More on the revise and resubmit

Ha, glancing back at the big revise and resubmit post, I realized I actually didn’t say what the editor’s big issue with the story structure was. Oops. Clearly, the post needed an edit pass. 😉

Anyway, I’d said that the structure of the The Dove, the Rook, and the Hawk is supposed to be “one big story in three parts”, akin to Lord of the Rings. However, what the editor said about this was that she’d prefer to see less setup for Book 2 and more of a sense of resolution for this book.

I get that. Certainly in Fellowship of the Ring, the biggest plot questions are of course not resolved, but there is a local resolution of sorts with the dissolution of the Fellowship. With my story, the idea here is that Book 1 is supposed to be Faanshi’s local arc, Book 2 is Julian’s, and Book 3 is Kestar’s. But clearly, I need better closure for Faanshi’s local arc.

The editor has given me several thoughts about how to tackle this, and I’m already thinking about which bits at the very end of Book 1 may be shifted over into the beginning of Book 2. This would serve nicely for giving Book 1 a less open ending while at the same time opening Book 2 with a sense of “okay, things are darker now, get ready”.

I’m also thinking that perhaps, structure-wise, I should think less “Lord of the Rings” and perhaps more “Star Wars”. (Which is kinda lulzy, given that I’ve got a bit of a Han-Luke-Leia dynamic going on with Julian, Kestar, and Faanshi, only without the Wookiee. Because Nine-Fingered Rab would take issues with being compared to Chewie, I fear!) The ultimate defeat of the Empire of course doesn’t happen until the third movie, but in ANH, you do have the nice big local resolution of “YAY the Death Star is asploded!”

Much thinking to do. And I’ve already had five, count ’em, five people volunteer to beta read; many thanks in advance to mamishka, jennygriffee, gerimaple, joelysue, and mari_mac1109! Thanks as well to apel who signal boosted me over on Twitter.