91: Reimagining & Restructuring
8/21/2015
Well, I made some big decisions. I decided to rewrite all of Part One: Wings of Providence, in order to make it a stand-alone book of 85,000-100,000 words. First though, I spent a week doing a detailed character analysis of Diallo, Alena, Siona, Makoa, Tamal, Dougga, and Bakar. Which included detailed physical descriptions, background, and a character-revealing questionnaire for each. I needed this as a basis for a new beginning so that I know my characters much more intimately than before.
Alena had the most drastic overhaul from my original vague and bland conceptions of her. She’s a real person now, not just the nice girl. All of them are much more defined now, and as a result both the writing and the story are much stronger.
I just finished my reimagined Chapter Three today, which actually combined what used to be scenes two and three – Diallo falling from the tree. I really wasn’t looking forward to going backward to this material, it was so played out and dead for me in my mind. But I actually pulled off a minor miracle and turned the whole beginning of the Alena section into something interesting and rich, every bit as good as my most recent work with The Shadow Falls.
I began by pinpointing the premise for my first book, Wings of Providence. Then I tried to figure out how what I had already (Alena, Kumbella, The Fever, and Twa Yal-Jukun) fulfills the premise and story I need to tell for a first book. As a result, the fourth Part: Twa Yal-Jukun is being cut out. That’s 70 pages of work discarded. But I’m sure I’ll be cannibalizing large segments of it, so it won’t be a total loss.
Also, I’m combining what used to be Alena and Kumbella into a single Part One. And I’ll be using The Fever as Part Four now. That means I have Part Two and Three to write from scratch. Part Three will be the quest for the ghost frog, which was only alluded to in my original draft.
Doing all this resolves two critical problems that have been plaguing me for quite a while. The first problem solved is that my books will no longer be massive tomes that would make publishing them problematic. And the second problem solved is that I’ll be able to more easily say what the story is about in each book. It won’t just be a life story (biography) with vaguely related Parts built around a vague notion of a prophecy. I now have a clear conception of “what the story is about” on multiple levels – that of the series as a whole (now eight books long), and as individual books.
What I originally conceived as Parts are now books, and what I used to call chapters (and then episodes) are now Parts. So, each book will still have four Parts, but there will be many chapters now per Part.
What I’m losing with all this is the aesthetic symmetry of maintaining the structure of fours. There are not just four books anymore. There aren’t just four chapters per Part anymore. It also lengthens the whole series and the scope of the stories to tell. Which means more work for me.
Though, maybe not. Because this disregard for keeping to four books means I don’t have to write what was going to be the fourth book, about their exodus and search for a new home. I can end the series with the destruction of their villages and their departure from Kamaria to find a new home. The story of the series then is about the last generation of the Batu as a tribe, not about how or if they’re able to rebuild elsewhere.
Not having to write that story is a huge burden removed. I love exodus stories, but I wasn’t looking forward to writing one. Especially when most of my main characters will have been dead or too old to be viable by then. Alena was the only important one who was going to survive into the fourth book (though like Moses, not surviving to reach the promise land herself). But now with eight books, Mogai will be dying in the last one, as he should.
There are other benefits of this new organization as well. For one thing, it means Book Two: Left Behind, is already done. It was always my strongest Part in terms of having a unified and complete story arc. Its ending is the only possible problem. Ending the book with the protagonist failing (actually, he fails repeatedly throughout the book) is not exactly going to endear me to readers. It wasn’t’ intended originally as a stand-alone, so I have some tweaking to do to make it suitable. But it’s roughly 98% finished as is. Unlike the first book.
It’s hard to say for sure with all the rewriting yet to do, but I’d guess I got 25-50% of the first book done. One whole Part has to be made up from scratch; another has a mix of pieces needing inventing. The other two are mostly rewrites, or as I call them: reimaginings – because they’re so dramatically different, there’s only a bare skeleton of the original that is at all recognizable. All for the better.
All this means I will have two books done, along with a quarter of the third, within the next three months. So, even if by some miracle I could talk a publisher into combining two books in one volume (as Tolkien did), I will still be done with my first volume in three months.
When It’s all said and done, this new structure and reimagining of the first book will make the work a lot better. It’s already so much better, just with the first three chapters I got done already. I had to invent Chapter Two out of thin air (the jola meeting), which turned out well. I needed it to break up the string of chapters with Diallo on the river. But it’s also good for establishing the jola up front, the characterizations of all four jola members, and adding support to the series plotline of the prophecy. I’m at a point now where I need to make up another chapter from scratch, this time using Dougga overhearing that the end of the world is coming. It will probably be a short chapter.
With the one I just finished today (Diallo falling from the tree), I originally had the second half from Alena’s POV, but I used almost nothing from that since Alena’s character and physical description completely changed. Instead of Kiza being the one to take Diallo’s loincloth and tormenting him, now it’s Alena who does it. And instead of Alena putting a halt to it because she’s such a goody two-shoes, it’s Kiza now who makes Alena give Diallo his loincloth back
It’s just so much more interesting, and the writing is much better now, too. Also, the play on various themes is better. There’s a much better sense that the story is about something. It’s all unified and tied neatly together, and the geographical shifts from chapter to chapter is much nicer. Having had multiple chapters in a row set in the same location was tedious.
I’m extremely happy with my first chapter now, and it used to be my worst. There’s a much stronger sense of place and atmosphere. Before it was just reeds and mud with two boys squabbling. Bringing in the log bridge, and starting out with Diallo instead of the heron, just changed the whole look and feel for the better.
It’s going to be a much stronger book and series than it was going to be if I stayed on the course I had been on two weeks ago. This reimagining and restructuring isn’t just a rewrite, it’s a whole new ball game. And I’ll still be able to meet my deadline for having my first book done by the end of this year. In fact, I should have two books done.
I’m not sure what to do about The Yara (prologue). It speaks to the story of the series and to Wings of Providence, but it’s no longer really necessary as a background for Mosai’s withdrawal – if it ever was necessary. But it’s also 35 pages and the scenes are not able to be split into separate chapters due to all the flashbacks. Besides, you can’t break a prologue into chapters, unless…
What if The Yara was the first Part of Book One? Could it be made to work thematically with its premise and theme structure? Is it too short to be its own Part? How would this affect the time structure (every Part spans four years)?
This is going to take some thought. More big decisions. But in the meantime, I’m still writing every day, all day. And loving it.
Present-Day Reflection
8/24/2026
All of this reimagining and restructuring reminds me of what I’ve read about Frank Herbert’s process of writing the first Dune novel. Originally conceived as Dune World (published as a three-part serial in Analog magazine between December 1963 and February 1964), its first incarnation was a mere shadow of what it would eventually become. Not just rewriting an entire story but recreating it from the ground up. This may be the only way to have work that has a sense of depth that feels real. Everything has a history to it and is built upon things that were once themselves substantial in their own way.
