I've been planning like crazy for the fourth draft of The Master's Oath. At first I wasn't planning on major revisions to the third draft, but the more I think about it the more I think I need to rework a lot of the plot.

- At present, my protagonist never faces all that much peril and is rather emotionally detached through most of the story. Sure, he faces and agonizes over some serious moral questions, but there's not enough sense of personal risk there.

- Related to the previous point . . . I didn't have a complete idea of what the villains of the piece were after when I wrote the previous draft, and so they're not very fully developed and their actions don't always make much sense to the reader.

- The magic scenes in the story are cool as they stand, but I think I see ways to turn up the volume on them and at the same time bring some of the story's themes into sharper focus.

- Here's the really big deal: since I finished the third draft I've become aware of the nasty imbroglio some folks are calling "RaceFail 09," along with with the side-argument over Patricia Wrede's latest young-adult novel. Oh, yeah, did I mention that my novel has lots of characters of color in it, and that issues of race, power, and privilege are absolutely central to the plot? No, I'm not going to toss this story in the waste bin, for fear that I'll never be able to do it justice. Still, as a white author I'm now even more aware than before that I damn well need to be in command of this story before I try to publish it. Every character and every plot development needs to be looked at critically before the thing escapes from my immediate circle of friends and readers. Maybe I need a wider circle of readers, too.

So, I'm introducing two or three new characters while downplaying or erasing several others. Changing the back stories of several characters. A bit more foreshadowing, a lot more tension from the first paragraph. Chopping out big sections of the current opening, in favor of throwing the protagonist into peril and action much faster. Adding a couple of new scenes to establish new character relationships that didn't exist before, and demonstrate a few more facets of the magic that exists in the fictional world. And I'm reviewing the relationships between my (white) protagonist and many of the colored characters, so as to give some of the more insensitive tropes a much wider berth.

This may take a while. I can't see it going by with the blinding speed that characterized the third draft. Fine-tuning is always a more deliberate process.

Tags: writing
Current Mood: artistic