Tag: Writing Serial Fiction

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.

The End Is The Beginning Is The End

This final chapter comes full-circle in a lot of ways. First, it was an experiment where I wrote the first chapter and the last chapter before writing the rest of the book. To do that, I obviously had to know the ending I was aiming toward. Luckily I am a planner, and I outlined this story in more detail than I ever have before.

The benefit I saw, which I didn’t expect when I originally wrote the ending, was that it gave me an emotional and tonal target to aim for, along with an end to the plot. Because I had this ending chapter, I had a good idea of how the chapters leading up to it should feel.

I also assumed that I would have to make major revisions to this chapter when I actually reached the end of the book. When I arrived, I didn’t end up making very many changes at all.

Since there were really no downsides and multiple upsides, the experiment was a clear success. I am planning to do this for every book going forward.

Tragedy or Comedy?

The classic definitions of tragedy and comedy hinge on whether the ending of the story is sad or happy, whether the protagonist gets what they ultimately want. If I had to pick, I am more drawn to tragedy. I don’t think anyone will accuse me of a happy ending here.

Like most dichotomies though, it’s a false one. I believe that the best stories have to incorporate both elements into their conclusion to feel satisfying. Life is never purely happy or sad, and going too far one way or the other makes a story feel artificial. Life is tragicomedy.

In Razor Mountain, the protagonist and the villain end up being the same person, and the tension comes from having multiple goals that are in conflict with one another. Christopher has all the power, but he still has to choose, and no matter what he chooses he will lose something significant. 

What Comes Next?

The story is finished! You can read it from cover to cover. But it’s not done yet.

I started this project of blogging through the process of writing an entire novel because I wanted to document everything. That process won’t be complete until we dive into editing.

I’m going to take a couple weeks away from Razor Mountain to give myself some editorial distance. I’ll to try to forget everything and come back in the mindset of a reader and editor. I’m also going to bring in other readers to get feedback and critique. I’ll build a list of things that need to be changed and improved, and then I’ll do the actual fixing and polishing.

Thank you to all of my regular readers, whether you followed Razor Mountain from the beginning or only found it partway through. I do recognize those names that pop up in the Likes every week. I hope you’ll stick around for this last part of the process, and whatever comes next.

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.

No More Mysteries

There once was a show called LOST. This show was designed around a firehose of mysteries that were blasted at its rabid fanbase in a technique that its creator, J. J. Abrams, called the “mystery box.” Then he went off to become the king of the nerds by directing films in the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, irritating fans from both. Meanwhile, the remaining writers continued creating mysteries at breakneck pace until the entire show collapsed under the weight of them. The ending of LOST held the title for most unsatisfying finale of a popular TV show for several years, until Game of Thrones came along.

Which is all to say that when I first began this book, I knew I wanted to create a mystery box that started with nothing but questions and ended by fully resolving every last one. Here in the penultimate chapter, we’ve reached that point. Christopher’s childhood trauma and the nature of the oracles were the last two things on my checklist. Now all the cards are on the table.

I’m under no delusions. I know that it was dangerous to save the most science-fictiony elements of the story for the very end. I hope it feels right after everything that led up to this point. I hope they’re fun, and not irritating. The last thing I want to do is pull a LOST.

The Emotional Center

This chapter is also the final reckoning. Christopher has no more distractions. He’s dying (well, sort of) and he has to sit with that. All of the external conflicts have been resolved. Even when he does his best to pick a fight with Cain, he gets nowhere.

The tension that remains is internal. It’s not even between Christopher and God-Speaker. They share the same fear—the fear that most of us have, to some extent or another—the fear of death. This is the connecting thread throughout the book. God-Speaker is too far gone. He’s trapped by his fear in an endless cycle. Christopher might not be.

It’s Easy Again

A lot of writers seem to agree that the middle of a book is the hardest part to write. In the beginning, everything is new and exciting. It doesn’t matter if some things aren’t quite clear yet, because there’s the whole rest of the book to take care of them. Then the middle comes along, and all of those problems and plot holes and difficult connections between plot point A and Z become very apparent. Even with extensive outlining, I felt that in this book.

As I’ve approached the end though, those problems have slowly fallen away. I know what I have to do, and it’s just a matter of doing it to the best of my ability. I’ve got a clear mark to hit for the final chapter, and a wide-open path to get there.

Writing isn’t always fun. Sometimes it’s a slog. In these final chapters, it’s been easy and it’s been fun. I’ll be done soon, and have something I can call a book with a straight face. Sure, there will be editing, but that’s a whole new adventure. I can’t wait to go back and read the whole thing, to see what worked and what didn’t quite work, and figure out how to smooth it out and polish it.

In the past, I haven’t always been very good at enjoying the writing when it came easy. This time, I’m making sure to appreciate it.

Next Time

It’s hard to believe it, but Chapter 34 is the end. Join me next week for the conclusion of Razor Mountain.

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.

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.

It’s Not Easy Being King

It has only been two chapters since Christopher found out who he really is, and this is the first time he’s had a chance to sit with that information. There’s no conversation or reveals. He spends this chapter snooping through God-Speaker’s house and God-Speaker’s memories.

I wanted to evoke a feeling of melancholy. Most of God-Speaker’s memories and possessions are old and sad. Christopher is beginning to see that even though God-Speaker rules his own little kingdom, being God-Speaker might not be that great.

There’s also the question of what will happen to the part of him that’s still Christopher when God-Speaker takes over, and whether he’ll effectively die or cease to exist.

Planning Out the Rest of the Book

With only a few chapters left, I’ve been starting to look at what it will take to wrap this thing up. Part of that is tracking the unanswered questions and teases from earlier chapters that need to be fully resolved. Part of it is trying to set up the emotional payoff to make the end of the book feel like a proper conclusion, and not just an ending.

I’m pleased with how well my outline has held up across the entire book. As I’ve mentioned before, I went into more detail in this outline than I normally would. I wanted to give myself a safety net, since I knew I would be dropping episodes as I wrote them, and I wouldn’t be able to go back and fix mistakes without making a confusing mess for anyone who was reading each episode as it came out.

There were a few things that changed along the way. Some chapters split in two, and other chapters were cannibalized by their neighbors before they were ever written. Some bits of information ended up coming out in different places than I had planned (usually because it made sense to insert it into a particular dialogue or moment, and I hadn’t anticipated that in outlining). Despite all that, I’m still headed toward the conclusion I planned all along. Everything mostly fit into the shape I planned for it.

I still have a rough draft of the final chapter that I wrote immediately after the first chapter, just as an experiment. I think it was a success. It’s not perfect, and I’m sure I’ll rewrite it when I get to that point, but it was a useful guide for the mood of the book, and the final target that I was shooting for.

I might try writing the last chapter first for all my books going forward.

Scheduling

As I think about the end of Razor Mountain, I’ve also been thinking about my posting schedule. I’ve generally been posting a new chapter every other week, but I’d like to finish this thing by posting the last two or three chapters in quick succession.

To make that work, I’ll want to get all those chapters written in advance, which means I’ll probably have an extra one- or two-week break right before the big finale.

Next Time

Chapter 31 has everything you could ever want: exciting new reveals, arguments about city planning, and some light attempted murder.

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.

You might recall that last time I decided to split the original Chapter 28 into two pieces. That turned out to be a good idea, because this “half” was still longer than my average chapter. Once again, dialogue fills up the pages quickly.

Large Group Dialogue

With Christopher and the entire Razor Mountain cabinet all seated around the conference table, there are fourteen people in the room during this chapter. This kind of large group dialogue isn’t something I have to do a lot, so it was an interesting challenge.

Most of the group hasn’t been introduced at this point, so I used Christopher’s faulty memory as an excuse to keep some of the secretaries anonymous for now. This limits the number of characters I have to introduce, and the number of characters the reader has to try to track.

I find that one of the best ways to keep the dialogue flowing is to be willing to adjust it as I go. I always have an idea of what I want to get across in a given scene, but I often rearrange the elements based on how I feel they would come up naturally in the conversation. I included some things in this chapter that I hadn’t initially planned to, because it felt like it would be strange for the secretaries to not ask certain questions.

Once again, it’s a balancing act in this book, because there are so many reveals to get to before the end. There are six (planned) chapters left, but that may change with some of the things planned for future chapters being pulled into this one.

The Detective’s Monologue

The detective’s monologue is a mystery trope where the main character reveals the answers to all the mysteries in a scene near the end of the story. This chapter felt a bit like that for Cain. He’s not pointing out the killer, but he is helping to explain the strange circumstances that led Christopher to Razor Mountain.

Meanwhile, Christopher reveals things that the other characters aren’t aware of, but the reader is mostly already familiar with. I could have tried to gloss over this, but I thought it might be beneficial to use this as a reminder of things that happened early in the story, so they’re fresh in the reader’s mind. The God-Speaker reveal also casts them in a different light.

Emotional Impact

Although this chapter (like the last couple) is mostly about getting across a lot of information, I did want to include an emotional twist at the end. Christopher has spent the entire book trying to get back home, and now his followers offer to bring him “home” within Razor Mountain. Christopher still isn’t going home. His homecoming is really God-Speaker’s.

In a lot of ways, this is what the remainder of the book is all about: how Christopher feels about becoming God-Speaker, and what he’s going to do about it.

Next Time

In Chapter 30, Christopher will have to start grappling with the changes going on inside his own head. And there’s still the issue of that pesky murderer skulking about.

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.

Remember When This Book Had No Dialogue?

Having just written yet another chapter that is almost entirely characters walking and talking, it’s hard to believe that this book started with a single character, completely alone in the wilderness. For the entirety of Act I, Christopher had nobody to talk to. God-Speaker had his tribe, but even in those early chapters they didn’t have much to say to each other, and I purposely limited their vocabulary and the ways they communicated.

In Act II, that began to change. Christopher was slowly introduced to more people: Amaranth, then the exiles, and finally the people of Razor Mountain itself. God-Speaker built up a society around himself, becoming more sophisticated and social.

Now, in Act III, I’m finding that every chapter is stuffed full of dialogue by necessity. Dialogue is a fantastic tool for rolling out exposition in a natural and interesting way. I need to resolve all the mysteries that were set up along the way, and that means getting a lot of information across. Dialogue is great for that.

The potential downside of all that dialogue is the way it slows the pacing. Dialogue naturally tends to slow a story down, because it feels like it’s happening more-or-less in real time. An entire chapter of dialogue can span only a few minutes of time within the story. Narrative description, even when it’s flowery, can often pack more time and more events into fewer words.

I’m trying to keep the dialogue tight to counter this slowing effect, but I’m sure I’ll come back later and find more that I could have done. For me, dialogue is one of the hardest things to edit, because changing something early in a conversation can cause cascading changes throughout the rest of the conversation, like redirecting the flow of a river.

Parsing Feedback

Feedback for this book has been a strange beast. I get some real-world feedback before I publish a chapter, then it goes out onto the blog, Wattpad and Tapas, where it (sometimes) gets more feedback, mostly in the form of comments. And sometimes I’ll get comments on chapters that I wrote months ago, as new people find the story. This process, with a publicly available serial story is a very different experience from writing the whole book and then getting feedback from a curated group of people.

That said, I’ve been getting great (that is, useful) feedback on the last couple chapters. Hopefully that means readers are engaged and excited about the direction the story is going. It’s really helpful to see what questions readers have and what they’re wondering about at this stage.

As mysteries start to resolve and questions get answered, I think readers naturally become more and more aware of the questions that haven’t been answered yet. Getting feedback on what readers are wondering about is really useful here, because it can tell me whether I’ve really answered some questions as well as I think I have. It also tells me what I should emphasize in upcoming chapters.

So, if you’re reading and you have feedback, please drop me a comment! It’ll only make the story better.

Next Time

Chapter 28 turned out to be a long one—so  long that I broke it in half. In Chapter 29, Cain and Christopher will confront the cabinet, and more will be revealed about what happened in the years while God-Speaker was gone from Razor Mountain.

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.

The Ol’ Switcheroo

This is it. The big reveal. The timelines have converged.

When I was working on the outline, I knew that I needed to show some of God-Speaker and Razor Mountain’s long history in the middle section of the book, but it quickly became apparent that I would have to limit the number of chapters dedicated to that history to not bog the whole thing down. However, I decided that I needed at least two chapters for this final part with Cain and Reed.

Firstly, I needed some time and words to build up these characters because of the pivotal role they play going into the last act. It also gave me the chance to set up a little twist. I placed Cain as the blatant bad guy, an echo of Strong-Shield, who had betrayed God-Speaker ten chapters earlier. I like to think I was a little more subtle in positioning Reed as a good guy, because he has God-Speaker’s implicit trust. That leads into the “small” twist when their roles turn out to be reversed.

The bigger twist is the nature of the connection between God-Speaker and Christopher. Admittedly, the structure of the book, following their two points of view, makes it pretty likely that there’s a connection there, but depending on how good of a guesser the reader is, it’s not clear what that connection is, or when it’ll be revealed. My hope, in layering the small twist and the big twist, is that the whole thing will be more impactful and feel like a bigger revelation. This, for me, is the most exciting part of the book so far.

This was a fun chapter to write, because it feels like I’ve been keeping a secret for a long time, and I no longer have to worry about accidentally giving it away. I’ve been perpetually worried that I’ll reveal something by accident. (I’ve accidentally swapped Christopher and God-Speaker’s names a few times, but as far as I know, I caught all of these slip-ups before posting. It still made me nervous that I’d miss one.

Beginning the End

This chapter is an inflection point: the end of Act II and the start of Act III. So the first thing it had to do was wrap up the middle of the book with an exciting reveal. But its other job is to usher in the final chapters by getting the reader interested in what is about to happen.

It provides some new questions to ask. How did Cain know about Christopher, and how exactly are Christopher and God-Speaker connected? What has happened between the cabinet members in the time since God-Speaker died, and is Reed still around? What exactly is Christopher going to do about all this?

That last question is a big one, because for most of the book Christopher has struggled to have some agency in what happens to him. A lot of shit happens to him—he’s a pinball in the first two acts. And while he makes decisions, it’s a little hard to tell how much those decisions are helping or hurting him.

My hope is that the reader is willing to accept that, for a while. But not forever. The protagonist has to have some control over what happens to him for the story to feel meaningful. The connection between God-Speaker and Christopher hints that he will have that chance in Act III.

Next Time

Having spent most of the book setting up mysteries, I’m thrilled to pretty much continuously reveal the answers for the remainder of the book. If writing Act II was like biking up hill, hopefully writing Act III will be more like coasting back down toward the big crash at the end.

See you in Chapter 28.