Hi everyone! Sorry this took so long to get out, I actually skimmed through the whole book before writing this, which took a while. I also had stupid midterms and stuff.
So right now I'm going to talk about what I plan to do with Paladin from here on out.
TL;DR: I'm going to be editing Paladin Book 1 heavily, and until that's done I won't move on to Book 2.
The longer explanation is that my dream for Paladin is for it to be published. Like, on book shelves with a really pretty red-and-white cover published. As it stands right now, I don't think the book is nearly ready for that. There are a lot of problems with it which I'll address in a second. Unfortunately, that means I can’t get started on Book 2 right away. I need to have Book 1 completely ironed out so that I can avoid wasting my time if I suddenly realize midway through Book 2 that there was a part in Book 1 that’s screwing up the plot or character dev. That sentence was word salad but whatever. The point is that I don't want glaring mistakes to bite me in the ass later on.
Anyway, right now I would like everyone's opinion on whether the changes I'm proposing make sense. (Thank you in advance!)
Issue 1: Length and General Changes
I’m in fairly decent shape as far as length goes. I’m sitting at about 200k words, about the upper limit of what I’d like. There are things I’m going to be cutting (get to that in a sec) and things I’ll be adding, so I expect the final tally to land at like 160-180k words.
I’m also going to be reducing the number of chapters I have. The current format of Paladin is a webnovel. That means really short chapters, which doesn’t work well for a normal novel. I think this is going to be a surprisingly large amount of work, because it’ll involve rewriting a lot of chapters that end on cliffhangers.
I’m going to tighten up the dialogue a bit, especially in regard to the whole “he said” or “I said” stuff. The refinement will also extend to the prose in general. I’ll probably cut down on the cursing somewhat, and just make sure that the writing style in general is consistent from beginning to end. Also I’m going to go through and actually indent my stupid paragraphs to make it more readable. Geh.
I might take out every first person POV except for Sam, making Camille and Adelaide third person POVs.
As far as combat and action scenes go, I was happy with them. I’ll obviously go through them again to make sure they are fluid/make sense, but I felt like the choreography in general translated well to the page.
Oh and I’m getting rid of the stupid prologue.
Issue 2: Worldbuilding
An issue I’m having with Paladin right now is that the world feels ill-defined. Sure, it’s the remnants of the US with most of the country destroyed, but what does that translate to? How do people get food and water? What is the average citizen doing (tried to get at that a little)? What is daily life like now? Before? These are all questions that I have sort of answered in my head but haven’t really translated onto the page yet.
As far as food goes, wartime America would definitely transition to food crops instead of what we have now. Colorado would probably be growing wheat or ranching, with some potatoes thrown in. That would make it fairly easy for the small towns to have a steady food supply. Mills would also be simple enough to build to process the wheat. Or maybe towns get into trade agreements where one farms and the other processes at an old factory. What I’m trying to say is that there wouldn’t be mass starvation or anything.
Water gets slightly trickier. I don’t know too much about water distribution, but I imagine that it doesn’t just happen by itself. I’m going to have to research that.
A minor tweak to the worldbuilding I’m going to have is that communications are for the most part still up. The satellites haven’t been destroyed, and much of the cable infrastructure is still functional. That seems to be more realistic than the everything suddenly going kaput. That changes the job of Mary though. Instead of a runner that brings messages from town to town, she and her merry crew are going to be scavengers. Thoughts on this idea?
Another thing I’m going to have to emphasize more is that there really aren’t a whole lot of young people around anymore. A large number of them died in Alaska or in the large cities where they were garrisoned.
A very good opportunity to do some worldbuilding will be through Camille, since she lived in on the surface world for a few months. If you can think of anything else that you think would be really important or cool to learn about the world of Paladin, please let me know.
Issue 3: Plot
The plot has some major issues. I liked where it ended up, but overall it did not ‘flow’ smoothly from one part to the next. There was no clear underlying thread to follow, and it jumped around too much. Currently, I’m going with the classic three act structure for Paladin. I’m going to talk about overall issues I have with the plot, then I’ll break down the specific changes I have planned for each Act. In the webnovel, I only have two parts. Part 1 is in the base, Part 2 is after that. For the novel, I’m going to split it into three acts Act 1 ends at Amy’s burial, Act 2 ends with finding Camille, Act 3 ends with the battle of Sterling.
ACT 1
For the most part, I felt like Act 1 was solid. Most of the changes I would like to make are in the beginning part. For example, I would like Sam to be in Paladin training already, so that it seems less like he was forced into it. There will be more time before Sam lets the scout time die. Sam’s mental breakdown and subsequent recovery will be more fleshed out and given the proper weight that is necessary.
I’m also going to take some of the info-dump summary chapters and make them more user friendly/less boring. Also more character building for Camille in the flashbacks.
I like the AI trainers so they're going to stick around. Probably will make Danna less sterotypical but polar bear buddy is fun. I do plan on making them seem less human and more like programs though, in order to make a clear distinction between how they act and how Adelaide acts (before she reveals the secret to Sam).
Y’know, now that I’m thinking about it, basically the entire first half of Act 1 is going to get some sort of overhaul… hmmm… But the second half is good so that’s nice.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
ACT 2
This Act suffered a lot from a loss of focus, in my opinion. There was a lot of jumping around between plot points that were forgettable. With the exception of the ending part at the Assimilator Hive, a lot of the elements of Act Two felt unimportant.
Especially the goddamn slavers. I have no fucking clue what to do with them, frankly. It feels like they don’t fit in anywhere. You kind of learn about them, Sam murders a bunch of them, then they just disappear. If they stick around, they’ll have to serve more of a purpose besides a convenient way for Sam to have a crisis about murdering people. I think a lot of my problem with them is that they have exactly zero depth. They add an interesting element to the world, but I don’t know if they’re necessary for a focused plot. We already have the antagonist of the Assimilators; do we really need the slavers?
Another problem with this part is the ‘Uther’ side plot which I’ll get to in a bit.
ACT 3
I want to make this act more connected to act two, especially in terms of the ‘lost black box’ plot line. I think that uncovering what happened to the scout team should be one of the major underlying plot threads. It gives a good excuse to hang out with the Red Eagles more and it dangles some sort of mystery in front of the reader.
Additionally, I would like to explore Camille’s story. I skipped over it in the first draft, but I’ll definitely be addressing it. It’ll give a nice worldbuilding opportunity too.
Finally, there’s the Denver mission. I love this part a lot, but I’m seriously considering moving it to Book 2, because it doesn’t slot in correctly AND it doesn’t make sense from a character motivation stand point. The problem with it is that it doesn’t feel like any of the characters should actually want to go there. Sam should be like hell to the fucking naw about going to Denver without a Paladin. Camille would never suggest that Sam go Denver because its near suicidal. The Red Eagles and Mary don’t know him well enough to go into a deathtrap just because of some Scanner Tech. I feel like once the team is assembled in Book 2, it would make it more likely for everyone to volunteer to go. And in addition to all of that, they didn’t even end up using the scanning technology in the first place. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, if I do remove Denver, I have to have something equally as exciting in its place, which will be hard. If I do replace Denver, it’ll be a plot point related to the ‘black box’. Then it makes more sense of the Red Eagles to be involved.
As far as the Battle of Sterling goes, I was more or less pleased with it. I’m probably going to go a little more in depth with the training montage though. And there are some other minor details that need to be changed, especially in the build up towards the battle.
I’ll also be trimming some of the fat from the chapters, but that’s going to be the case for everything in the book. The whole thing should be streamlined and to the point. Other than intentional red herrings, I think that every part of a novel should be important in some way or show up in the plot later.
Issue 4: Character Dev
I’m pretty okay with how character dev went in Paladin. I’d like to take that a step farther by making sure that every named character (that is reasonably important) has an end goal or driving aspiration. Also I think that characters that develop need to fall back into bad habits every once in a while. I don’t think it’s realistic to have someone fix their flaws once and for all.
Sam
Dunno if you guys noticed, but Sam pretty much stopped developing after he started going to the surface. He currently doesn’t have believable flaws, besides the ‘naïve’ thing which is meh. This does not a compelling character make. To put it bluntly, he’s a little too good to be true.
Possible solutions: Major flaw = ‘not my problem’ syndrome, minor flaws = naivety, identity crisis, scared to lose people he cares about (once Camille shows up again)
The major flaw that he would be struggling with throughout the book is that Sam hesitates at crucial moments. He doesn’t help everybody, because he feels as though it’s not his business to stick his nose into/he’s more into self-preservation. That changes, obviously, but it’ll take a few painful lessons and a lot of nightmares. Maybe some prodding from Camille too.
I was actually thinking that a possible use for the slavers would be in this area: When he first encounters them, he decides that it really isn’t his business to police them, even though he knows he should. Then, the slavers that he lets go attack and destroy a town. Just like when he let the original team die in Act 1, his inaction leads to innocents getting killed.
He’s wracked by guilt, which is why he commits so quickly to fighting for Sterling later on, as a way to redeem himself. That makes his decision to help a little more impactful in my opinion. I don’t want him to start as a hero – I want him to get there by the end of the book.
The problem with this idea is that it could make for a very frustrating protagonist. Nobody likes a coward, after all. But I’m trying to think about what a relatively normal civilian would do in his position, someone that’s lost pretty much everything. Also, that sets him up to being too willing to commit to saving everyone in the next book.
What do you all think? (Even if the flaw I proposed doesn't make the cut, Sam needs more developement so I'll go in a different direction.)
Also, the Uther thing was kind of dumb. I like the idea of Sam trying to hide behind a fake identity, but I handled it clumsily. Definitely going to need to tweak that.
Camille
One of the characters I’m most unhappy with. I felt that she never really got developed and only had vague motivations. I was even considering axing her completely, but I’m probably not going to. As I mentioned before, the flashbacks in Part 1 of the book are going to be less info-dump, so I think I’m going to have a few scenes of Camille and Sam interacting before they got separated. Maybe even before they started dating?
Camille needs to have some flaws, like she gets mad very quickly or something of that nature, or she gets fixated on research too much. The main takeaway is that right now she isn’t doing much for the story and that needs to be fixed. Having an Assimilator expert will be helpful down the line though and I do like the ‘established relationship’ dynamic a lot.
Adelaide
She needs a little development too, actually, but I like the conflict that’s central to her character. She wants to be treated like a person, but she’s afraid to expose herself to the outside world. Amy instilled a deep fear of being recognized, so she still hides under a mask around people she doesn't trust. Other than that, she’s trying to explore what it means to be a person. She has a lot of potential though. Honestly, she is definitely the character I have the most plans for down the line. I’m excited to get to them.
Red Eagles Squad
For the most part okay. I’ll develop them more in the next book, and my main focus for them in this book is that they have distinct personalities. I think I accomplished that to a certain degree. I’m pretty pleased with Aaron. Jackson could use work. Rebecca needs a little more too, because she was great before Camille showed up then kind of fizzled out after.
Conclusion
So… yeah. There’s a shit ton of work ahead of me as far as editing this goes. I’ve never edited a book before, so I have no idea how long it will take. I’m hoping no longer than a couple months (that might just be wishful thinking though). But my philosophy on it is that having a strong foundation will make going forward with the series much, much easier. I do feel bad for smashing any dreams of a quick start to the next book though...
I think I managed to get most of my thoughts down... maybe. It's a bit hard to keep track of them all and I feel like I'm constantly coming up with new changes. I'm sure there are a bunch of minor things I forgot to include. Please let me know if there’s anything I’m missing in here, or if there’s anything you felt that the story needed or even did particularly well. Your comments and opinions are really invaluable to me, because they let me get a finger on the pulse of my readers.
P.S. If there’s interest in seeing how the second draft develops, let me know and I’ll find a way to post it somewhere. Maybe Patreon or just a Google Doc. But keep in mind that changes wouldn’t be published in a chapter by chapter format like they have been. It would be a rolling document that is revised and edited day to day, and I will probably be jumping back and forth between different parts of the book.
P.P.S Thanks to everyone yet again for reading Paladin, commenting on it, and sticking around after I bailed. You guys are the reason that I kept writing, so I owe you big.