out altogether (which additionally gets rid of the chapter/entry confusion), and figuring out a way of stringing the entries together a little more cohesively. This would get difficult when I’m jumping between a bunch of different locations, but could probably be done. That would add cohesion, and would improve the Table of Contents (by reducing it to one page), along with not being quite so spoilerish as the entry titles are. On the other hand, it could make it flow too much (is that possible), and make it more difficult for the reader to slice the action. And I’d lose the clever titles. I suppose I’d deal.
Ninthly, again somewhat on the note of the previous, I’d combine chapters together. Ghosts of the Past should just get absorbed into Everyday Life, especially since I would reduce the material in those tremendously. Shattered Fragments (unabashedly my favorite chapter) would probably absorb Someday’s Return, since it’s so short and fits into the theme (and doesn’t even have any good theme music; these are probably my worst choices). I halfway feel as though Within The Burning Leaves should get absorbed into something—but on the other hand, I’d actually like to expand that out a little. Maybe have Ami talk more with the women on Ankera. I had several entries like that planned, but they died because of (guess what?) Mazhigo.
The problem with this is that it would create a great disparity between chapters; I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
Tenthly, I…
Actually, I don’t have a tenth one, aside from “tighten it all up, make some of the little things make more sense”, but that’s a given, right?
It’s also not like this is an exhaustive list. It’s just the things that stood out the most to me when I read the book from front to back. Being as I’m the author, that makes them pretty egregious (either that or I’m being really hard on myself). There’s certainly a lot more work that needs to be done, but it’s a start, and it’s things to think about whenever I do start editing it.
Still, despite all that, I think I did pretty good for the way I went about doing it, writing it over time. But it’s not perfect; in time, perhaps I will address these flaws, beyond just writing about them. But not today.
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