You Can't Fight A War Without Losing Blood

Another update on edits!

After about a month, I'm one third of the way through the manuscript.  That's pretty intense, considering the amount of time it took to write the whole thing.

Two chapters have suffered the big X of death so far, but I don't anticipate anymore casualties.  As mentioned in my previous post, the first chapter to die is being re-purposed for a future novel and the important bits for this novel have been moved elsewhere in the story.

The other chapter, though.  Yikes.  It was practically all fluff.  It served as a way to introduce a character before her main appearance.  However, having finished the first draft, I came to discover her role was not nearly as big as I had initially intended it to be.  In the end I didn't need the introductory chapter at all.  She will still be an important character, to an extent, but her bigger role in the series as a whole has been drastically reduced.

In other news, as part of the editing process, I put to paper all of the behind-the-scenes story that serves as the series plot.  A majority of it will not be revealed until future novels, but there will be hints, and it has major effects on the contained plot of this first book.  Writing it all down gave me some cool ideas that I can incorporate during this first edit.  When the entire series is complete it'd be cool to show off how I knew all this stuff from the beginning.  Lost-style.  WE HAVE TO GO BACK!

So pumped!  Lots of cool things on the horizon, including a surprise proclamation.  Going to save that for later, but it will be proclaimed sometime in the next few months.

Until next time...

Omoide wa Okkusenman!

The first round of edits continues.

I got up to the fourth chapter when I realized it was completely out of place.  It was practically all exposition/background story, save for a short action sequence at the beginning, and it disrupted the flow of the novel.  By this point in the book, the MC has already received his call to adventure, so I couldn't do a flashback.

What to do, what to do?

I tried moving the chapter up in line, but it just didn't make sense to do a flashback so early.  The chapter explained a lot of things about the universe in which the story resides, but the MC hadn't yet been solidly introduced to the audience.  It was a hard decision, but I had to slash the whole chapter.  I guess thats a sign of mature writing, but it doesn't hurt any less.

I did comb through it, however, and pick out the vital pieces of background information to be worked into conversations in other chapters.  The actual event that happened in that chapter... by the time its relevant to the story for this first book we'll be ready for Act 2.  And I'm not slowing the pace of the middle part of the story for a flashback.  It will likely be recycled for Book 2, as I planned on having a very similar scene to kick that book off anyway.

Something else that recently came up... apparently there's bias in the writing industry towards prologues.  Unbeknownst to me.  It puts me in a rough spot, because the "prologue" that I have is vital to the entire series.  It has to be the first scene, but it takes place outside of the main story, so I'm not sure if I can recategorize it as "Chapter One."  Either way, it will be the first scene in the book.  It can't be helped.

Decisions.

UPDATE:  Rowling's Chapter One of Harry Potter Numero Uno is essentially a prologue.  But its her Chapter One.  I guess I know what I'm doing, then.  Now, about the epilogue...