Possible Major Changes
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Possible Book 2 endings that would have hooked me (depending on the build up) for Book 3:
– Talarius admitting his hubris and asking Tom to setup a meeting for his return.
– Hilda or someone from Talarius & co. wanting to setup a meeting w/ Tom.Basically ramp up the tension on Tiernon & co. vs. Tom and then just with the promise of resolution. But not the Oosters. Leave them in the wings waiting to crash the party and screw things over in their zealousness. I mean, this book is called “Heavenly Host” and the conflict is Tom vs. Heaven’s forces.
Hence the reason I started a thread in the finished reading section for people to post ideas that could potentially drastically shift where the book goes. Hopefully we can get some new mind boggling possibilities, I tend to try and avoid shifting too far from what is already there, leaning more towards just refining things a bit.
Yeah, been thinking about that. The “slow” part is that for the last month, I had the cut where it was, so was sort of working in my head and notes for the build to big end to 3.
This was my problem for sometime with Book II. Because it’s a second book, it is by its nature a “link book”
From a trilogy point of view, almost all book 2’s are the low points.
So I need to think about more climactic scenes that I can move in. Your suggestions are actually stuff I did play with, but are still less climactic than I’d ideally envision.
Here are some problems:
1) Oorstemoth and the Rod are going to head into the Abyss, demon hunting. Obviously there is a lot of ground to cover there and nothing too fast that I see.
2) The Asmeth stuff probably wouldn’t be fully realized conflict wise until book 4 as is.One thing that does happen early in book 3 is that Damien, Vaselle, and the Shamans all have to get home somehow. The experienced shamans aren’t that big of a problem because with effort they can find their homes astrally and help setup a gate point there.
The Astlanian’s are a different issue. However, Tizzy has a link to Gastrope’ so the plan is to freak the crap out of Gastrope’ with the orc shamans and others coming home via him in Murgatroy.
A big part of the Jenn/Gastrope/Grove story line (but not all of it) is to bring in the elves who are HUGE Orcus haters, to the point of being irrational (for elves–normally perturbed for everyone else)
If not clear, Aodh the third conspirator to kill Orcus is the chief avatar of Ne’t the Elvish god of war. So for this mix it is elves vs orcs.
So the point of this is that Gastrope’ sort of gets stuck as a double agent.
The question is? Is ‘the return trip’ big enough? Not clear.
Also, I don’t have to cut stuff to fit this particular thing in. If I had to I could up the page numbers by quite a bit and make the book at least 1/3 bigger.
However, just stuffing things might not be the answer. Sometimes less is more if it speeds up the story.
So, even if not necessary, cutting might be useful.
Also, would more Tom early on be useful?
The problem is, they are in the cave recuperating and bored. Boredom is an important contrast. So I’m not sure what Tom would be doing other than his mental anxiety gymnastics and arguing with Talarius.
Arguing with Talarius could be amusing though.
First off I need to ask if there is anything fairly big early on in book 3s plans that you could put into the end of book two as a draw for people. I don’t really want you to give away all the dirty little secrets before they’re ready, so no spoilers if it can be helped.
My idea is to cut out a lot of the rapid early scene jumps from the book and filling all that newly emptied space with something bigger at the end that you can leave as a cliffhanger to make people want to not wait for book 3. (lets face reality here EVERYONE hates waiting for the next book, its part of the charm involved in reading) A lot of the early scenes though are for characters or groups that don’t make any major plays throughout the entire book and just feel like filler for the most part, you could cut out the guys that aren’t doing much other than posturing up for book three and give them a flashback chapter or just merge the timelines some. Say start book three on fight day or a few days after but have it go at a much more accelerated rate so that it ends where you want it to.
For me it feels like there are 3 important groups to follow for where this book ends, Hilda and the Saints, (possible band name?) Tom & Co., and Lilith and the not-so Saintly Saints. Jenn and Gastrope are building to somewhere important it seems but nothing happens to them that is all that earth shattering, they basically go on a fancy plane ride and eat good food.
If you have something major that can happen to them to cliffhanger that storyline as well as the tom one, that would be a great place to end book 2. Maybe have them be present in that town when Tom brings the shamans back and see either Tom turning into Edwyrd or Rupert changing shapes? Leave off with them trying to help her with the shock that both Tom and Rupert are demons and Damien and Gastrope already knew? I would HATE to have a book end with a ‘continued in book three’ at the start of a war between realms with discord strewn between allies that had just been learning to trust and like each other. Which means of course that it would be a good way to break between books because the people that are into the story by that point would have no choice but to wait and get the next book to see what happens.
So long ramble later, cut the scenes from the factions that aren’t doing much and extend into whats planned for book 3 to possibly get a cliffhanger for more than one storyline. Right now it doesn’t even feel like much of one is there for Tom and he is trying to build a demonic fortress and an army of orcs.
Cool.
At one point I was going to have dialog between Lilith and Sentir Fallon on this, he doesn’t know about the corrupting influences. She does, and Aodh certainly does, because that’s a dividing line between Sidhe and Dok Sidhe.
And while Aodh knows this, he simply doesn’t care. His goal is to destroy his enemy, and all orcs.
And you bring up a good question, I’ve had.
If the book were longer, some of the “filler” like scenes fleshed out and if more came of them by the end; and we added more Tom to the first half (which admittedly–he’s in a cave waiting on people to regenerate–makes me scratch for something other than more conversations)
Would that make help?
Or do I need to escalate problems for Tom or others, faster.
Cool, I got the bit about Antimus being like antimatter to animus, but didnt think it would be a corrupting dark influence on Talarius or the church in general. I thought the stated ‘moral slippage’ of the church was due to ongoing political influence of zealots squeing the church over time. Maybe a few hints should be thrown in about its properties other than destroying animus? Talarius feeling ‘something’ is different since the battle, or Sentir Fallon worrying the changes in the church are due to him leaving it on astlan, and stating something to the fact when talking to his ‘conspirators’?
I agree that the first half of the book had me wondering “what about Tom?”, but I dont think the other PoV chapters should be removed. Maybe more chapters about Tom could be put in covering Tizzy’s tour of the abyss, or Tom helping Reggie get a handle on being a demon, stuff that could assist character development but not affect the established timeline.
That’s what I’ve been thinking of…
more conflicts for Tom…but not clear what that would be yet…the tour, might be useful.
I have one thought, but not sure about it, because it means introducing another sort of demon, and I’m already doing Incubus/Succubus/D’Orc/D’Warg as is…
Yes, he’ll need it later, but some practice might be useful….
86 is a lot of demons…I may take a look at that.
Tom needs some of his god mana for later purposes.
On an other matter: You could think about cutting down (or out) section 86.0. I think it’s mainly made to convey the fear lesser demons feel for Tom cuz the other demonlords are not of the friendly sort.
Yeah, I’m thinking somewhat along those lines.
It will end up being a mix of things, and I think some of the answers will remain mysteries until book iii when Tom starts thinking about the logical consistency of it. Particularly how you get rid of thousands of D’Orcs.
But a crux is this, regenerating in the Abyss is different then dissolving and reforming weakly in the Abyss. Regenerating in the Abyss means growing back/healing from wounds, largest single piece.
How do we know which piece to start with, well, it’s a conscious or semiconscious effort on the part of the demon, choosing a starting point.
If you are literally disintegrated it could take a VERY VERY long time to come back and you might just give up. That’s what suicidal D’Orcs did.
They gave up. No one forces you to regenerate, you could give up, much like the alvar and sidhe do eventually and let yourself disperse.
Demons eventually go the same way other immortals go.
Now the problem is, a lot of demons were wiped out in the demon wars that happened up until the Orcus battle. There are ways/weapons that can kill demons, they are terrible weapons. But in many cases it’s just disintegrate someone so badly that it would take them so long to regenerate that they give up.
Change it so that dying in the Abyss isn’t permanent, but dying anywhere damages a demon. The more the damage the harder / longer it is to recover. So, what happens if you damage a damaged demon? Maybe it becomes even harder to hold together and they just eventually dissipate when the soul is attacked instead of a body.
Or, if you go that route with the D’Orcs have them dying several times until finally fading or suiciding by refusing to reform and then you get this really tragic group given the 4000 year history. Slowly being ground away, returning only to be beat down again.
Unfortunately it’d require a [b]major[/b] rewrite to Book 2, but it wouldn’t need Book 1 to be revised and you might be able to into an style of immortal warfare. If you do it well it could provide some very interesting strategies and combat styles, e.g., more suicide attacks if it gets your side to win, that could really help the book to stand out.
Hmmmmmmm
I see your point.
Bummer, guess I need to do a third edition!
🙂
Hmmmmmm…I need to think on this. In some ways this gives me an out for Tom on some guilt…but it creates some other real problems.
Boggy’s statement isn’t/wasn’t in my mind actually correct. It was just very hard to kill demons in the Abyss because they would keep regenerating short of something stopping them.OK, I could deal with that one statement, however….
The D’Orcs have had quite a bit of attrition. Both from the demons and from depression.
Yeah this is an issue.
well later it seems like he has to make a conscious effort to use the god mana, I wasn’t suggesting that he try and use that for animagery, just that if he is jittery and cooped up in a cave for days after a fight where he almost died it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for him to want to try and improve his skill with magic.
And while at that, I probably need to go into more detail on where the D’Orc army in Etterdam went…they should have returned, they didn’t, so they were slain permanently in Etterdam. Where and how to get into this since Tom didn’t really question it…hmm…I think I shall have Tom pondering this.
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