This is part of an ongoing series where I’m documenting the development of my serial novel, Razor Mountain.
You can find my spoiler-free journals for each chapter, my spoiler-heavy pre-production journals, and the book itself over at the Razor Mountain landing page.
Writing With Thumbs
I use Scrivener for my novel writing. I generally write entirely my computer, but I also have Scrivener on mobile. Unfortunately, when I last upgraded my phone, the integration between Scrivener and Dropbox on mobile got messed up.
I finally got around to fixing that, so I can once again open my projects on my phone. Now, I wouldn’t say that a tiny touchscreen is a great writing environment, but it has the advantage of going everywhere with me. It’s the same reason I prefer reading physical books, but about half of what I read is e-books (again, mostly on my phone).
For some reason, being able to write in spare moments—as a car passenger, or during breaks at work, or sitting in bed—was very helpful for this chapter. I ended up writing almost all of it on my phone. I did notice some odd effects as a result, like shorter paragraphs and sentences. I still did my revisions on the computer, so I think most of the stylistic changes ended up getting edited out. I’d be curious if anyone notices a difference.
Revealing
The end of this chapter is structured like a classic mystery reveal, with the twist being that the reader has known for many chapters that Reed was the killer. Since that reveal was already…revealed, I hadn’t really put enough thought into Reed as a villain. He was more of a plot device than a character. While that can sometimes be a perfectly reasonable tactic with certain characters, in this case it was a definite deficiency.
After getting some reader feedback on my first draft, I realized that this is still an important reveal, but the revelation is Reed’s motive. My wife suggested that his motive didn’t feel personal enough. I hadn’t really thought through the details of his life before he arrived in his current position, so I had to go back and figure out what his childhood and early life were like. I won’t go into any of that here. Like most backstory, it will never come out in the book. It’s still valuable for the few lines of dialogue that it will inform.
I’m still not entirely sure I’m happy with how this turned out, but I think the real fix may require adjustments to other chapters as well.
Pyrrhic Victory
There are only two more chapters after this, and there is only one more open question still on my list to resolve. God-Speaker has overcome his enemy, and is once again in power, with the situation firmly under his control. After spending the entire book in constant danger, Christopher finally seems to be physically safe, but also on the verge of disappearing into God-Speaker.
Now that there are no more distractions, Christopher has to come to grips with his transformation. He’s “won,” but he’s also given up his original goal of ever getting home.
Next Time
In the penultimate chapter, Christopher has to decide if he’s happy giving in to God-Speaker. Is there anything he can even do about it? We’ll find out next time.
Words Deferred 