Okay, I have let the dust settle a bit, and it’s time to start pulling the pieces together for Act II now. As currently planned, I have 13 chapters in this act. A little over half of the chapters are complete, though I am uncertain of their condition, i.e. I think the writing is a little weak and the tone may be subtly different because certain moods have changed in the reworking of the plotlines. I will touch them up a bit as I work, though it is my intention to save any real ‘polish’ phase until after I complete the entire draft.

I maintain a skeleton document that has pretty much the entire novel plot, sans niceties like phrasing, dialog, and descriptions, i.e. “Ahmed fights and kills several Elgies”, which could be several pages in the actual chapter. I use this to plan out chapters and track the flow, figure out how things fit together. Then, once I have it worked out, I actually write the chapter.

For act II, I still have some rough parts with the Skeleton, specifically with Sadrik. He is not only a retroactively added character, he is overwriting another, more boring character, and I have to absorb some events into him while maintaining his personality, so there are some challenges. I may end up just tossing some of the stuff the overwritten guy did, though it will mean losing some work. In the end, Sadrik will handle things his way. One has considerably less leeway than you might imagine at making characters behave in ways they don’t like. Yes, brute force works. But the characters grow sick if you do this, and they die.

I think, if I can just solidify the skeleton for Act II and Act III this week, I will count myself as having done very well. And for alpha readers, no, you can’t see the skeletons yet. The entire point of alpha readers is that you know nothing about the plot! I know what I have in the skeleton. The question is, “Did I actually communicate it properly?”, so I need to keep it to myself and see if certain things come through to the readers. After I have heard some feedback from a few folks on the Act I draft, I’ll give some thought to posting the skeletons.

Assuming, of course, I’ve got them where I want them.