Sunday, August 16, 2009

Spinward Fringe: Fracture - Early Editing

I've begun my editorial pass / possible final draft on Spinward Fringe: Fracture and it occurs to me that there are a few very important things about this book that I didn't mention before.

It's a shorter book than Spinward Fringe Frontline. I decided that instead of taking eight or so months to release a large book, I'd split the story into three acts and write a trilogy.

The book also takes elements of the early Spinward Fringe series (Resurrection / Awakening), and fuses them with the First Light Chronicles setting and character style. Two days pass in this book, the story pace is faster than ever, I find the dialog pops more in this book than in Frontline, and I get to tell this story from many angles and explore the experiences of characters that I think more readers will be able to relate to more easily.

There's also special attention paid to how certain characters react to what they may have gained or lost over the last few months (since page 1 of Spinward Fringe Resurrection), and I've made a great effort to keep the story from getting bogged down with constant flashbacks to moments we've seen before. Instead, I try to keep building a few characters by reviewing bits of their past and emotions in the present that I haven't had a chance to examine in detail.

I've also returned to a kind of story telling that had the tendency to evoke a lot more emotion from me. I wrote a new prologue for this book that nearly had me in tears. Normally I'd be patting myself on the back and hoping that all that emotion survives my edit, but in this case I was left wondering if I made everyone around me uncomfortable at the writing jam I was attending. [A writing jam is when a group of writers get together in a cafe or someone's home and spend time working together or on their own projects.]

There's one more thing I'd like to mention before I get back to work. Editing this book is fun. Editing Frontline was a bit of a chore at times because of its sheer size and the characters spent a lot of time in a setting I no longer enjoyed imagining because it was an awful place, I wouldn't want to find myself in the same situation that the characters are in for most of that book. Don't get me wrong, the setting was great for the story, I had just spent days imagining it already at that point.

So far, editing Spinward Fringe Fracture has been very rewarding. I'm finding a lot of places where I'm smoothing out some rough edges, which is normal, and a few places were I get sucked in by the scenes and the story so well that I forget to edit. It happened with Frontline as well, but only after the first edit was completed and I had to go back to the beginning for another pass.

If my editor and beta readers approve this edit when I'm finished, you can look forward to Spinward Fringe: Fracture at the end of August.

Gotta love being independent, this stuff happens fast!

RL

[Do you prefer shorter books and a release every 2-3 months or longer books and releases every 9 months? Please comment below!]

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I feel 200 page books would be fine. I feel more connected if I am able to get from one book in a series to the next sooner. The memories of the book before are more readily available to me.

Unknown said...

I agree with fox_dude. If the characters are well developed, like in this series, I like keeping up with them and look forward to hearing about them (sooner than later)like I would a friend. I normally only read titles that have more than one volume. I can't stand waiting years and years for the next volume. By the time they bring out additional books, I've already forgotten about it. I love the whole series, the characters are like family to me. Thanks again, keep it up. I'll also make a donation!

Randolph Lalonde said...

Thank you both for weighing in on the issue! After counting votes and comments it looks like these books will weigh in at between 70,000 to 100,000 words each. For comparison, Frontline was well over 200,000 words.

I'd also like to thank you for your fantastic comments, AC. I'm glad you enjoy the series and hope you enjoy what I have in store for everyone.

Thank you for your support, I love what I do and I'll keep improving my craft so each book is better than the last.