Looking for Input

[JBryden88]

So, as the winter dies down, Spring comes, I feel like a bear out of hibernation. I'm writing again, however this time, I'm unfocused.

To be honest, I think I'm shelving my "completed" manuscript for a good long while. It's not that I'm not proud of it, but when I look at it, I think... "the character development isn't half bad, but the pacing and story are terrible." Mostly because for the first half of the book, it's chasing one goal. But then the second part its like... "what did I just do?"

For a more in depth summary, I'll give you the run down.

It's meant to be the first in a series, yet it's also meant to stand alone as well.

The original concept for my story, tentatively called "The Red Axe," is that here's this realm, very loosely based on a mixture of Norse, Irish, Scottish, and very faint English (mostly the fact that it's feudal is the english part, but very barbaric leanings) that values honor and strength. The term often used for the realm is "unconquerable." Anyway. The whole story centers around Cathal and his men (and women) and how they serve the king blah blah blah.

Anyway. The character development is fine. I'll be changing things up, I know how I'll be reworking the romance for example, and otherwise the character development is perfect. The problem is the overall plot.

As it stands, for the first chunk of the story, there's a bandit king. He's marauding the realm, causing issues. Heroes save the day, send him to the afterlife, and there is mourning after one of the main characters dies. The second part of the story is where it's kind of chaotic, centered around characters moving on, a "small" action sequence, and then the realm gets invaded by the Empire in the east.

I'm not satisfied with this.
I love these characters, I've been spending much time with them ever since I envisioned them in a short story about three or four years ago. But I need to change this, and make a more satisfying story. I want the pacing to slow down, focus more on the characters, but I want the threat level to be higher.

How do I say, minimize the bandit threat, maximize the threat of invasion, and provide both the intense character development I seek while having some good ol' medieval warfare to top it all off? With this story I am perplexed.

It's been collecting dust since the fall when I finished it, and I have other story ideas, but I don't want to just abandon this one either!

 

[JCFarnham]

This very thing happened to me with my novel Blitz (1st done for Nanowrimo and now in moving into the 2nd drafting phase with major rewrites). I had "protagonist meets people who change her life" and "together they engage in a heist", and the second part was what they did with what they stole and their involvement in the coming civil war because of that. In fact in theory that's more or less exactly the same problem as you're having really.

What I did to remedy this (and this may not by any means work in your case) is say, "right, once they pull off the heist I'm going to cut the book there, everything after that point can be the next story in the series". And so I went from one science fiction novel to a series of two. This left a hell of a lot more room for me to play with my theme, in both cases, and little to no split of focus.

Of course I had to move around and re-pace some subplots and cut a few useless reactionary characters here and there but I think the story is better for it.

Thats not to say I've written them fully yet, haha I'm a slow writer, but I do have scenes here and there and a general outline for the overall arc of the two books. Two incomplete books with a strong backbone are better than one weak one in my opinion.

So that's merely an example from my writing, but I hope it gives you some direction.

 

[Devor]

How do I say, minimize the bandit threat, maximize the threat of invasion, and provide both the intense character development I seek while having some good ol' medieval warfare to top it all off? With this story I am perplexed.

Two possibilities leap out at me.

The first is that the empire is Grendel's mom. That's a phrase which means, the empire is the "big bad" responsible for the bandits, which your characters find out right around the Bandit King climax. So the bandits were just mercenaries sent in as a distraction or to soften the region up for invasion while the empire amasses forces. This makes the bandits into a pawn, even a patsy, and the empire into a masterminding villain.

The second, you just have to balance two villains, but that's going to take a lot of reworking on your part. The empire has to be foreshadowed and discussed almost right away, and I think the bandit climax should probably be be pushed back to about 3/4ths the way through the book. You have to set them up as equals; the bandits, for instance, are a more personal conflict for the characters while the empire is more ominous and "epic" in scope.

In my opinion, I think the second is the harder way to go but would deliver a better book if done well.

 

[JBryden88]

Devor... you rule. Seriously.

I didn't even think about it that way. Neither possibility occurred to me. I might use both.

As it is, the brigands have been personal for the realm, especially for the king, whose whole reign is tarnished by the fact he has /never/ caught the bastard that's been hounding his realm for years. So the idea that now, when the bandits have been bought out, maybe they've been given better equipment(?) by the Empire, and when the heroes finally deal with them -> they realize it's been a ruse this whole time?

I like that. I'll have to seriously figure out what to do with some of the character points, but I like that notion, and will sit on it and brainstorm it for awhile.

 

[Penpilot]

I think you just echoed the story of my first novel. The choice I made was to trunk it and start a new book. This may not be an option for you, but for me, I think it worked out best for me in terms of developing as a writer. I got way to close to the novel and couldn't think straight about anything that was happening. Pace was off and as I tried harder and harder to fix things it got more and more convoluted. Didn't help that the book was nearly 300 000 words with 6 pov characters. It turned into a situation where I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

SO I left the first book behind and wrote a second, taking the lessons learned from the first and adding to them while writing the second. The second book is working out great, and now that I have distance and perspective on my first book. I can see a clear and obvious path to fixing it. With perspective, I can see the solutions to my problems just lying there in plain sight.