It’s interesting starting a new series. I don’t feel fully comfortable yet with my new characters and I’m in that “getting to know them” stage where their own unique voice isn’t as solidified as they will eventually become. It just comes down to spending more time with them, and it’ll be easy enough to make the necessary adjustments during editing once I discover some of the things I don’t know now. But it does make writing much slower than say doing a Royce ad Hadrian project.

Also there’s a bit of a  “feeling my way in the dark” that I’m fighting and part of that is because I want to get the right balance between action and moments of introspection. I’m about to start chapter four, and all in all I think it’s going well. I’ve made some adjustments from from the original outline, and I really like the way these changes are helping out with providing good “balance.”

Originally, the first chapters were designed to “introduce” each of the four characters, one chapter each.  But doing so felt like the reader was being exposed to a lot of characters without getting time to connect with any of them.  So I’ve now added an “unscheduled” chapter that goes back and spends time with the first character and I like the way that breaks the introductions up.

Doing this also solved another problem I was having.  Chapter one has a very fast-paced opening but there is also some information I have to get out before we meet one of the other characters.  I had originally added this as a separate section in chapter one but that really wasn’t working.  It took all the energy out of the first section and the two really clashed stylistically. Moving that section and making it its own chapter solved so many problems.

For those that are here to find advice for writing, I guess the take away is don’t be afraid to move stuff around and don’t get overly concerned when something isn’t fitting in ‘just right” – just keep writing, and let your subconscious mind work on it. One day you’ll be in the shower, or taking a walk and the brilliant idea of how to ‘fix” it will come to you.  Well time to get “back at it.”