Meredith Mansfield, Author

So, last time I blogged about the last sticky revisions to BEYOND THE PROPHECY. The ones I left until last because I needed to think about them more.

Probably the hardest of those–and the one I was likely to leave to last–was a very general note on the whole middle of the story. A large part of what’s going on there is actually setting up for the conflict in the fourth (and final) book of the series. But that meant that it largely lost sight of the main conflict of this story. Things were happening, often exciting things, but they didn’t seem to further the story. And as a consequence it felt weak, sort of meandering.

But I need those things to happen. This is one of the problems with wiriting middle books in a series. And it was going to be the hardest thing to fix in this manuscript.

Then, on Monday, I listened to the latest episode of the Writing Excuses podcast. Which just happened to be about middles and characters needing to fail (even if they succeed at something smaller) during the middle. And the light broke through. That sometimes happens when my subconscious is worrying at a problem for me (while I take care of the easier revisions) and then I run across just the thing that proves to be the key to the solution.

I’m likely going to listen to that podcast again–maybe more than once. But the key is this. Yes, my characters have to step aside to deal with this other problem before it gets out of hand. (It will, anyway, of course, but not until the next book.) Yes, but by doing that, something else has to go wrong in the main conflict because they weren’t there to stop it.

I need to work it so that when we come to the climax, the situation is worse than it would have been (not necessarily a lot worse than it already is, though) if they had made different choices. Even though their choices weren’t wrong.

It’s going to take a bit of reworking, but it will make the story so much stronger.