Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Anytime you invoke Tesla, it's got to be a good thing.

I really need to explain how it is possible for a bunch of Tuskers (mutant wild pigs) to bring down the humans.

It's pretty wild.  I've got super intelligent Tuskers, and zombies, and the end of civilization.

I think I've figured out a pretty good way to explain it, and it needs to be in the second book. It involves invoking Tesla!  Anytime you can use Tesla has to be a good thing.
 
No matter what I do, the third Tuskers book is getting too big and unwieldy.   I want it to be no more than 25% bigger than the first two books, but to accomplish that, it will have to be pretty sparse the rest of the way.

The first book is fine the way it is.  Nothing needs be done.

But in writing the third book, I've realized that I missed some bets in the second book.

Basically, though the first book was told almost solely from the human perspective, the second and third books need to be told from the Tuskers' perspective at least a third of the time to make them work.

When I first looked at this problem of too big a third book, I thought I had a very simple and elegant solution.  I would take the expedition of humans to the Tusker territory that was split between the two books and bring it all the way back home in the second book.

I thought all I had to do was tack those chapters to the end of what was already written.

But it was horrible.  Boring and stupid.  So I changed back.

Now, on third thought, I think my inclination is correct.  It's just that it won't be simple.  It will require integrating the extra chapters, weaving them into the current storyline, not just tacking them on without effort.

So my next task is to sit down and make a diagram with a timeline and try to fit the chapters in the proper slots.  I think if the chapters are alternated with the current book, they would work much better.

Meanwhile, by taking these chapters out of the third book, I've left a bit of hole in the beginning.  But, as I said, I need more material from the Tuskers' point of view, so those should fit in there nicely.

Which basically means I have to re-write both books.

I wish I didn't have to.  I wish they had come as easy as the first book, but that isn't what happened, and now that I've actually sold the first book I want to make absolutely sure the second and third books are as good as they can be.

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