This post contains spoilers for The Subtle Art of Empire (formerly known as The Blood of Their Dreams).
I've come a long way from the mortified, chewing-on-my-fingernails feeling I first got when sharing my work. Getting feedback at this stage is fun and exciting. I wanted to share a few of my favorite snippets from reader comments.
I identified a lot with having a part of yourself you weren't quite in control of, that could help you but also hinder you.
I like the idea of secret magic technology. Like "the NSA can break all known encryption, they just don't tell anyone"
The description of Sierra’s experience of incanting vilai kyr winarem malea konsari was one of my favorite passages in the book. The visual changes wrought by each lemma and her raw feelings about them made that scene so vivid. I re-read it several times just to relive it again.
The part in chapter two when Albion spits on Sierra by accident is gross and funny at the same time. I appreciate that.
I'm sad that Eiden died so soon! Will Sierra get another lyre-playing, gold-eyed almost-consort?
I spent most of March digesting these comments and considering how to reorganize the book. This was a lot of thinkwork, and not a lot of writing, which was discouraging. But I eventually broke ground on the new draft late last month, and now, with a significantly revised outline in hand, I'm making strides again.
Below I've summarized some of the big changes coming up for Draft 4.
Focusing less on Lorehaven
It was clear to me that Sierra needed to spend less time being puzzled by Lorehaven and ever-so-slowly discovering its secrets. These chapters plodded along when the pace and stakes needed to be ramping up. Initially, I thought I could remedy this by cluing her in to Lorehaven much earlier, such that when she finally goes there, it's with direction, purpose, a sense of "the pieces all coming together." I played with the thought that perhaps Lorehaven didn't truly exist in the waking world, and had been consigned to fugue. But the violence that later befalls Lorehaven is geography-specific, and reconciling these two ideas was hard. (More on this topic later.)
Rebalancing the story
With these changes, I struggled to make Sierra's remaining time in Lorehaven meaningful. I had ideas for crises: she glimpses something terrible happening to Aldus! Tane succumbs to moladras, and they have to save him! But they were just filler, distractions from a story that was mostly already told. The book was front-heavy.
I had been aggressively positioning the moment when Sierra, Hadonar, and Gisele come together to cure Tane as my story's midpoint ("meeting with the goddess," "mirror moment," etc.). But I considered that a more pivotal moment might be when she refuses Eiden's "olive branch" in a tavern. Because Eiden's perceived betrayal of Sagalle is a major plot point, I had already been planning to introduce him earlier and rewrite him as a more sympathetic character. Switching the sequence of a few events to make this moment the midpoint felt right.
Upping the stakes meaningfully
Another problem with the Lorehaven sequence: there was no sense that the baddies were getting closer or more powerful. The crises mentioned above read as filler because they weren't direct consequences of Sagalle's getting closer to achieving her goal. She needed to be doing more, and what she was doing, i.e. becoming more fanatical and authoritarian, needed to be driving her and Eiden apart. It's tropey, but the natural consequence of Sagalle stepping up military action against Hyacinth is a big final battle.
Not focusing on Lorehaven at all
And it doesn't make sense for a big final battle to suddenly descend on Lorehaven, which is geographically in the middle of nowhere. So as much as I love my caldera city, I'm consolidating in the name of unity of place. All major settings -- Belledge, Zidéa, Lorehaven -- will merge into a New Crobuzon-style Capital, tentatively named Niou Sang, whose underworkings give rise to the Wye, and whose shadow in fugue is long and violent.
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I'm excited about these changes, though I know they're going to be a lot of work, and I wonder if I haven't already changed the story too many times. Wasn't this last draft good enough? Half of it, anyway? The weirdest times are when I realize I've already written a piece of the new plot -- two or more drafts ago. To that I shrug and say, the pendulum has to swing before it can find its equilibrium.